May 2019 Monthly Historical Documents

 aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, drawings, drawings&documents, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 022019
 

On May 31st, APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents program subscribers were sent emails containing links to the May, 2019, rewards. This months set of documents and diagrams included high-rez copies of:

Document: “Manned Lunar Vehicle Design,” a General Electric paper from 1962 describing a direct-landing Apollo concept

Document: “AP-76 Project 1226,” a highly illustrated Republic Aviation report from May 1955 describing their design for the X-15

Diagram: “DNI-27C, VFX Design Study Fixed Wing/Buried Engine,” September 1968 North American Aviation fighter design

CAD Diagram: three-view of the Dandridge Cole/Martin Aircraft “Aldebaran” giant nuclear powered launch vehicle notional concept

 

If this sort of thing is of interest and you’d like to get in on it and make sure you don’t miss any of the forthcoming releases, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

 

 



All prior “back issues” are available for purchase by subscribers. Recent months rewards have included:

 Posted by at 11:49 pm

“Big Stick” art

 aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, nukes, projects, rockets, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 112019
 

The San Diego Air and Space Museums Flickr account recently added this illustration, showing a Convair “Big Stick” being launched off the back of mobile transporter. “Big Stick” was a Convair concept for a nuclear ramjet powered cruise missile of nearly unlimited range, a less-known competing design against Voughts Pluto vehicle.

A higher rez (though, sadly, not a whole lot higher) version is available HERE.

If you are interested in Big Stick and Project Pluto, I recommend Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N1, which covers both in detail.

 

 Posted by at 7:43 pm

APR Historical Documents: December 2018

 aircraft, APR, awesomeness, drawings, history, new products, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Dec 242018
 

2018-12 Rewards are now available for downloading for APR Historical Documents subscribers. This month the rewards include:

1: A large document: “Sea Launch and Recovery of Very Large Rocket Vehicles,” a 1962 Aerojet report on the sea Dragon concept

2: “Ryan Aeronautical Company Plane Portraits,” information, photos and three-views of a sizable range of Ryan aircraft, manned and unmanned

3: “Nova,” a blueprint of the NASA “Saturn C-8” launch vehicle with 8 F-1 engines

4: CAD diagrams: Star Raker scrap views

If you are interested in signing up, you can do so either at Patreon or directly through PayPal. Signing up now makes you eligible for rewards starting with the *next* months rewards. The directly-through-PayPal system is new; it would probably be best to sign up after the first of the month.

 Posted by at 6:16 pm

APR Monthly Historical Documents Program

 aircraft, APR, art, drawings, history, Hmm..., new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Dec 182018
 

For some years I have been operating the “Aerospace Projects Review Patreon” which provides monthly rewards in the form of high resolution scans of vintage aerospace diagrams, art and documents. This has worked pretty well, but it seems that perhaps some people might prefer to sign on more directly. Fortunately, PayPal provides the option not only for one-time purchases but also monthly subscriptions. By subscribing using the drop-down menu below, you will receive the same benefits as APR Patrons, but without going through Patreon itself.



Details below.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 6:10 pm

Early Lockheed Space Shuttle concept art

 APR, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Nov 292018
 

A design circa 1970 for a Lockheed lifting body space shuttle concept. This design was derived from the earlier STAR Clipper stage-and-a-half design from the late 1960s… the whole story of the STAR Clipper and its many derivatives is given in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N2, available HERE.

Note that this vehicle is equipped with sizable internal propellant tanks. As a result the cockpit is separated from the payload bay; in order to access the payload, the crew would need to pass through a long, narrow tunnel not unlike that within the B-36 bomber.

 Posted by at 11:56 pm

Rocketdyne nuclear-electric spacecraft art

 APR, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 252018
 

A piece of 1960’s (published in a book in 1967, but it looks older than that) artwork depicting a five-man nuclear-electric spacecraft. heading to Mars. The spacecraft is long for radiation shielding purposes; at the far distant forward end is the reactor, with the crew and ion engines in the conical section in the tail. Between the ends is a long boom attached to which are the propellant tanks and two large radiators. This is more or less the propulsion system and layout originally planned for the spaceship “Discovery” from the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” with the difference that the ion engines were on the other side of the crew module, and the spacecraft “towed” the reactor and radiators, rather than pushing them.

