May APR Patreon Rewards

 aircraft, art, drawings, history, new products, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  23 Responses »
Jun 252015
 

Should have posted this nearly a month ago, but…

The rewards for APR Patrons for May, 2015 are available (for the next few days, anyway, until I finally get the June rewards out). Included this month:

Document: An early 60’s NASA concept for a most unusual launch vehicle (which appears to have been scribbled on by Werner von Braun)

Document: Trident rocket motor manual

Document: Boeing arctic resource aircraft

Diagram: Convair VTOL tailsitter supersonic fighter

CAD diagram: Rockwell “Surprise Fighter” early stealthy design

2015-05 ad

If you’d like to access these and many other extras, please check out the APR Patreon page.

patreon-200

 

 Posted by at 9:55 am

Dornier P 232/3

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects  8 Responses »
Jun 242015
 

Found on ebay a while back was a translation of a WWII-era German report on the Dornier P 232/3 design. This was a proposed derivative of the Dornier Do 335 fighter… while the Do 335 had a piston engine in the nose and another in the tail, the P 232/3 replaced the tail engine with a turbojet. This would have chewed through the fuel in a hell of a hurry, but it also would have increased top speed. Mixed propulsion fighters like this enjoyed a brief burst of popularity for a short span of years immediately following WWII, but apart from some prototypes nothing really came of them.

The ebay sale helpfully provided some good scans of some diagrams.

833041490_o 833041554_o

 Posted by at 10:33 pm

USS United States

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects, ships  8 Responses »
Jun 182015
 

The USS United States (CVA-58) was a supercarrier that was begun in 1948, but never finished. Even though the keel was laid, the actual layout of the final ship has always been pretty poorly defined in published sources. It would have been an angled-deck supercarrier of modern design, but with no island at all, just a flat deck.  But diagrams of it have always been vague, unofficial or dubious.

Huzzah! The National Archives has a number of high-rez plans of the ship as designed in October 1947. Five diagrams of slightly differing study concepts are available; I’m not sure which – if any – most accurately depicts the ship as it was eventually to be defined.

CV-New Study Arrangement Plans

Here’s one of the diagrams… greatly reduced in size. See the National Archives page for the full-rez versions.

RG19_SpringStyle4_PD1422

 Posted by at 5:45 pm

“City in Space” and TAV art

 aircraft, art, history, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 172015
 

I have just uploaded 300 dpi-high-rez scans of two things to the APR Patreon “Extras” folder (2015-06 sub-folder):

1) An article from the May, 1956, issue of Popular Science, “Now They’re Planning A City In Space.” This article, illustrated with full-color paintings, describes the gigantic artificial gravity space station proposed by Darrell Romick of Goodyear Aircraft Company as part of the METEOR project. This space station is forward-thinking by today’s standards, and is challenged in scale only by the likes of the O’Neill space colonies.

2) A McDonnell-Douglas painting depicting a Trans Atmospheric Vehicle in orbit.

These items are available to all $4+ APR Patreon patrons, and were made possible by the support of APR patrons and customers. If you’d like to access these and many other extras, please check out the APR Patreon page.

patreon-200

 

cityinspace McDonnell Douglas TAV in orbit art

 Posted by at 2:19 pm

MD-12

 aircraft, art, eBay, projects  8 Responses »
Jun 092015
 

The apparently original concept painting of the McDonnell-Douglas MD-12 showed up on eBay a few days back. The MD-12 was the last new aircraft that McD designed before being absorbed by Boeing; like the Boeing NLA and the Airbus A380, it was a big fat double decker designed to haul large numbers of passengers at once.

ebay 2015-06-04 md-12 a

 Posted by at 10:37 am

Lunetta

 art, history, projects, spacecraft  4 Responses »
May 232015
 

The idea of orbital mirrors to shine sunlight down onto the night side of Earth precede WWII; Hermann Oberth proposed such at thing in 1923. Today if someone were to seriously propose an orbiting space mirror the probably use would be to *shade* the Earth from sunlight in order to reduce insolation and very, very slightly cool the planet. Still, it might prove an interesting mathematical study… if an orbiting mirror is used to alternately shade the Earth and then light up the Earth, is it a net positive? When you factor in that the night-time sunlight beamed down would presumably offset artificially generated lighting – say, by lighting up a city, replacing streetlights – it may be that the result would be to reduce planetary temperature.

As recently as 1977, Rockwell International (after Krafft Ehricke) examined the use of orbiting mirrors called “Lunetta” to provide illumination.

rockwell 77 lunetta

 Posted by at 9:25 pm

Seems a little harsh

 AARRRGH, aircraft, blather, Gah., Hmm..., news, projects, US Bomber Projects, ಠ_ಠ  8 Responses »
May 202015
 

So I decided to check in on the Amazon Kindle versions of the US Bomber Projects (available HERE) to see how they’re doing, after I recently uploaded a bunch of new ones. As it turns out: wow. Bad. So, that’s that, I guess.

I also decided to check on the reviews, of which there are very few. Now, checking reviews of stuff you’ve worked hard on is always asking for trouble; *maybe* someone will say something complementary; *maybe* someone will give a negative feedback that provides useful information. But as this is the internet, you’re like as not going to get a response like this:

review

Huh. Not a fan, I guess.

Interestingly, the same reviewer posted an equally negative (though grammatically confounding) review of another issue of the Kindle USBP back in February. One wonders why he would buy a second issue if the first was so bad, but he has posted 140 separate reviews of items, indicating he likes to review stuff, I guess.

Just in case, here’s the recent issue in question:

 Posted by at 10:10 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries