So who got a Sanger report…?

 aircraft, awesomeness, books, history, Hmm..., projects, rockets, science, science fiction, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Mar 092016
 

Still slowly slogging through the process of cleaning up the Sanger “A Rocket Drive for Long Range Bombers” report scans. Some pages are easy… a few minutes and done. Other pages, specifically the ones from the middle of the book, can take well in excess of an hour. The problem is that the Sanger report is hard-bound, and the feller who scanned it didn’t want to break the spine. As a consequence, near the middle of the book, the inboard bits of text are smooshed and blurred. The only way to digitally restore these is to copy/paste bits of text and individual letters to replace the bad bits. *These* pages can take a lot longer.

Fortunately the whole book isn’t like this. Near the front and back, the scans are quite good and easy to deal with. This includes the last two pages… pages that list where copies of the report were to be sent. there are some *very* interesting names in this list…

S2 (128) S2 (129)

 Posted by at 4:09 pm

Project Horizon on TV

 art, awesomeness, blather, history, Hmm..., projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  4 Responses »
Mar 072016
 

Project Horizon was a late 1950’s US Army study for a military lunar base. It’s hardly a secret at this point… it has been written about for decades, and several volumes of the report have been available online as generally “meh”-quality PDFs for years. Still, as well known as Horizon is to the space-history community, I imagine it’s pretty much unknown to the general population. So imagine my modest surprise when I halfway caught a commercial for a special on Project Horizon to air tomorrow (Tuesday) night on the Science Channel, on an episode of “NASA’s Unexplained Files.”

From the bit I caught, it seems like the show will probably slant the story not as “hey, look as this neato-wacky concept the Army looked at sixty years ago,” but more as “what is the Army hiding on the moon, look, BEHOLD, for we have found Secret Plans.” In general this would be a turnoff, but it’s not like Horizon gets a lot of press. And from the brief glimpse, it *looks* like someone got hold of Project Horizon color artwork. So this might be one of those things where the show is spectacular if you simply put the sound on “mute.” Consequently, it might be worth digitally recording if anyone has the ability. And who knows… *maybe* they’ll actually produce something new, or give hints as to where a complete original *color* version of the reports might be found.

UPDATE: Bleurrrrgh. Good and shallow, added nothing new. The color artwork shown is *modern* lunar base artwork, from the 90’s or later.

 Posted by at 12:00 pm

Zielpunkt: NYC

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  8 Responses »
Mar 052016
 

I managed to finagle a complete full-color scan of an original copy of Eugen Sanger’s 1944 report, Uber einen Raketenantrieb fur Fernbomber (A Rocket Drive for Long Range Bombers). A “meh” quality B&W PDF of an English-language translation of the report has been available online for a while, but it seems to me that the world needs a proper high-rez version of the original, in color where appropriate.

One of the pages I’ve cleaned up from the new scan shows the statistical damage potential if New York City was regularly targeted by a very large number of bombs. This image, at least a black-and-white English-translated version, several generations removed from the original, is reasonably well-known and commonly reproduced… and as described a few years back, is generally described wrong.

Sanger (1) S2 (101)

 Posted by at 6:03 pm

AH-56 & JVX

 aircraft, art, drawings, history, Patreon, projects  4 Responses »
Feb 282016
 

I’ve put scans of a 1968 Popular Science article on the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne attack helicopter and a Boeing-Bell brochure on the JVX tiltrotor (which became the V-22) on the APR Patreon dropbox, in the 2016-02 folder.

The Pop Sci article featured cover art by Robert McCall. Just cuz, I tinkered with the cover art, attempting to scrape off the text and restore it to just the painting. Perhaps not a 100% success, but not too bad. The JVX is not *quite* the final V-22 design; a notable difference is the inclusion of a .50 caliber gatling gun in the nose and a rocket launcher hanging off the side the cockpit.

If interested in getting these, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon. The “Extras” are available to all $4 patrons. Quite a pile of high-rez stuff is available now.

jvx ah-56

 Posted by at 3:02 pm

USAF unveils the B-21

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm..., news, politics, projects  19 Responses »
Feb 262016
 

That’s right… B-21, not B-3. Looks like this:

B-21 art

US Air Force Unveils New B-21 Bomber

If you think it looks like the B-2, you’re not wrong, but it looks even more like the original ATB designs from before the B-2 configuration was nailed down:

atb_1981

Now, you may notice that in the B-21 artwork, no exhausts are visible. This could be because the exhausts are on the underside (very unlikely), or they are actually integrated into the trailing edge (unlikely), or the USAF simply doesn’t want to show the exhausts. Anyone who remembers the first artists impression the USAF released of the B-2 will remember that:

b-2_02

I’ve seen a lot of people cheesed off about this design, that it’s too much like the B-2. But… so what? If the goal was to design a long-range subsonic stealthy bomber, the B-2 layout is not far from optimal. The B-52 looked like the B-47; the 787 looked like the 777 looked like the 737 looked like the 707. This is due not to lack of creativity on the part of the designers, but to the laws of physics and economics.