 Posted by at 11:44 pm

STAR Clipper

 APR, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Launch Vehicle Projects  No Responses »
Aug 032018
 

A piece of color art, scanned from a 35mm slide at NASA HQ some years back. The Lockheed STAR Clipper was an early concept for a reusable 1.5 STO launch vehicle, a predecessor to the Space Shuttle. The STAR Clipper was described and illustrated in unnecessarily *vast* degree in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N2 and in US Launch Vehicle Projects #2.

The STAR Clipper was an interesting design which was popular and well known for a while, receiving lot of kinda-press… it, or shuttles very much like it in appearance, appeared in a lot of publicity art produced by Lockheed, NASA, the USAF and even other companies. For a while it was the Shuttle Stereotype.

 Posted by at 1:45 am

Slightly Wrong

 APR, art, awesomeness, Crazy, humor, science fiction  No Responses »
Jul 312018
 

I’m still debating whether or not to proceed with t-shirts. In part because I’m lazy, but mostly because I’m neither artistically inclined nor do I think I’m all that witty. Certainly not at this level.

slightlywrong

They specialize in pop culture references that are, as might be guessed, slightly wrong. Anyone who has known superfans knows that getting things *slightly* wrong will drive them/us bonkers.

 

Some years ago, for about thirty seconds a meme was popular that spliced together a photo of a pop culture character, together with a quote from another, and an attribution to a third. It was exactly the sort of thing that would cause the autistic/OCD aspects of nerddom to flip.

 Posted by at 1:12 am

Lunar Exploration Systems for Apollo

 APR, awesomeness, blather, books, eBay, history, news, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Apr 192018
 

For the APR Patreon I try to acquire as much interesting aerospace documentation as I can, and these items fall into two categories:

  1. Stuff that I can afford. This stuff winds up in the APR Patreon catalog of potential monthly rewards for patrons.
  2. Stuff I can’t hope to afford.

There’s a lot of the latter category of stuff. Sometimes it’s because the item has a ridiculously high Buy It Now price or starting bid, or because the item will be popular among bidders, or because it’s *really* good/big and thus worth every penny. But unaffordable is unaffordable.

However, there is an option for “stuff I can’t afford:” crowdfunding. I’ve done this a number of times with considerable success, and I’ve just done so again, winning a trio of General Dynamics documents describing a 1965 program to develop a logistics system for extending the Apollo lunar exploration program:

This set of documents was just much too expensive for an individual (well, I’m sure Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk wouldn’t have flinched), but with a group of like-mined funders it came in at $30 per person. So what happens now:

1: I wait for it to show up in the mail.

2: I make a complete set of scans in 300 DPI grayscale (and color, where appropriate) and convert to PDFs

3: I make the scans and PDFs available to funders, generally via Dropbox

4: I find an appropriate archive for the documents, and then donate the originals to them.

5: And that’s it. The files are shared with the funders, but do not appear on future APR Patreon catalogs or as purchasable, downloadable “Diagrams and Documents.” What the funders choose to do with their scans & PDFs is up to them.

APR Patrons get alerted to each of these occasional “crowdfunding opportunities.” So if you’d like to participate, please considered signing up for the APR Patreon.

patreon-200

 Posted by at 12:11 pm

US Aerospace Projects catalog page updated

 APR, US Bomber Projects, US Fighter Projects, US Launch Vehicle Projects, US Research & Recon Projects, US Spacecraft Projects, US Transport Projects, US VTOL Projects  2 Responses »
Feb 152018
 

Updated the webpage is an irritating process compared to adding new blog posts, but I’ve finally gotten around to updating the Aerospace Projects Review main page and the US Aerospace Projects catalog page:

http://aerospaceprojectsreview.com/

http://aerospaceprojectsreview.com/bomproj.htm

 

 Posted by at 12:10 am
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