SpaceX Interplanetary spaceship

 art, Hmm..., projects, rockets, spacecraft  32 Responses »
Sep 272016
 

Some images copied out of the presentations today. It clearly has some heritage back to the Delta Clipper, at least in inspiration. I’m unconvinced, though, that this is a completely serious engineering concept. At the very least it seems to be jazzed up for some wow-factor; that huge window, for example, is a structural nightmare and the passenger compartment seems to be one breachable pressurized volume. Blow out one window and the whole thing will depressurize.

Still, it’s good to see big-thinkin’. But I really wish they would have somehow vetted some of the questioners after Elon’s presentation… about a third of ’em were either idiots or just there to flack some product or other.

2016-09-27-203311 2016-09-27-202604 2016-09-27-203642 spacex-interplanetary-07 spacex-interplanetary-05

 Posted by at 8:13 pm

The Chrysler Saucer

 aircraft, Crazy, history, Hmm..., nukes, projects, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft  4 Responses »
Sep 192016
 

There was a time when American auto manufacturers had important aerospace divisions. Chrysler, for example, was responsible for rockets such as the Redstone, Jupiter and the Saturn I and Ib first stage.

In late 1956, Lovell Lawrence Jr, an assistant chief engineer at the missiles division of Chrysler, publicized a concept for a nuclear-powered “flying saucer.” It seems to have been *partially* a reasonably rational concept for a long duration spacecraft for missions to Mars. It would spin like a frisbee to generate artificial gravity, though the relatively small radius would be likely to produce some harsh Coriolis effects. The saucer would be about 50 feet in diameter and only 6 feet thick.

Where the design goes a bit off the rails is that the performance expected of the craft was insanely impressive. It was a single-stage-to-solar-orbit craft, capable of taking off horizontally from a runway using nuclear-powered jet engines (note: “jet” in this case might mean “rocket.”) The craft would be capable of going from the Earth to Mars in 9 to 12 weeks.

Being that close to an atomic reactor (with a light enough shield to allow the thing to take off) would be a death sentence long before the craft would get to Mars.

After years of trying to research this concept, all I’ve managed to scrape up are three things from Ye Olde internet: two newspaper articles and one cover story from a UFO “fanzine.” I have tried over some years to obtain a copy of the “Saucer News” from August-September 1957 from sites like ebay, but without success. It seems like an original printing, or at least a decent scan, would provide a reasonably good version of the Chrysler saucer art. Anybody has more on this, I’m interested.

saucernews25-1957-aug-sep chrysler-saucer-2 chrysler-saucer-1

 Posted by at 11:29 pm

Blue Origin “New Glenn”

 awesomeness, news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  17 Responses »
Sep 122016
 

Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin has described a new rocket his company is working on , the “New Glenn.” It’s kinda big:

new-glenn-large2

The “New Glenn” will be 27 feet in diameter (close to the Shuttle External Tank, it seems), 270 feet tall in a two-stage configuration and 313 feet tall in a three stage configuration. The first stage is recoverable, landing vertically under rocket power. It will have seven BE-4 engines burning natural gas and oxygen, producing 3.85 million pounds of thrust. The second stage uses a single BE-4 engine with an increased expansion ratio. The third stage uses a LOX/LH2 BE-3 engine.

The article says that Bezos has claimed that the rocket will fly “within the decade.” If that means by the end of 2019, that’s pretty ambitious.

 Posted by at 10:00 pm

Bell Aerospace Hypersonic Transport Ticket

 aircraft, art, history, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  10 Responses »
Sep 052016
 

Produced by Bell Aerospace around 1960 as a promotional item was this “ticket” for a flight from New York City to Melbourne, Australia. The aircraft shown was a two-stage hypersonic passenger transport; the first stage was essentially a supersonic transport equipped with turboramjet engines; it carried on its back a rocket powered passenger spaceplane. At the time it was pushed by the likes of Walter Dornberger, who had previously publicized a two-stage all-rocket powered hypersonic transport. There was some link between this design and the Dyna Soar program, but it is unclear just how involved the engineering was on the HST. Artwork was produced and a good display model, but it’s hard to tell if it went any further than that.

bell hst ticket 2 bell hst ticket 1

I have uploaded high-rez scans (600 dpi) to the 2016-09 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is accessible to all APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above.

 Posted by at 1:11 am

A good reason to sign up for the APR Patreon

 aircraft, APR, awesomeness, blather, drawings, history, news, Patreon, projects, wisdom  No Responses »
Sep 032016
 

Several days ago word hit of someone with six file boxes of their fathers stuff, wondering what to do with it. Not an unusual occurrence. But in this case, the father was an important engineer  at North American Aviation, worked on the XB-70, B-1 and Shuttle, and the files all related to that. In the end, the archive wound up on Craigslist, and sold shortly afterwards. It is now being shipped… to me.

