StarHopper Hopped

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Jul 252019

Not much to see in this video, since it occurred at night and was shrouded by smoke and vapor. Presumably better video will emerge. But the StarHopper seems to have done what it set out to do… it went up, it translated, it came down and it didn’t kerplat or kerplode.

A quarter century ago I went out of my mind watching the Delta Clipper do this. Now, it’s more “Huh. Well, that’s good.” Because one gets used to seeing amazing things, I suppose, which explains why people stopped caring about Apollo and didn’t string up LBJ when Apollo was strangled in the crib. Fortunately for SpaceX, they don’t need to keep the masses entertained… they just need to keep Elon Musk entertained. And hopefully he won’t be done being entertained until there is a self-sustaining space infrastructure in place.

McDonnell-Douglas M-260-RTA-1

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Jul 242019

McDonnell Douglas spent much of the 1970’s trying to get NASA, the Marines and the Navy to fund the development of a lift-fan-based VTOL aircraft concept, the Model 260. This general concept showed up in a number of different forms, from strike bomber to carrier onboard delivery transport to Marine troop transport. Shown below is a”Research Technology Aircraft,” a proof of concept prototype to be assembled from existing aircraft components, much as Rockwell did with the XFV-12.

I’ve made the full resolution version of the diagram (equivalent to 37 inches wide at 300dpi) available to above-$10-subscribers of the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program/Patreon.

If this sort of thing is of interest, consider subscribing. Even a buck a month will help out; but the more you subscribe for, the more you get… and the more you help me get from eBay and save for the ages.

Booklet of General Plans

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Jul 232019

A while back I sold a few copies of a prototype of a “Booklet of General Plans” for the Space Station V from “2001.” The feedback I got suggested that the idea has merits, and with some refinement it might be something interesting.

Along with Space Station V, I have made mention of wanting to do the same sort of thing with Clavius Base and The Orville. Clavius Base is a concept at a fabulously early stage. The Orville’s 3D model is long completed, but recent news is that Eaglemoss will release a line of Orville ships starting in 2020. Since the Eaglemoss Star Trek ships come with a small magazine that provides canonical in-universe data, I will wait to see what comes out at that time.

I have a number of other Booklets in various stages of completion. Some are still in the modeling stags; some require a whole lot of tinkering with the diagrams, some are in the writeup stage. Each will have text to go along with them that will be an in-universe description of the vehicle; the “Bird One,” for example, depicts a US government attempt to reverse engineer the design as best they can based on fragmentary data. The Ajax will be another US Government attempt to describe Mongo tech after the events of “Flash Gordon.” And of course some of these, such as the Dyna Soar and the 10-meter Orion, will be non-fictional descriptions.

For those nerdy and old enough to remember the glory days of the “Booklets of General Plans” that were released for various Star trek ships, you’ll remember the pages and pages of deck plans. With a lot of these, “deck plans” won’t really be possible… for Dyna Soar, there really wasn’t a deck, and for the Helicarrier there were *way* too many decks. So each Booklet will be its own thing, with diagrams, inboard profiles, etc. that are appropriate. I’m thinking of pricing these something like $2 per page, more or less. The basic set will be 11X17 sheets, folded in half and put in a letter-sized envelope; but I’m also contemplating a limited run of each possibly on better paper, and either rolled or bound within a 12X18 binder.

If this sort of thing is of interest, take a look and let me know in the comments which one or more appeal. This is a sloooow, long-term project, more hobby than anything. So if you want one… let me know. And let your friends who might want one know. A few others arne’t included below, such as the “Men Into Space” ship and the Boeing IMIS Mars craft, which will be a *huge* set.

repost: US Launch Vehicle Projects #06: Solar Power Satellite Launchers

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Jul 212019

Now available… the newest and biggest issue in the US Aerospace Projects line.

US Launch Vehicle Projects #6

Cover art was provided by Rob Parthoens, www.baroba.be

US Launch Vehicle Projects #06 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #6 is devoted to the launch vehicles proposed for the 1970’s Solar Power Satellite program. This required millions of tons of payload delivered into Earth orbit over a span of decades, with flight rates of several times per day for each vehicle. This program produced some of the largest and most ambitious launch vehicles ever designed, and was the last time that launchers of this size were ever seriously contemplated. Appropriately, USLP#6 is by far the largest issue of US Aerospace projects to date at over seventy pages, three times the size of a usual issue.

Topics in this issue include the Rockwell Star-Raker, several Boeing Space Freighters, the Boeing “Big Onion” Low Cost Heavy Lift Vehicle (antecedent and descendant designs), a Grumman two-stage HLLV, a Rockwell HLLV and “small” HLLV, NASA-JSC heavy lifters, a Boeing/Rockwell Personnel Launch Vehicle and a Boeing winged SSTO. Along with orthogonal views, a number of perspective diagrams are also included.

USLP #6 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $9:

——–

Manhattan vs San Francisco vs SPS

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Jul 122019

Three possibilities, comparing the initial relatively dinky (dainty at less than 12 km in length) initial NASA SPS concept to Manhattan island (in a simple line drawing), to San Francisco and to the the regions around Manhattan. What looks best?

