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

NASA nuclear fusion rocket

 history, models, nukes, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Aug 242016
 

An early/mid 1960’s concept model of an interplanetary spacecraft using a nuclear fusion powerplant. Back then there was a LOT of faith in the idea of fusion reactors being just around the corner. One very obvious design flaw? No radiators. Any internal-fusion system (or internal-fission, for that matter) would need *vast* radiator surface area.

Details on the photo are unavailable. I originally downloaded this image from the GRIN (Great Images in NASA) website, which has now been closed in favor of a Flickr account that is difficult to search. Feh. If you want the full-rez version *another* Flickr account has it HERE.

GPN-2009-00027

 Posted by at 5:12 pm

Flutter at a glance

 AARRRGH, aircraft, awesomeness, history, models, projects, youtube  3 Responses »
Aug 242016
 

A NASA-Langley film from decades ago, a collection of quick clips from wind tunnel tests. These show models designed to bend and flex somewhat like their larger real-world kin, and then they are massively overstressed to the point of failure. If doing a spit-take was a real thing rather than a Hollywood trope, I woulda spit-took at about 1:20, when a Boeing 2707-100 supersonic transport model is shown being turned into a damn porpoise in the wind tunnel (instead, I just blurted out “holy shee-it” and laughed for a while). About 15 seconds later it (or a model similar to it) is turned into so much confetti. I assume the wind tunnel had some sort of shrapnel-filter to keep the junk from being sucked into the blades…

 

 

 

 Posted by at 2:17 am

Ryan Vertifan in a rescue role

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, projects, youtube  3 Responses »
Aug 222016
 

The Ryan XV-5A Vertifan was a 1960’s VTOL aircraft that was given considerable testing and proved to be reasonably successful, yet it was not chosen to be put into production. he video below (a couple different versions of it) show the XV-5A being put through its paces. It’s shown to be a remarkably nimble and stable platform. Also shown are numerous pieces of concept art, the XV-5A being used in a rescue capacity. Interestingly, the idea presented was to send the VTOL right alongside strike aircraft so that it would be right there on the scene ready to collect any pilots who happen to get shot down during the mission.

The XV-5A used largish fans embedded win the nose and wings to provide vertical thrust; the fans were driven by the exhaust from the jet engines. This is not a particularly elegant solution, unlike the Harrier with its fully integrated single engine system, but the fan approach would provide both better fuel efficiency during hover and lower jet velocity compared to something like the Harrier or the F-35. This would mean that the vertical thrust would tear up the dirt or deck plating a whole lot less.

One wonders how well the XV-5A would perform today. It would have the benefit of better engines and better materials, meaning more thrust at lower fuel consumption, in an aircraft that weighs less. And perhaps more importantly, modern avionics and computerized controls would make this plane much more stable, controllable and safe in hover.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 9:09 pm

Thousand Astronomical Unit spacecraft

 art, history, nukes, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  11 Responses »
Aug 112016
 

Starting in the 1970s and running through much of the 1980’s, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ran numerous studies of Thousand Astronomical Unit (TAU) spacecraft. These were somewhat akin to Voyager class probes, but with important differences. instead of small RTGs for power, they would use SP-100 class fission reactors, mounted many dozens of meters away at the end of long booms. Located at the center of mass of the system would be a bank of ion engines; the nuclear electric propulsion system would operate for *years* to boost these craft to extremely high speeds. Still, it would take decades for them to travel 1,000 AU from the Sun, many times further than Pluto. There, large optical telescopes would take parallax measurements on distant stars; by positioning numerous TAU craft in every direction, the measurement baseline would be vast, and precise distance fixes could be made for stars on the other side of the galaxy.

A number of TAU designs were examined, but the one shown here in JPL art seems to be pretty representative. These probes would have to be engineered with a high degree of both reliability and autonomy as their main observation missions would only begin something like 50 years after launch. Diagrams of a different design and more information were presented in US Spacecraft Projects #3.

jpl tau

 Posted by at 1:54 pm

Dual Keel Space Station Art: Part Two

 art, history, Patreon, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 032016
 

A while ago I was asked by another aerospace historian if I had any artwork of the “Dual Keel” version of the Space Station design from the mid/late 1980s. This was a predecessor to the International Space Station (the “Russians” being the “Soviets” at the time) and was to be used not just as an orbiting shack for some basic research, but also as an assembly area for manned missions to the moon and Mars. Turns out I had a fair amount of Dual Keel art. As is the way of things, a lot of that art is moderately poor… scanned from dusty slides, in many cases. Still, it’s what I had. It dawned on me that others might be interested in it, so I put all the images into the same size and format (standard 8.5X11) and made a PDF out of it, seventy some pages. I have uploaded Part Two to the “APR Extras” Dropbox site into the “2016-08 APR Extras” folder. This is accessible to all APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above (if you are such a patron and don’t have access, send me a message via Patreon, I’ll get you fixed up). Part One was uploaded to the “2016-07 APR Extras” Dropbox folder last month.

dualkeelad2

 Posted by at 9:25 pm
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