A glimpse at the first draft of the diagrams for US Transport Projects #8. The careful observer will note that there have been a number of “Forthcoming” posts over the last several months with no followup of a final product. There will be, at some point, a mass release of a larger than usual number of USxP issues.
An advertisement from 1963 illustrating a quite-possibly artistic license nuclear powered space probe heading towards Jupiter. The probe was to use the SNAP-50/SPUR powerplant (300 to 1200 kilowatts of electricity) to power a circular bank of ion engines. The realistic nature of the design should be questioned due to the lack of any apparent communication system… no great big radio dish, in other words.
Patrons of the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon received last month:
Diagram: A foldout diagram of an Apollo-derived logistics spacecraft
Document: “The Piasecki Story,” an illustrated history of the company and its products
Document: “The N.S. Savannah,” a brochure about the sole nuclear powered merchant vessel
Document: “Lunar Spacecraft Design” A paper describing the evolution of the General Electric Apollo design, quite similar to the later Soyuz spacecraft
CAD diagram: 1985 design of the British HOTOL spaceplane
If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
Turns out that the “Museum of Flying” has on display a large model of the Douglas Model 2229 supersonic transport. This design was studied for the FAA in the early 1960’s, and would have gone up against the likes of the Lockheed L-2000 and the Boeing 2707… had Douglas not determined that SSTs were economically infeasible and dropped out early. Consequently, the 2229 is one of the more difficult designs to get any good data on. I’d love to get a bunch of photos of this model from every conceivable angle (especially orthogonal views) and, it at all possible (very likely not), I’d also love to get measurements.
Someone visited back in 2015 and posted a few photos:
For all I know the museum may also have a nicely detailed engineering study document tucked away in their archive, but I have no “in” there to find out.
Circa 1960, courtesy Douglas Missile and Space Systems. Both the “flying saucer” and the lunar lander in the background are actually familiar designs, each having appeared from time to time in various media outlets. it’s unclear how *serious* either of these designs were, however. I do know that United Technologies, where I worked from 2000-2004, had an old model of a similar flying saucer on non-display in one of the shops. It was something like 3 to 4 feet in diameter and actually semi-functonal: it was mounted on a gimbal and fitted with a number of small plexiglas-fueled hybrid rocket motors. For displays the motors could be fired up and the saucer would, I believe, rotate and tilt and whatnot, responding to inputs from joysticks on the display stand.That always seemed a terrible idea: not due to the risk of fire or explosion, but because of the brain-melting screech those little rockets would put out.
I have no idea what happened to that display piece. Might’ve wandered home with someone. Might’ve moved on to another company. And chances are quite good that, like a whole lot of United Tech, it was simply trashed.
An advertisement from 1960, illustrating Marquardts work on the Project Pluto nuclear ramjet:
If you want more on Project Pluto – and who wouldn’t, as the idea of a locomotive-sized cruise missile flying at virtually unlimited range at tree to level and at a blistering Mach 3+ is fascinating – check out Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N1.
An ad for Thompson Products from 1958. The cargo rocket shown here is pure artistic license, with almost certainly no actual engineering behind it. It’s pure science fiction for the purpose of advertising razzmatazz. And yet… the similarity to the latest design of the SpaceX BFS is pretty remarkable.
“Thompson Products” may not be immediately familiar. But in October 1958 (about two months before this ad was published in Av Week, so… shrug) Thompson Products merged with the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, forming Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc. … TRW. So… huh, how about that.
The Lockheed L-2000 was a Mach 3 SST designed to compete against the Boeing 2707 in the mid 1960’s. It was an elegant and classy looking design, but was passed over by the US Government in favor of the Boeing design. Lockheed built a full scale and reasonably convincing mockup of the craft, using it for both study and PR purposes.
The L-2000 looked like nothing quite so much as a cross between the Concorde and the SR-71.
A full rez scan of the 8X10 glossy has been uploaded to the 2018-09 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
… will be livestreamed at 9PM eastern time. Billionaire, certainly. Japanese, possibly. Anybody want to make guesses?
UPDATE: yup, the paying passenger is Japanese online entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, who is paying an unstated but clearly substantial sum. The plan is that in 2023 a BFR/BFS will launch around the moon carrying Maezawa and six to eight artists of his choosing in the hopes that they’ll come home and make an art.
If they said what the *total* crew and passenger complement will be, I didn’t catch it. But it should be substantially more than one billionaire and eight artists.
Musk estimates that the development cost of BFR will be no less than $2 billion, probably around $5 billion, no more than $10 billion. Compare to SLS/Orion, which has so far spent in excess of $11 billion on the SLS and will spend something like $6 billion for the Orion capsule.
It has been *years* since I have released any “Air & Space Drawings & Documents,” high rez scans of vintage aerospace items. At last, I’m adding new items. The complete catalog can be seen HERE.
New items. Each are available for $4.
Air Document 27: “Design Study for an Air Force Model F-82E Airplane Modified to a Ground Attack Airplane” A 24-page study from 1949 for a twin-bodied F-82 modified with Allison turboprop engines. The engines would be mounted in the mid-fuselage, about where the cockpits originally were; the cockpits would be moved forward to compensate. The document, taken from a vintage copy printed from microfilm, includes numerous diagrams and B&W art.
Air Document 28: “This Is The Life With Lockheed” A 36-page booklet produced by Lockheed, Georgia Division, showing the wonders of working there in 1959. Includes not only descriptions and photos of the local environment and amenities but also photos of Lockheed facilities, products and projects. An interesting view of a very different era.
Air Document 29: “SAM-D Air Defense Weapon System” A 1973 Redstone Arsenal information booklet on the Surface-to-Air Missile, Development, which became the “Patriot” anti-aircraft/ anti-missile missile. The booklet describes the various elements of a SAM-D deployment.
Air Document 30: “V-397 (Regulus II) Summary Report” A 42-page 1955 Chance-Vought report on the Regulus II supersonic cruise missile. Includes data and glorious diagrams on the tactical missile as well as the flight test vehicle with landing gear. Scanned from a vintage printout from microfilm.
Air Document 31: “Republic XF-103 data” Dating from the mid-50’s, this collection of data and diagrams of the Mach 3+ XF-103 interceptor comes not from Republic, but from Lockheed. A rare look into corporate “competition data gathering,” this 21-page data file shows the sort of information that Lockheed put together on the designs put forward by their competitors.
Several of these were released *four* *years* ago to patrons of the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon. Patrons receive items such as these at a low cost and years earlier than waiting for them to appear on the Drawing & documents catalog… and most of the Patreon items *won’t* appear here.
If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.