Photos of some of the aerospace history I’ve been able to purchase lately thanks to the APR Patreon. If you’d like to help out and get in on this action, please check out the APR Patreon page.
And then there’s this. While I haven’t managed to get hold of the actual item, I have gotten full-color scans of this, in chunks. I am now piecing it together into one gigantic whole.
In May of 1967, Barron Hilton – of Hilton Hotels – gave a presentation at the 13th Annual Meeting of the American Astronautical Society where he discusses the possibilities of orbiting and lunar hotels. Even as far back as ’67, Hilton considered such concepts to be perfectly feasible, and essentially inevitable. A shout-out is given to the Hilton depicted on Space Station V in “2001: A Space Odyssey” which would come out about a year later.
This being the 1960’s, of course there would be a “Galaxy Lounge” where guest could enjoy a martini.
Following Hilton was a presentation by Krafft Ehrike (then of North American Aviation) on the subject of “space tourism.” Once again, the concept was treated as wholly valid. He presented a design for a large orbiting tourist destination. While it featured zero-gravity facilities, it wisely was a rotating artificial gravity station, providing for the comfort and convenience of the guests. There would be several “world rooms” with different environments… artificial gravity levels matching the moon and Mars, say.
One assumption was that space launch costs would drop to $10/pound ($71/pound in 2015 dollars). At the time, with the rapid advances in space launch – remember, the first satellite had, at that time, only been launched less than a decade earlier, and now giant Saturn V rockets were preparing to send men to the moon – a price drop to those levels seemed a reasonable assumption. This would be done by having many, many launches of fully reusable vehicles, capable of reliably transporting the guests. The hotel would hold 1100 guests at a time, for 400,000 guest-days per year, and would have an in-orbit weight of 1,000,000 pounds. Profit would be a glittering $5 per guest per day… a total of about $39K/day in 2015 dollars.
I have scanned the Hilton and Ehricke papers and made them available for $4 and up APR Patreon patrons. If interested, please check out the APR Patreon.
A piece of artwork depicting Ehrickes space hotel. At some point Ehricke took to calling this “Astropolis.”
A brief article on a Japanese mini-shuttle, photographed from an issue of “Space World” magazine a few months back (sadly, I didn’t catch the date of the article, but it would have been sometime in the early/mid 1980’s). This is, I believe, an early design of the “HOPE” spaceplane which was more or less Japans answer to the French Hermes spaceplane. This mini-shuttle would have been a little bigger than the Dyna Soar from twenty years earlier, but equipped not only with its own onboard rocket propulsion system but also a pair of turbojets of atmospheric propulsion.
This photo was passed to me to identify. Much of it looks like the Grumman G-623 VTOL fighter concept from the mid 1970s (illustrated below), but the tail is obviously entirely different and the nose is much pointier. It’s my guess that the model might represent an early version of the G-623 design. Can anyone confirm/deny?
The Grumman G-623:
A piece of artwork from General Dynamics, circa 1963, illustrating their AMPSS (Advanced Manned Precision Strike System) design. This was a predecessor program to the AMSA (Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft – a.k.a. Americas Most Studied Aircraft) that was a predecessor to the B-1 program. The General Dynamics design shown here is very similar to (possibly the same as, though the engine arrangement and canopy frames look a little different) the design presented in US Bomber Projects issue #6, available here and here. This was much like a scaled-up F-111 in terms of overall configuration, especially visible around the cockpit. However, few if any actual components would carry over. 
I have made the full-rez version of this scan available at the APR Patreon for $4-and-up patrons. It is in the APR Patreon “Extras” Dropbox, in the 2015-05 folder.
Just added five more issues to Amazon for $2.99 each. These are Kindle-fied versions of the issues otherwise available as PDFs here.
There aren’t a whole lot of reviews… seven in total, I think. Six on one issue… and three are 5 out of 5, while three are 1 out of 5. It seems that those who went to the effort of reviewing either loved them or hated them. The negative reviews are at least honest – although I can’t makes heads or tails out of one of them. One of the complaints is that the drawings are too small, but I’m thinking that that might be an issue with the reader, dunno.
Below is an artists impression of the Bell D190B, a tilt-duct VTOL derived in part from the X-22. The D190 series, dating from the early 1960’s, was for a more-or-less common airframe design that could carry out a number of missions. Interestingly, variants of this design were considered for “parasite” roles. The aircraft could hard-dock to the underside of a C-130; the larger transport aircraft could then haul the smaller VTOL around the world, where it could serve as a rescue plane (note the rectangular hatch on the top of the fuselage). Another idea was for the small VTOL to serve as a crew or passenger transfer system for EC-135J (707 derivatives) flying command posts, including transporting VIPs (read: politicians) away from nuclear strikes to orbiting escape planes.
Sadly, while I’ve found many bits and pieces on this over the years, I’ve yet to come across good design data. If anyone has anything, I’d love to see it.
I have made the full-rez version of this scan available at the APR Patreon for $4-and-up patrons. It is in the APR Patreon “Extras” Dropbox, in the 2015-04 folder.
Along with the knowledge that you’re helping support the cause of preserving and spreading aerospace history, if you become an Aerospace Projects Review patron you get the first crack at stuff that might be of interest. For example… a little while back I sold off some one-off test prints, and more recently 85 or so old issues of Analog/Astounding science fiction magazines dating from the 1940’s into the 1970’s.
APR Patreon patrons get not only the first crack at these things (more such sales are coming, including a whole bunch of aerospace books), but also get them at a discount. The $10-level patrons have the opportunity at first dibs, followed by $4 and up patrons.
If interested, check out the APR Patreon HERE.
More stuff will be coming soon…
A piece of Bell Helicopter artwork depicting their design for the LHX competition, what became the RAH-66 Comanche. Note that this design featured unusual curved, swept sponsons and a NOTAR (no tail rotor) tail.
The full resolution version of this scan has been made available for $4 patrons at the APR Patreon.
Earlier this week, the United Launch Alliance announced the development of the semi-reusable “Vulcan” launcher meant to replace the likes of the Delta IV. 
Regardless of the merits or problems with this new design, there’s one issue that may cause prompt legal trouble:
Paul Allen Launches ‘Vulcan Aerospace’ to Boost Private Space Travel
Vulcan Aerospace will operate the “Stratolaunch” booster system now being built in California. 
Vulcan Aerospace, it turns out, is part of Vulcan, Inc., which was formed in 1986 and has a trademark on the “Vulcan” name. 
And Vulcan, Inc, seems like it wants to enforce that.
Ooops.
You’d think ULA would have checked on that. 
The article says that ULA looked into the name and found no legal issues… but that seems to perhaps be not entirely correct.