Proposed Cyanotypes

 aircraft, art, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, history, Hmm..., new products, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  7 Responses »
Dec 032015
 

I’m planning on producing some new cyanotype blueprints at some point. Some will be copies of vintage blueprints, but some will be all-new CAD diagrams. Below are some CAD diagrams at various stages of completion. All are based on a 10-inch by 40-inch format; this will make them appropriate for folding into a book, or hanging on a wall. They would go for $25 per sheet as cyanotypes; I might also do them in frosted (white) mylar for probably a bit cheaper and maybe on regular paper for a lot cheaper. However, before plowing ahead I’d be interested in feedback… which of these are of interest? Which might you actually plunk down funds for? Additionally: I’ve produced a *lot* of CAD diagrams for APR and USXP. Is there anything I’ve done you’d like to see expanded out like this?

1: USAF 10-meter Orion, two sheets, 1/96 scale

NPP-0500X-Model

2: Have Sting orbital railgun, one sheet, 1/200 scale

ussp03-02-wide railgun-Model

3: X-15A-3, 1 sheet, 1/35 scaleussp 02-03 wide X15A-3-Model

4: Rockwell MRCC, 1 sheet, 1/60 scaleusbp-12-107 wide rockwell MRCC-Model

5: Rockwell D645-3, one sheet, 1/144 scaleusbp-07-104 wide rockwell d645-3-Model

6: X-20/Titan IIIc, two sheets, 1/72 scalemisc-132 wide X-20-Titan III-Model

7: XB-70, one sheet, 1/144 scalemisc-127 wide XB-70-Model

8: ITHACUS troop transport, two sheets, 1/200 scale

ustp04-002-1 wide ithacus-Model

 Posted by at 11:26 pm

DARPA cancels ALASA

 aircraft, news, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  8 Responses »
Dec 012015
 

DARPA Scraps Plan To Launch Small Sats from F-15 Fighter Jet

ALASA (Airborne Launch Assist Space Access) was a program to develop a launch vehicle that could be carried aloft by an F-15, with an orbital payload of around 45 kilograms. The design detail that was supposed to make ALASA work was what killed it: the propellant.

ALASA was to use liquid rocket engines. Nothing new there. The propellant combination was acetylene and nitrous oxide; that’s kinda new. But the Really New part of the design was that the two propellants were to be pre-mixed, meaning that the vehicle required only a single tank and simpler plumbing. Pre-mixing fuel and oxidizer is always a tricky proposition, but it has been successfully demonstrated from time to time. But here, in several tests the propellant simply exploded. This should not be overly surprising… acetylene is one of those unstable chemicals that will on occasion blow itself to bits just because it’s cranky. Mixing it with an oxidizer is just asking for trouble.

DARPA seems to have bailed on the launcher program, but is continuing to try to develop the propellant (called NA-7). Tricky though it may be, if it can be reliably stabilized there are undoubtedly vehicle designs that could effectively utilize it.

ALASA-darpa

The ALASA vehicle made another unusual design choice: the rocket engines were near the front, not at the back. The reason for this: the trailing propellant tank could be dropped as a stage, but leave the engines in place. This would theoretically make the vehicle lighter, at the risk of having hot rocket exhaust scraping down the sides of the tank.

 Posted by at 2:52 pm

APR Patreon November Rewards

 aircraft, APR, drawings, history, new products, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Nov 272015
 

Just under the wire, rewards for November have been made available to APR patrons. Three documents and one large-format diagram, and one all-new CAD diagram, have been posted:

  1. NASA diagram (on two sheets) of a NERVA nuclear rocket engine display model, presenting the configuration with detail and clarity
  2. An article on a orbiting nuclear power station
  3. A full-color brochure (via photographs) on the Convair Model 36, their entry for what became the B-36
  4. A North American Aviation presentation on delta wings for the X-15, presenting a few different configurations
  5. An all-new layout CAD diagram of the Bernal Sphere space colony concept

If you’d like to help out and gain access to these and past and future rewards, please check out the APR Patreon.

patreon-200

2015-11 ad

 Posted by at 5:02 am

Buy stuff at Amazon

 aircraft, blather, news, projects, sales & specials  No Responses »
Nov 262015
 

Amazon currently is running a “30% off any one book up to $10” special, if you type in “HOLIDAY30” in the “Gift cards & promotional codes” section during checkout. The small print is HERE. Why do I bring it up? Because Federally Mandated Commercial Over-Shopping Holiday is only a month away… and if you do your  shopping for knickknacks and whatnot starting with the Amazon search box you should see at the upper right of this very page, a small, tiny percentage will be kicked back my way. So wander over yonder to buy a couple XPlayBoxStations for the horrible ingrate brat children your family is plague with, and when you’re done pick up a book for yourself. Below are a few options that look like they might be good (don’t have ’em myself yet).

 

 

American Secret Projects: Fighters, Bombers, and Attack Aircraft, 1937-1945

——–
N-1: For the Moon and Mars A Guide to the Soviet Superbooster (English and Russian Edition)


—–
The 2001 File: Harry Lange and the Design of the Landmark Science Fiction Film


—–
An Untaken Road: Strategy, Technology, and the Hidden History of America’s Mobile ICBMs (Transforming War)

 Posted by at 5:01 pm

The most Sci-Fi thing you’ll see all day: option A

 awesomeness, history, news, projects, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  12 Responses »
Nov 242015
 

Blue Origin seems to have flown their New Shepard craft yesterday… booster rocket and capsule. The video shows the launch, a CGI version of the separation, video of the capsule landing and video of the booster landing. The booster landing video, especially the view at 2:39, is just about the sportiest ride imaginable that doesn’t end with an Incident Review Board.

In some ways this is similar to the SpaceX Falcon 9 + Dragon capsule. Important difference is the much lower performance of Blue origins system… straight up into space, but no attempt at orbital flight (and nowhere near capable of it). But with a second stage… who knows.

 Posted by at 2:38 pm

Dyna Soar/ Titan III Art

 aircraft, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Nov 242015
 

In 1963 the Curtiss Wright Corporation ran an ad in Missiles & Rockets magazine illustrating their participation in the Titan III/Dyna Soar program. The main illustration in the ad depicts the launch vehicle in flight; it is not, sadly, a wholly accurate depiction. The N2O4 thrust vector fluid tanks for the SRBs aren’t included, nor are the separation motors; the two engine bells on the Titan core are shown clocked out of alignment. Still, a reasonably nice illustration.

missilesrockets1219unse_0529 missilesrockets1219unse_0528

 Posted by at 10:09 am

MOL Model

 history, models, projects, rockets, spacecraft  1 Response »
Nov 192015
 

A poor-quality photo of a display model of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, made partially of plexiglas to permit a view of the interior. Appears to have been made by or for Air Force Space Systems Division. Image published in the February 17, 1964, issue of Missiles & Rockets magazine. This would have been an early design of the MOL. It’s difficult to determine size/scale of the model, but it looks reasonably large… probably at least 1/24 scale. Note that the transstage is shown attached, but it represented at low fidelity.

molmodel

 Posted by at 9:53 am

PDF Review: Airbus Almost-Hypersonic Transport Patent

 aircraft, drawings, Hmm..., Patreon, projects, rockets, youtube  5 Responses »
Nov 132015
 

A few months ago, Airbus Defence and Space Sas received a US patent for a nearly hypersonic passenger transport. The vehicle has a number of different engines… rocket engines for vertical boost and acceleration, ramjets for hypersonic cruise, turbojets for subsonic flight including takeoff and landing. It would take off conventionally with turbojets, fire the rocket to shoot almost vertically to about 35 kilometers altitude (going supersonic in the process), then level off and cruise under ramjet power at Mach 4.5. The extreme altitude, about 3 times higher than normal jetliner traffic, would mean that the sonic boom should be greatly attenuated by the time it got to the surface.

The wingtip fins would rotate through 90 degrees to maintain center of pressure from subsonic through supersonic.

Unusually for a patent, this one provides dimensions. Fuselage length (dimension 11 in Figure 1) is 52.995 meters; overall length (dimension 110, Figure 3) is 57.63 meters; maximum span (dimension 126, Figure 5) is 27.188 meters.

Interestingly, the design looks like a mishmash of WWII-era designs… the “gothic wing” designed by Michael Gluhareff of Sikorsky merged with the wingtips of the Blohm & Voss P.208-2 or Skoda-Kauba SL-6.

This is US Patent 907661B2. At the moment the Google page for this patent seems a little non-functional; the PDF of the patent won’t download for me. Fortunately, the page for the patent application is functioning just fine. You can download the PDF file of the patent application directly from THIS LINK RIGHT HERE.

Some pages of diagrams:

Pages from US20120325957_Page_1Pages from US20120325957_Page_2 Pages from US20120325957_Page_3

Here is a video description of the design.

The interior views of the vehicle show one of the problems with rocket-boosted transport aircraft: The majority of the interior volume isn’t people and cargo, but propellant.

Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon. If this sort of thing interests you, please consider signing up… not only will you help fund the search for obscure aerospace history, you’ll gain access to a lot of interesting stuff, not available elsewhere.

patreon-200

 Posted by at 11:53 am

Logistics Capsules in Color

 art, history, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Nov 072015
 

Color artwork from NASA circa 1964 depicting Apollo-derived logistics spacecraft. The BALLOS (BALlistic LOgistic Spacecraft) was studied by several corporations such as Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas as well as NASA; the artwork was done *for* NASA, but it’s unclear if it was done *by* NASA.

The full resolution versions of these artworks have been posted into the 2015-11 folder in the APR Extras Dropbox. Please check out the APR Patreon!

S64-06336 S64-01800

 Posted by at 1:09 am

Russian mobile nuclear powerplant

 Hmm..., news, nukes, projects, science  12 Responses »
Nov 042015
 

Russian Army to Build Mobile Nuclear Stations

Seems that the whole “Pamir” setup will require four sizable truck-pulled trailers:

  1. Reactor
  2. Turbine
  3. Control room
  4. housing for crew

No info on the power output, but it’s claimed that it’ll be up and running around 2020.

pamir

Sure, kinda hard to really necessarily trust Russian (or, let’s face it, pretty much anybodies) claims about developing anything interesting and nuclear anytime soon. But if they were able to pull it off, and go from “hey, I’ve got an idea” to “hey, look, an operational nuclear power station on wheels” inside half a decade, then the US will have no excuses from not being able to crank out it’s own even better nukes. The only possible excuse will be politics and bureaucrats.

 Posted by at 5:14 pm
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