Seemed to go reasonably well. Some reports later that my audio faded in and out… I can only assume that my phone was either on the fritz, or perhaps the phone line itself was a bit screwy. Anyway, you can download it in MP3 format here:

http://archived.thespaceshow.com/shows/2134-BWB-2013-12-02.mp3

If you have a question raised specifically by the interview, you can ask it either here, or at the Space Show blog:

http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/scott-lowther-monday-12-2-13/

One minor correction: I was asked what the first US bomber was. I seemed to recall that the US dropped bombs from biplanes during the Pancho Villa expeditions of 1916; I was close, as there were Curtis biplanes modified to drop small incendiaries sent to Mexico, but the bombs were not dropped.

At some point I’ll have to listen to it myself, if for no other reason than to see if I can hear the feline cage match that took place right near me near the end of the interview… I guess Buttons and Speedbump decided that I wasn’t paying enough attention to them.

An early 1970’s Lockheed concept for a fully reusable shuttle. Shown here is the orbiter, a minimum-mass, low-cross-range design with a vast fuselage and relatively tiny wings. The system used a reusable flyback booster for the first stage. Far more information is available on this and related concepts in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N2 and V3N2 Addendum, available HERE.

Reminder: I’ll be on tomorrow, December 2, at 2 PM Pacific time (3 Mountain, 4 central, etc).

http://thespaceshow.com/

I am in the process of reworking my web pages. Part of this is consolidating all the stuff into more compact, less graphically intense (and, I imagine, annoying) forms; part of this is standardizing the prices. All Aerospace Drawings are now only $3; all Aerospace Documents are only $4. The “canonical” catalog is now hosted on the aerospaceprojectsreview.com web page; the pages on up-ship.com/blog are obsolete and will be changed out ASAP.

The new Aerospace Drawings & Documents catalog (includes APR & USBP)

The new Cyanotype Blueprints catalog

An early 1970’s Lockheed concept for a fully reusable shuttle. Shown here is the orbiter, derived from the earlier STAR Clipper concept… but bigger and without the V-tank. The system used a reusable flyback booster for the first stage. Far more information is available on this and related concepts in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N2 and V3N2 Addendum, available HERE.

I have lined up a 90-minute interview with The Space Show, a four-times-a-week podcast.

I haven’t been interviewed since a brief “man in the street” thing on TV back in my college days (Ha! Pre-internet! Good luck finding THAT!), and certainly not for an hour and a half. This has the potential to be as “umm” filled as a teleprompterless speech by the President, but likely with more bitchin’ about the state of aerospace history retention in the US.

Currently schedule is for Monday, December 2, from 2 to 3:30 Pacific Time. If you’ve been *dyin’* to hear what I sound like… well, here’s your shot.

A few pages were inadvertently left out of V5N1 in the recent APR Volume 5 pdf release. This has been fixed. If you’ve purchased Vol5, you can download the corrected version using the info in the email you were sent.

The complete rework of APR from the original release a decade ago is going a lot slower than I’d planned. A lot of people have asked for the original versions of the as-yet-unreleased issues of APR to be made available. I’ve been hesitant to do so, but… it’s just taking too long. So, I’ve taken the original Word files for the six issues of Volume 4 and the six issues of Volume 5, and made two PDF files from them. I’m making them temporarily available as two bulk sets. When the issues are re-released, these full-volume sets will be withdrawn. So, Volume 5 might remain available till the sun explodes, I dunno…

If you’re dying to get hold of the old-school APRs, here’s your chance. Remember, these are the *original* files from around 2002-2004, without any updates, edits or other changes. Errors, crappy formatting and all. A bunch of the individual old articles remain available as well.