I would not have been able to afford the archive – never mind the shipping costs – on my own. However, by working with the patrons on the APR Patreon , we were able to pool funds so that the total cost per person is *trivial.* When the archive gets here – all 300+ pounds of it – I will go through every single page and catalog it; the best stuff will be scanned and, barring ITAR & classification issues, all of the crowdfunders will receive the complete set of high-rez scans. And then when I’ve gleaned from it what’s worth gleaning, it will be donated to an appropriate archive… the Smithsonian, the SDASM, the National Archives, Edwards AFB, whatever seems best in the end.

The door to sign up for this crowdfunding project is now closed. It followed shortly on the heels of a similar project that scored an admittedly much smaller but definitely fascinating  collection of F2Y Sea Dart documentation and diagrams, including much about operational follow-on attack aircraft meant to operate from ships and subs; and a similar archive that was crowdfunded a year or two back that scored a whole bunch of 2707 SST stuff. I’ve grown sick of seeing amazing stuff appear on ebay and then vanish into a black hole, never to be seen by anyone again; this way, aerospace history is preserved and shared.

If you’d like to be involved in this sort of thing, sign up for the APR Patreon and you’ll not only get the monthly aerospace goodies that comes with membership, but you’ll also be able to get in on these crowd funding efforts. You’ll save aerospace history, get a bunch of amazing stuff, and not have to spend a whole lot to do it.

 Posted by at 8:05 pm

So, how big was it? Part 1A

 art, awesomeness, history, models, projects, spacecraft  4 Responses »
Aug 302016
 

In the previous installment I worked out what I think the diameter of the individual modules is on the very large Lockheed Space station in this piece of art:

At the time I devoted my efforts to diameter and just kinda half-assed the module length. Now behold, in this latest installment of Don’t You Have Anything Better To Do Theater as I work out the module length with greater precision and less guesswork, using image processing programs (specifically Paint Shop Pro) and CAD programs (specifically Rhino 3D).

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 3:15 pm

Avro “Big Wheel” mobile Minuteman launcher

 awesomeness, Crazy, history, Hmm..., nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets  3 Responses »
Aug 292016
 

Military hardware design programs often have code names that are random or nearly so, so you can’t figure out what they are if you overhear them. Concepts like “Have Blue” or “Copper Canyon” or “Science Dawn” or even “Silver Bug” are pretty opaque. But every now and then there are concepts like Avro Canada’s 1960 idea for a truck capable of carrying and launching two Minuteman ICBMs: “Big Wheel.” For once, the name matched the product.

bigwheel

One wonders what sort of career these might have had in the Monster Truck circuit after they became obsolete.

This is a document I scored off ebay a little while back; it arrived and I’ve scanned it and will include it in the very next APR Patreon catalog. If you’d like a copy, a monthly contribution of as little as $4 will get you the full-rez 300 dpi scan of each months reward documents and diagrams… currently, three documents, one large-format diagram or piece of artwork. That’s a buck an item. Give the APR Patreon a look.

bigwheel layout

 Posted by at 7:26 pm

So, how big was it?

 art, blather, drawings, history, Hmm..., projects, science, science fiction, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Aug 272016
 

Earlier this year I posted this image of a late 60’s/early 70’s Lockheed space station:

And asked if there was any hard data out there on the design. Much to my disappointment, but not to my surprise, there doesn’t seem to be any. Clearly the artist devoted a considerable amount of effort to the project… it’s not something slapped together on a whim. But it’s also likely something that got buried and may never again see the light of publicity. So some months back I decided to try to figure out just how big it was supposed to be. Fortunately there are reasonably clear humans for scale.

First off: one thing you discover real fast about the world of concept is art is Do Not Trust Scale References. Things aren’t scaled *down* too often, but things are scaled *up* with annoying frequency. Because Bigger Is Better, I suppose. Consequently, the artist here *could* have taken serious liberties; scaling things up by a factor of 1.5 or even two would not be unheard of. But… this is seemingly all there is. Without further data, you have to work with what you have.

So, starting with the cutaway image, there are a number of male human figures. Assume that the average is about 70 inches tall (for those of you in countries that *didn’t* land men on the moon, 70 inches is about 5.7621e-17 parsecs). Three figures are fairly clearly visible on the uppermost module… one is 67 pixels tall, one is 69 pixels tall and one is 77 pixels tall. The average there is 71 pixels. Thus… 71 pixels = 70 inches. For simplicity, let’s just assume that 1 pixel equals 1 inch.  The diameter of the module can be estimated based on the top and bottom points of the cylinder. The top  is clearly visible via the cables entering into it;  the underside has similar cables which are not visible due to the module being slightly rotated. If we assume that the bottom is as far from the visible edge as the top is, that gives a diameter of 386 pixels, or 386 inches.

module 1 dims

Interestingly, and perhaps tellingly, the diameter of the Saturn V first and second stages was 396 inches. I think it’s perhaps safe to assume that we’re looking at modules designed to be that same diameter. Drawing one of the modules in CAD by tracing over the geometry gives a module length of about 1116 inches.

lock station module

Coming up next time on “Don’t You Have Anything Better To Do Theater:” the overall layout and dimensions of the space station.

 Posted by at 3:37 pm
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