X-20 Dyna Soar Diagram booklet

 aircraft, APR, art, drawings, eBay, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Nov 032013
 

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These are bound in a 12X18 pressboard report cover with prong fasteners… outdated today, but appropriate for early 1960’s aerospace history.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.

$T2eC16V,!y0FI,DL!KrjBSds6v3CoQ~~60_57 $(KGrHqNHJCEFJl53O6CWBSds7wsO7Q~~60_57 $(KGrHqVHJEwFJh,r4mMYBSds7Yqw!g~~60_57 $(KGrHqJHJC!FJnKsF674BSds7hFZ9!~~60_57 $(KGrHqRHJDQFJoCqBIC2BSds688)qQ~~60_57 $T2eC16NHJGwFFYuou38+BSds6jN3ww~~60_57

 Posted by at 9:10 pm

X-20 recovery efforts

 AARRRGH, aircraft, APR, blather, drawings, Gah., projects, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  2 Responses »
Oct 212013
 

After the CAD screwup, I’ve been working on recovering what I lost. The image below shows status as of a few minutes ago. The TIII/156 is back. The TIII/early is back. The TIII/operational is mostly back. The Dyna Soar overview and DS/Transstage overview weren’t lost. The inboard profile lost much. Now lost are the Saturn, “Skylab,” 932-102 and 934-606. They’ll have to be redrawn from scratch. The other ones listed will need to be created more or less from scratch, but weren’t lost in the screwup. There will be others as well, to be created not via 2D AutoCAD but via 3D Rhino. That model, fortunately, was unaffected.

V3N4 2013-10-22

This has been a schedule-bomber. If you want to see me obsessed, see me after I lose something I didn’t want to lose; I tend to go “grrrr” and devote myself to getting it back, at the expense of whatever else I needed to be doing. It messes with my sense of the way the universe aught to be. Of course, sometimes what’s lost *can’t* be recovered (go ahead and *try* to bring back the dead, for example), and that can make a permanent mess of things. I get caught in sort of a neurological do-loop; “just get over it” not being a function built into my programming.

V3N4 2013-10-22 - b

 Posted by at 11:42 pm

AAAAAARRRRRRGH!!!!

 AARRRGH, APR, blather, Crazy, drawings, dumbassery  13 Responses »
Oct 202013
 

So there I was, workign on the X-20 drawings for V3N4. Something burped in AutoCAD, and the drawing closed on me. Sadly, it closed right after *everything* was erased. And when it closed the drawing, it *saved* the drawing. With nothign in it. And it also saved it as a new BAK (backup) file, also with nothing in it. So apart from a few scraps in separate files, I’ve lost all the X-20 2D drawings.

 

Wonderful.

Gone:

 Posted by at 11:51 am

Line Weights

 aircraft, APR, art, blather, books, drawings, projects  No Responses »
Oct 192013
 

For what it’s worth:

I’m constantly tinkering with line settings, but I’ve largely settled on the results shown below. I do my drawings in AutoCAD 2000 and then further processing in Paint Shop Pro. The lines in ACAD are split into several layers:
1) “Outline:” This is for, obviously, the main outlines. This includes major overlaps, such as engine nacelles in front of wings of fuselages and such. Also used for sharp intersections, such as some wing/body intersections, when the angle of intersection is greater than 45 degrees. “Outline” is White (which prints black) with a lineweight of 0.40 mm.
2) “Details:” used for things like control surfaces, doors, windows, etc. Also used for intersections at less than 45 degrees. Also White, with a “default” lineweight.
3) “Lines:” Used for panels lines, faint intersections and the like. uses Color 253 (medium gray) and a default lineweight.

The process for going from ACAD 2000 to a good raster image is more complex than it would seem to need to be; I imagine more recent versions of ACAD have cleaned the process up. Anyway:
1) Plot the drawing as an EPS file at ANSI C size (22X17 inches)
2) Open the drawing in Paint Shop Pro at 200 dpi, grayscale, no transparency.
3) Crop the image just at the outer border

The image  just as-is is then saved as a GIF or PNG (not JPG, as that entails loss). It can then be plastered directly into a Word document. The drawing will print out (on paper) at a chosen scale if the border was drawn at a specific size, and when put into Word the image is formatted to be that width. If you want to print at a specific scale but don’t wnat the border, you can still go through the whole process with a border, and then simply erase it /paint it out at the last step so that the image has the right size but no border.

I’ve found plotting the CAD drawing at larger sizes initially helps smooth out curves. But this means that the image is way too big for basic online posting, and the line weights get really thin and faint when the image is just resized smaller. So before resizing smaller one or both of the following:
1) “Erode” the image. This expands line widths. At full rez it looks pretty crappy, but when resized it works well.
2) “Blur” the image. This widens the lines and helps smooth it out, but makes everything lighter. The image can be darkened via gamma correction or brightness/contrast.

Something else to consider: “Drawing Order.” With multiple line colors, it matters what lines are “over” and “under” what other lines. After the drawing is done in ACAD, the “draworder” commend lets you pick what lines are in front, what are in back. It’s best to have the “Outline” layer in front, and the “Lines” layer in back. This way, when a black Outline line intersects with a gray “Lines” line, the black line is unbroken. Sometimes I forget this step, and the results can look *wrong.*

The image below of the Lockheed CL-1170-6-2 was from issue V1N3 of Aerospace Projects Review, reformatted in AutoCAD to print out on 11X17.

v1n3-106-full rez

v1n3-106-eroded-ensmallered v1n3-106-ensmallered v1n3-106-blurred-ensmallered

 Posted by at 11:56 am

More model progress

 aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, models, projects, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft  1 Response »
Oct 182013
 

X-20 Dyna Soar. Model being made for the purposes of illustrating the next issue of APR. Dunno if there’s enough interest in a physical model to make a stab at it, though a cutaway model showing the truss-structure innards – a thing only possible via 3D printing – seems appealing. Note that the heat panel lines are being modeled in place, so they should appear on any theoretical 3D print, and definitely appear on  rendered illustrations.

2013-10-18 x-20

Further progress on the Prometheus, mostly tinkering on the engines. You know what? These components are nightmares. But the final model is gonna be *awesome.*

 

2013-10-18 pro a 2013-10-18 pro b

So if you’ve been wondering why my blogging about old aerospace projects has fallen off of late… here ya go.

 Posted by at 10:34 pm
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