APR Original Run Volume 4 downloadable PDF: $30

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APR Original Run Volume 5 downloadable PDF: $30

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Here are the contents:

Volume 4:

The X-15 Research Airplane Competition: The Bell Aircraft Proposal by Dennis R. Jenkins
First in a series of articles describing the competitors for the X-15

Lockheed Model L-153 Part 2 by Bill Slayton
Immediately post-war M-wing jet fighter designs

Cobras Of The Field by Scott Lowther
Modified helicopters for ag duty

Lockheed Model L-153 Part 3 by Bill Slayton
Immediately post-war swept-wing jet fighter designs

The X-15 Research Airplane Competition: The Douglas Aircraft Proposal by Dennis R. Jenkins
The Douglas competitor for the X-15

The Martin “Spacemaster” by Scott Lowther
An unconventional design competitor for the Shuttle

Radial Engine P-51 Mustang by Scott Lowther
A little-known modification to the supreme WWII fighter

The X-15 Research Airplane Competition: The Republic Aviation Proposal by Dennis R. Jenkins
The Republic competitor for the X-15

Boeing Super Clippers, then and Now by Scott Lowther
Truly grand aircraft

The X-15 Research Airplane Competition: The North American Proposal by Dennis R. Jenkins
The winning competitor for the X-15

The HFB 530 Ranger by Mike Hirschberg A German VTOL strike/recon design

Lockheed Model L-153 Part 4 by Bill Slayton
Early Post-war variable geometry fighters

Sonic Cruiser Update by Scott Lowther
New drawings of a new aircraft

LARA Craft: COIN Raiders by Scott Lowther
A long way to go for a bad pun for some tough aircraft

English MUSTARD by Scott Lowther
An early 1960’s British fully reusable Space Shuttle

The NACA’s First Jet by Scott Lowther
The last gasp for ducted fans prior to the turbojet

Addendum to Issue V4N5
Ooops.

The Hopeless Diamond by Scott Lowther
The first cut of the stealth fighter

Sea Dragon by Scott Lowther
A giant, dirt-cheap launch vehicle

North American NA-116 by Scott Lowther
A long-range bomber

Multibody Designs From Lockheed by Scott Lowther
Unconventional yet fuel efficient designs

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Volume 5:

Editor’s Gratuitous Additions: Republic XF-103
A little bit of extra info.

Republic XF-103 by Dennis R. Jenkins
About as sleek as an aircraft can get.

Boeing’s Advanced Multipurpose Large Launch Vehicle by Scott Lowther
Perhaps the most powerful space launcher ever seriously conceived.

McDonnell Douglas GRM-29A by Scott Lowther
Just about the coolest spaceplane ever… but would it have worked???

The Rockwell XFV-12A V/STOL Prototype by Dana E. Lubich
It came close…

XFV-12A Followons by Scott Lowther
The end of the program wasn’t the end of the concept

Hawker Siddeley HS 141 by Scott Lowther
VTOL jetliner concept

Bell/Boeing Armed XV-15 by Scott Lowther
A tilt rotor with a mission

Lockheed Sea Sitter by Scott Lowther
A seaplane to conquer the oceans

Early Atlas Missile Designs by Scott Lowther
Evolution of America’s first ICBM

Boeing’s Air-Launched Micro-Fighters by Scott Lowther
The fighter needed for a flying aircraft carrier

Chrysler SERV by Scott Lowther
An SSTO Space Shuttle design

Soviet Seaplane Jet Bombers by Thomas Mueller and Jens Baganz
A counterpoint to American efforts

4,000 Ton Orion by Scott Lowther
Recently declassified data on a large nuclear pulse propulsion craft

Mart Model 262 by Scott Lowther
A mysteriously delayed article on VTOL fighters…

NASA Langley High Speed Civil Transport by Scott Lowther
Mach 3 and Mach 4 transports from the late 1980’s

Convair/Canadair Tilt-Wing Close Support Aircraft by Scott Lowther
VTOL gunship

Spacejet by Scott Lowther
Spaceplanes with dropable jet engines

Handley Page All-Wing Airbus by Scott Lowther
A British flying-wing transport from the 1960’s

Convair NX-2 Nuclear Powered Bomber by Scott Lowther
A well known but – until now – poorly documented nuclear powered aircraft project

