S-60 Passenger Pod

 aircraft, art, history, projects  5 Responses »
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.

1959-11-02-23

 Posted by at 9:30 am

Re-engined B-52

 aircraft, drawings, history, Hmm..., Patreon, projects  5 Responses »
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?

re-engined b-52

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…

patreon-200

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.

 Posted by at 10:41 am

You daily dose of Hurrr, Herp and Derp

 dumbassery, Forward!, projects, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  4 Responses »
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.

 Posted by at 4:29 pm

Aero Art

 aircraft, art, books, history, Hmm..., projects, spacecraft  11 Responses »
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.

 Posted by at 1:50 am

NIMF Art

 aircraft, art, history, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  7 Responses »
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.

martin-marietta_nimf0009

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.

patreon-200

 Posted by at 1:25 am

Saturnalia Sale

 aircraft, APR, projects, rockets, sales & specials, US Bomber Projects, US Launch Vehicle Projects, US Spacecraft Projects, US Transport Projects  1 Response »
Dec 252015
 

It dawns on me that today is a holiday of some note. It also dawns on me that I have bills to pay. So, until midnight-ish (mountain time), I’m running a sale on all US Aerospace Projects and Aerospace Projects Review downloadable issues. Still can’t run a convenient Paypal “coupon” or any such thing, so as with previous sales, you buy something and I’ll refund you the difference.

So, for the duration of the sale, get 20% off all APR and USXP orders of $10 or more. And get 25% off for all orders over $100.

Sale has ended.

 Posted by at 3:07 pm

Little Joe/Minuteman

 art, projects, rockets  3 Responses »
Dec 252015
 

A 1965 General Dynamics/Convair concept for using obsolete Minuteman I ICBMs as upper stages atop the Little Joe II. This setup would put 2,000 pounds of payload into a 100 nautical mile orbit.

littlejoeminuteman

 Posted by at 12:26 am
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