The next two US Aerospace Projects issues will be new types. Here’s a first look at one of them:
Jan 292016
Jan 272016
As some may know, I’ve recently been on a high-rez aerospace artwork kick (as always, if you know of or have any such, let me know). And while I’ve been focusing on high quality stuff, sometimes there are low-quality images that are stuff worth of note.
One such is below, a rendering of the Northrop Corporations “SLOMAR” (Space Logistics, Maintenance and Repair) design circa 1960. Numerous companies worked on that USAF study, producing a range of lifting manned entry vehicles (see the General Dynamics version HERE). Northrop designed a vehicle virtually identical to the Boeing Dyna Soar, though a bit bigger.
Jan 252016
After the Delta Clipper came the X-33. And before the decision was made to award the project to Lockheed, McDonnell-Douglas was in the running, basing their X-33 on their Delta Clipper.
When they lost X-33, the Delta Clipper idea and design faded into extinction.
‘Cept it seems to be back now:
New player Masten eyes Space Coast for launches, research
Some notable changes in the design, of course, but the heritage is obvious.
I kinda wonder about the future. It seems reasonably obvious that from the NASA/national point of view, the future of manned spaceflight is pretty damn bleak. The Orion capsule is a useful space taxi… but to where? NASA has no real plans on going *anywhere.* And come January 2017, the new President could sweep what little planning there is away. But from the point of view of private companies, from SpaceX and Blue Origin to Virgin Galactic and Masten and Xcor, things seem remarkably hopeful. It’s been distressingly obvious for some years now that, despite my earlier hopes and dreams and training and work and career, I’ll play no part… but it’s good to see that chances are good that *someone* will.
Anybody need a used, factory-second and obsolete aerospace engineer?
Jan 232016
USSP #04
US Spacecraft Projects #04, the Lander Special is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #04 includes:
- GE Electrically Propelled Cargo Vehicle: A lunar lander with a nuclear reactor and ion engines to reduce the cost of lunar logistics
- Douglas LASS: Landing an S-IVb stage on the moon
- Convair PLAME: VTOL crew return with jet engines
- North American Mars Excursion Module: the iconic conical Mars lander
- Martin-Marietta Ballistic NIMF: A nuclear “hopper”
- Early LEM: One of the first recognizable designs, by Maxime Faget
- ROMBUS: probably the largest lunar lander seriously proposed
- Boeing Lander Module 2: A recent Mars crew lander
USSP #04 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $5:
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USTP #05
US Transport Projects #05 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #05 includes:
- Boeing Model 820-100: The B-52 can haul more than bombs…
- Lockheed Nuclear Tug: Want to tow two C-5s across an ocean?
- Martin Super Ocean Transport: A WWII-era design for a post-war giant passenger transport
- HOT EAGLE: 13 Marines to Benghazi in minutes
- Sikorsky SST: An early supersonic transport concept
- Lifting Body Cargo Airplane: A wartime design for a multibody design with a separate cargo module
- Resource Air Carrier: A giant “flying pipeline” to haul petroleum
- Boeing Model 763-165: A side-by-side New Large Airplane design
USTP #05 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:
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Jan 212016
A piece of Sikorsky concept art from 1959 illustrating a commercial passenger pod for the S-60 flying crane helicopter. Into the 1960’s there were a lot of people thinking that commercial helicopter “airliners” would soon be a practical reality… and obviously, helicopters are perfectly functional in the role of hauling people to and fro, but the idea never really caught on. And in retrospect it’s not difficult to see why.
Compared to turbojet or turboprop passenger planes, helicopters are creakingly slow and quite short ranged. So the idea was that helicopter-liners would serve as short range feeder vehicles, transporting businessmen and the like from city centers to outlying regions. A popular goal was to fly passengers from the top of skyscrapers to distant airports, saving considerable time and trouble with ground traffic. But in the end, while helicopters could do that – as many a multi-millionaire with his own helicopter can attest – the cost was always high, and the noise of regularly scheduled very large choppers was excessive. There was also always the fear of helicopters this big zipping up and down the city streets, and building the infrastructure to support in-city commercial heliports just seemed like too much effort.