Technology Needs for High Speed Rotorcraft Part 1 Sikorsky and Bell by Scott Lowther
Tiltrotos, tiltwings, fan-in-body designs

Lockheed-Martin ICE by Scott Lowther
An experimental tailless stealth fighter design

Raumwaffe, 1946

Boeing WS-110A

X-Wings

Dash-On-Warning

A decade ago I released Aerospace Projects Review solely in printed form… in the form of simple 11X17 sheets stapled down the centerline. In recent years I’ve released it – and other aerospace documents – instead in PDF format, and also as a high-quality print-on-demand version. While the PDF versions are quick and cost effective, they don’t fit on a bookshelf. The Magcloud versions are good, but a bit limiting… one page size. No foldouts.

And one common feature of both PDF and MagCloud: They’re very “modern.” Most of the time, that’s just fine. But sometimes… old-school just seems a whole lot more appropriate.

I’ve picked up some old-fashioned report covers that use the folding metal prongs, the type that used to be pretty ubiquitous in aerospace offices. A generation and more ago, if you wanted to put out a report, or just bind together a bunch of stuff, this is what you’d use. In recent years, of course, these binders have fallen out of fashion, replaced with spiral bindings, 3-ring binders, or just plain scanned PDF documents and the like. It’s been a number of years since I’ve seen these things in the wild, either in office supply stores or in use. But they *scream* “this is how it’s done, son.” I’ve used large format versions of these on the recent X-20 Dyna Soar diagram set I out on eBay.

I’ve got the harebrained notion of making available a number of old reports, and things like Aerospace Projects Review, in this format. This is a lot of work (for me) compared to the PDF/print-on-demand options, but the end result is quite a bit different from the others. As a first test, I’ve re-worked the first four US Bomber Project issues into one publication, with the diagrams reformatted and rescaled for 11X17 foldouts. Here are photos of the first test :

If people are interested, I’ve already pulled out a fat stack of reports to release in this format (a number of Saturn program reports, aircraft pilots manuals, design studies, rocket engine manuals, etc.). Price would be variable, based on length, but they’d be less than a print-on-demand version, as well as including foldouts where appropriate. So, the question is… how much interest is there?

There is a bit more formatting needed for the US Bomber Projects version, obviously. Anyone want this prototype? Call it $20 plus postage.

Might come a time when I embark on true Aerospace Hispter Art Overload: using these binders to put together collections of cyanotype blueprints on vellum… that would be awesome.

Selling this on eBay:

X-20 Dyna Soar Model 2050E diagram booklet

Here is a collection of 11X17 CAD diagrams of the X-20 Dyna Soar, specifically the final design, Model 2050E from 1963. These diagrams were created for issue V3N4 of Aerospace Projects Review; since this issue has not yet been published (and won’t be for a while yet), these will be the only copies of these diagrams out-and-about for some time. And if I get mashed by a Mack truck before V3N4… well, these will be the only copies out there, period.

These are bound in a 12X18 pressboard report cover with prong fasteners… outdated today, but appropriate for early 1960’s aerospace history. The collection currently has 25 pages, though this may change. Any additional diagrams that are finished prior to the end of the auction (I’d estimate one or two) will be added. The collection includes, but is not limited to: 1/48 scale 5-view diagram of the X-20 Dyna Soar, accurately showing the configuration of the metallic heat shields; several 1/72 layout diagrams of the X-20 with adapter and transstage; several 1/125 scale diagrams of the X-20/Titan IIIc launch vehicle, in different configurations; 1/175 X-20/Saturn C-1; 1/48 3-view of the “synergetic” configuration; numerous diagrams of various small space stations designed with operational Dyna Soar shuttle vehicles in mind; a scale comparison of the Dyna Soar with the ASSET test vehicle, the X-37B spaceplane and the HTV-2 test vehicle; separate 3-views of those other vehicles; and as a bonus, diagrams from issues V2N5 and V3N3 showing earlier versions of the Dyna Soar used as components of advanced launch systems such as the Aerospace Plane and the B-70 based Reusable Booster System.