Plexiglas Space Shuttle

 art, awesomeness, history, models, projects, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 072019
 

A video where some guys get into the archives of the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. On display is a sizable (looks like about 1/50 scale) Space Shuttle, ET and Boosters made from plexiglas. It is a thing of beauty, surely a chore and a half for the model shop back in the day. This is *not* the final Shuttle design; some differences are obvious such as the split cargo bay doors and, while unmentioned in the video, the existence of extended OMS pod fairings, reaching out onto the aft of the cargo bay doors.

Last time I visited the USS&RC in something like 2005 they had a much bigger plexiglas STS model on public display, something like 1/10 scale, along with a gigantic plexiglas Saturn V. Such things are fantastic artifacts, and if you are working on a complex engineering project like this a see-through plexiglass large scale model is terribly helpful. I suspect that such things are only rarely made these days, as computer graphics are a lot easier, cheaper and more readily updatable. But nothing beats a Real Thing. And at least so far, 3D printing is not up to the job of stamping out large-scale transparent models like this. But someday…

 Posted by at 12:45 pm

Sea Dragon vs Saturn V

 art, awesomeness, history, models, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 042019
 

A scale comparison between the Saturn V and Sea Dragon CD models I’m working on for a 1/7o0 scale kit for Fantastic Plastic. The Sea Dragon would have had about four times the payload of the Saturn V, despite being *gigantic* compared to the Saturn V. This was due to the fact that the Sea Dragon was, by design, a *low* performance vehicle, using simple pressure feed. the result was that everything was necessarily gigantic… giant engines, tanks, wall thicknesses, plumbing lines, etc. While the main propellant feed lines for most rockets are measured in inches, up to a foot or two, in diameter, the LOX and RP-1 lines at the base of the Sea Dragon were about ten *feet* in diameter.

 

 

 Posted by at 10:28 pm

X-60A

 aircraft, art, projects, rockets, youtube  No Responses »
Feb 282019
 

The Air Force Research Lab has released a half-heartedly CGI animated video showing the X-60A hypersonic research vehicle designed by Generation Orbit. This is a small unmanned missile to be carried to release altitude underneath a modified Gulfstream III corporate jet, where it would fire its own throttleable liquid rocket engine and climb to cruise altitude (~130,000 ft). The vehicle is fitted with an unconventional set of wings and control surfaces; it’s not immediately clear just what it’s supposed to do other than go fast. One would imagine that high-Mach airbreathing propulsion systems would be of interest to the USAF these days, and scramjet technology is mentioned as part of the proposed payload, but how such equipment would be integrated into the vehicle is unclear.

 

 Posted by at 4:54 pm

Orbital railgun

 history, nukes, projects, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 232019
 

An illustration from 1984 showing the main features of an orbital railgun for the Strategic Defense Initiative program. While the design looks reasonable enough, almost certainly this is either missing a whole lot of important details or has changed them into unrecognizability. Scale is impossible to determine, but a practical space-based railgun capable of generating the projectile velocities needed (typically 10 km/sec) would have been an impressive structure indeed.

 

 Posted by at 2:39 am

Hughes Hot Cycle Heavylifter

 aircraft, art, history, projects  No Responses »
Feb 152019
 

A magazine ad from 1967 showing a concept for a “Hot Cycle” helicopter. The “hot cycle” was a way to spin the rotors without imparting a massive torque to the fuselage as usually happens with helicopters, requiring a tail rotor to counter. here, instead of mechanically linking the engine to the rotor via drive shafts and gears, the engine exhaust was ducted up through the central rotor shaft, then out to the tips of the rotors, and then ejected through thrust-generating nozzles. This would impart only a trivial amount of torque to the fuselage, largely from friction with the shaft bearings. it was a great idea, but there were some issues with leakage around the bearings as well as being impressively loud and fuel-hungry.

Note that while the “hot cycle” eliminated the great majority of the need for an anti-torque tail rotor, this and similar designs still had one. This tail rotor would be used to swing the tail back and forth, yawing the aircraft at low speed.. This woudl require that the rotor be able to provide thrust in either direction on demand.

 Posted by at 3:03 pm

Forthcoming

 Crazy, history, Hmm..., projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Spacecraft Projects  No Responses »
Feb 132019
 

Another early look at US Spacecraft Projects #6, this time showing one of the more unusual space vehicles ever seriously contemplated… a single stage to orbit space station. This one would seem to be especially vulnerable to thrust imbalance, but at least it had enough engines (11,520) so that if one went out, the lack of thrust wouldn’t be *too* hard to counter.

 Posted by at 11:09 pm

“Big Stick” art

 aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, nukes, projects, rockets, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 112019
 

The San Diego Air and Space Museums Flickr account recently added this illustration, showing a Convair “Big Stick” being launched off the back of mobile transporter. “Big Stick” was a Convair concept for a nuclear ramjet powered cruise missile of nearly unlimited range, a less-known competing design against Voughts Pluto vehicle.

A higher rez (though, sadly, not a whole lot higher) version is available HERE.

If you are interested in Big Stick and Project Pluto, I recommend Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N1, which covers both in detail.

 

 Posted by at 7:43 pm

Nova/Post-Saturn Model Collection

 history, models, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Feb 092019
 

Discussions with Fantastic Plastic about model sets of large boosters is starting to focus on the Nova/Post Saturn collection for the initial release. Scale is likely to be 1/700 ( the smaller boosters aren’t *too* small, the bigger boosters are impressive and it will go with any of a number of existing ship model kits), and the current lineup is shown below.

Picking which designs to include and which to exclude is a bit of trick with the Nova/Post-Saturn line, as there were literally *hundreds* of designs worthy of consideration. If anyone has a suggestion for some other design you’re dying to see, let me know. The “inches” scale bar here is for the models at 1/288 scale… which this model set assuredly *won’t* be. Fantastic Plastic has previously released a 1/288 ROMBUS and a 1/288 NEXUS and *may* release 1/288 scale models of some of the others as individual kits… but the Sea Dragon and the Super-NEXUS would be *huge.* Once the collection is finalized a single display base will be sketched out.

 

 

 Posted by at 1:10 am
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