UPDATE: pretty universally the far right option was the most popular one (insert political joke HERE). A suggestion was made to rotate the SPS to align it with the island, which I’ve done below and… meh. It doesn’t really do it for me. I’ve blown up the thickness of the dimension lines. The somewhat faint ellipse at far right in the new image below is the receiver array at 45 degrees latitude. Clearly it is just about as big as the SPS itself, which at first blush might make one wonder “why go to the bother, then?” But there are a few points:

1) Size is determined by the dispersion of the microwave beam coming from a 1-km diameter emitter array in geosynchronous, *not* on the max power density it could handle. So you could potentially have a couple SPS’s beaming down to a single array.

2) Unlike a PV array the microwave receiver lets the bulk of regular light come through. it could be roughly as dense as chickenwire, meaning that you could suspend the net-like receiver over crop land, park land or water.

3) The receiver, like the SPS, works 24 hours, day and night, good weather and bad, with no need to track the sun. A ground-based PV array with the same footprint would cost a lot more than the receiver and produce much less total energy averaged out over the year.

Selling space books on ebay

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Jul 072019

And I’m a little surprised at the lack of interest in some of them:

Aerospace Vehicle Design Vol II Spacecraft Design by K. D. Wood, 1964

This one is real hard to come by, usually sells for well over $100. Only one bid, $19.99. This one ends in a few hours.

Three early “Space” books for kids: Fletcher Pratt, Jack Coggins, Lester Del Rey

Sure, they’re a little rough, but they’re old kids books, awesome in their massively over-optimistic way, and terribly low price. This one ends in a few hours.

Proceedings of the Shuttle-Based Cometary Science Workshop, 1976 NASA

This one ends in a few hours.

And this one:

XIIIth International Astronautical Congress Varna 1962, II (pp 483-1026)

This book of conference proceedings has papers on the Aerojet Sea Dragon, a general Electic “Direct” Apollo design and a nuclear-powered TV satellite. It’s already made the rounds on ebay once, no bidders. Huh.

And there’s other stuff.

https://www.ebay.com/usr/dynascott

SP-100 sketch

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Jul 062019

A sketch of the 1980s/90s SP-100 space-based nuclear reactor, designed to provide 100 kilowatts of electrical power continuously for years on end. It would have been just the thing for applications where solar panels would not have been practical, such as deep space probes or military systems that need to be somewhat maneuverable. One might thing that replacing vast PV arrays with a small reactor would have made the satellites less visible… and on radar and likely visible light, that’s probably true. but that reactor and its radiators would have been quite visible in infra-red, apparent to any IR sensor pointed int its general direction. The sketch below shows not only the tests and progress that had been done on the SP-100, but also a conceptual payload of an undefined sort. It seems to be festooned with sensors.

Cruise Missile propfan

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Jul 042019

Someone is selling a contractors model of an engine for a cruise missile on ebay. The engine is an unducted aft fan design. This type of engine was proposed for use on jetliners; it provides fuel efficiency benefits but in the end the brain-melting noise it put out doomed the concept. Not only did it bother people, it also tended to buzz the bejeebers out of the aircraft structure. In the end very high bypass conventional turbofan engines proved capable of doing the job. Noise, of course, would not have been much of an issue for a cruise missile, but since this design was put forward (circa 1989) the US has not fielded any new major cruise missiles.

Note:”TCAE /GEAE” likely stands for Teledyne Continental Aviation and Engineering / General Electric Aviation Engines. Teledyne CAE was known as such between 1969 and 1999, an unhelpful 30-year span.

Vtg USAF TCAE/GEAE Propfan Engine Cruise Missile App 1/5 Scale Contractor Model

McDonnell-Douglas Phase B Shuttle Model

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Jul 012019

For much of the time while the concept of the Space Shuttle was being developed the vehicle consisted of a manned flyback booster of relatively enormous dimensions, coupled with an orbiter that included sizable internal oxygen tanks, sometimes with external hydrogen tanks, sometimes internal. The model below, a masterpiece of late 1960’s model makers craft, illustrates one such concept. the orbiter is similar to the Grumman H-33 except larger, with completely internal hydrogen and oxygen tanks.

Had this type of Space Shuttle been built and flown successfully, there is every chance that it would have been substantially less costly to operate than the Shuttle we got: flying the booster back to a runway landing and refurbishing it would theoretically have been a lot faster and easier than fishing solid rocket motor casings out of the ocean and shipping them to Utah for refurb. But getting the design to the point of operation would have been a nightmare. The booster was unlike anything previously attempted, and would have been an aircraft roughly the size of the C-5 Galaxy, with a top speed like that of the X-15

I have uploaded the full resolution scan of the photo to the 2019-07 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to $4 and up subscribers to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

Elon’s dreaming big

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Jun 302019

I’ll believe it when I see it:

SpaceX targets 2021 commercial Starship launch

I suspect these are Elon-estimates, which have been notoriously optimistic in the past. Still, there’s no reason why SpaceX *can’t* pull this off. And if they can… that would be not only impressive, but world changing . Western civilization just might have a chance to survive. Not on Earth, of course… here, we’re pretty well doomed. But out in space, maybe, just maybe, there’s a possibility that people who speak English, aren’t ashamed of Washington and Jefferson and think rationally and scientifically might live on.

“The goal is to get orbital as quickly as possible, potentially even this year, with the full stack operational by the end of next year and then customers in early 2021.”

Here’s hoping.

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