Something I’d love to see… a new air superiority fighter designed for stealthiness and relatively low cost. One way to accomplish this? Rehash the LockMart F-22 layout. We know the configuration is stealthy. We know it’ll fly. So why *not* base a new design on the existing engineering?Save a whole lot of time, trouble and expense.

 

 Posted by at 6:09 pm

Transonic 767

 aircraft, art, history, projects  4 Responses »
Feb 242016
 

In the early 1970s, after the collapse of the SST program due to, in part, the rise in energy prices, Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics and NASA looked at the possibility of jetliners designed to fly economically right at the edge of the sound barrier. The idea was that there is an unavoidable spike in drag at Mach 1.00, but it would theoretically be possible to fly at, say, Mach 0.98 at relatively low drag. This would make the aircraft about 100 mph faster than conventional jetliners without being much more expensive. In order to pull this off, the jetliners would need to take advantage of every imaginable aerodynamic trick in the book… most obviously, area rule designing resulting in “wasp waisted” fuselages, and almost no straight lines… all curves. The problem is that this makes aircraft heavier and more expensive to build. Thus, no transonic airliners ever got any further than wind tunnel tests.

Below is a piece of Boeing art showing one of their designs for an Advanced Technology Transport. It was a Model 767 design, dash-number unknown.

transonic 767

 Posted by at 12:56 pm

2D B-1 Mockup

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects, secrets  2 Responses »
Feb 232016
 

An early 1970’s photo of a “mockup” of the Rockwell B-1 bomber. Rather than building an expensive plywood mockup that accurately recreated the complex curves of the B-1, this one was vastly simpler… a “side view” diagram of the B-1 with a few interior details, with a “shadow” on the floor. If you look carefully, it looks like this photo has been censored… the bays fore and aft of the main landing gear have been blacked out. Presumably these showed the payload of SRAMs and/or cruise missiles. One engine and the wing pivot system are included as actual 3-D items, probably mockups. Note that this is not the final B-1 design as built… the nose contours are a bit off.

b-1 2d mockup

 Posted by at 3:27 pm

WS324A Characteristic Summary

 aircraft, drawings, history, Patreon, projects  7 Responses »
Feb 232016
 

One of an extremely large large number of designs put forward for Weapons System 324A, Tactical Fighter X, which eventually became the F-111. This particular design, circa 1962, is the WADD 46 from the Wright Air Development Center and is pretty typical… a twin engine supersonic design with sizable variable-sweep wings.

Two full-rez pages from the WS324A Characteristics Summary have been posted to the 2016-02 APR Extras Dropbox folder for all $4 and up APR Patreon patrons.

Ws324a

 Posted by at 12:04 am

Dyna Soar/Titan IIIc Diagram

 art, drawings, history, new products, projects, rockets, spacecraft  10 Responses »
Feb 222016
 

I’ve babbled about this a time or two in the past, but the specifics keep changing. But I think I’m zeroing in on the final form. The diagram below is meant for 24 X 36; the diagrams are at 1/72 scale. The final print will be black ink on white translucent mylar.

misc-132 24x36 X-20-Titan III-Model

As shown here, it’s still a ways away from being complete; much more data to add, some refinements and additions to the diagrams, perhaps some artistic flourishes (though since I’m apparently devoid of any actual artistic talent, that sort of thing will be kept to an engineering minimum).

There will be only a limited number of these printed up, based on interest expressed in advance. The price is yet to be determined, but $50 is a very high upper limit. That comes from the price of something vaguely similar… the 24X36-on-white-mylar blueprints of the Nostromo from “Alien” and the Sulaco from “Aliens” that used to be available here:

http://www.hydride-ion.com

Those two I got a few years ago, but only recently got around to framing (cheapo poster frames, but frames nonetheless). They look *spectacular.* And as they are substantially more spectacular than the X-20/Titan IIIc, my diagrams shouldn’t be priced at the same level.

If anyone has suggestions, I’d be interested.

 Posted by at 8:23 pm
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