Jan 202016
I recently acquired diagrams of a B-52 with six high-bypass turbofans. Sadly, the diagram lacks data on *which* engines those were, and when the design was made. So: does this look familiar?
Could be any of several, I think.
The full diagrams have been posted into the 2016-01 folder on the APR Patron Dropbox site. If interested, this and many, many other high-rez aerospace goodies are available to all APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and higher. So, check it out…
UPDATE: Looks like this was *probably* the CFM56. Some Googling finds repeated references to a study in the 1980′ s to re-engine the B-52 with six CFM56’s, though I haven’t found much in the way of details.
Jan 172016
Gentlemen, behold! The absolutely dumbest thing you’ll read all day. And unless you also read Donald Trumps dream journal, very likely the dumbest thing you’ll read all week:
International students, here’s what you need to know about guns in America to survive your education
The sheer amount of dishonest propaganda contained in this screed simply boggles the mind. For instance:
States that allow guns on campus. Since guns are carried in a concealed fashion, it will never be clear who is packing one, so these are the most dangerous states: Colorado, Idaho, and Utah.
The author is attempting to claim that university campii in Colorado, Idaho and Utah are particularly dangerous places because they allow concealed carry on campus. Guess how many students have been shot by a concealed carry license holder on Utah or Idaho since 1990. Go on, GUESS.
Here’s a hint for anyone considering visiting the US, as a student, tourist, on business travel or whatever: if you don’t want to get shot, follow this one simple rule: don’t engage in criminal behavior. That’s the number on thing that gets people shot: their own criminality. Yes, there are some places to avoid. Seedy areas. Run down areas. Chicago. Detroit. Anyplace with a long record of Democratic party dominance. But these are unlikely to be the places you want to go anyway.
Jan 082016
This set of illustrations took distressingly long to come together, a lot of that time being research. Issue 4 of US Spacecraft Projects will, as previously promised, be all about “landers,” an admittedly somewhat vague descriptor. Still a fair bit of work to do, but at least the basics are all in place.
Jan 052016
I recently decided that I wanted to at least look at the idea of producing a printed and bound book or two of aerospace artwork. For copyright reasons selling coffeetable tomes filled with other peoples art is probably not a good idea, so this would likely be something just for myself, if it can be made affordable. But step one was gathering the artwork I have into one location so’s I can figure out what to include. So I dug through the ol’ hard drives and gathered stuff into one folder. A few conditions: the images had to be large/high-rez enough to be printed at at least 8.5X11; they had to be in color, not B&W; they had to be paintings (not CGI, not photos of models, not line drawings); they had to be “official” images, not fan art of the like; they had to be interesting.
I’ve been thinking of perhaps a few different volumes… “Saturn/Apollo,” “Shuttle Program,” “Conceptual Designs,” etc. I was looking for something on the order of 50 images per volume.
End result: the “Aero Art” folder has 982 files for a total of 7.73 gigabytes. I guess I have enough to take a stab at this…
What I’d *really* like to do is to have a larger format book… preferably 11X17 or so pages. But that’s probably a bit much.
Jan 032016
propellant tank, structure, landing gear and a nuclear rocket engine, to be used for landing a payload on Mars and for flying or hopping around. The propellant would be liquid carbon dioxide, easily compressed from the Martian atmosphere; the performance would be, by conventional liquid hydrogen nuclear rocket standards, reasonably awful, but it would be adequate to lurch back into Mars orbit or to do long range hops.
Two main designs seem to have been studied: a conical “ballistic” vehicle that would be a dedicated “hopper,” landing on its tail, and a winded vehicle that would land vertically in a horizontal attitude. This latter design was sent to me in the form of diagrams and five computer renders. The renders – early 1990’s vintage – came as viewgraph transparencies, clearly photographs of a computer monitor. The winged vehicle had simple shock absorbers for landing gear, terminating in dishes rather than wheels meaning that a rolling start or stop was impossible. The available information sadly doesn’t explain how the thing was supposed to land vertically.
The full-rez scans of the viewgraphs have been made available to APR Patrons in the 2016-01 APR Extras Dropbox folder. If you’d like to help out and gain access to this and many other pieces of aerospace history, please check out the APR Patreon.