This website is Star Wars in schematic form. It must’ve taken freakin’ *forever.* It’s definitely worth a look.
May 242016
May 242016
In the late 1960s, Barron Hilton of Hilton Hotels pursued the idea of hotels in orbit or on the moon (as discussed previously HERE). Around that time, Hilton Hotels apparently produced a little PR gimmick in the form of a “Lunar Hilton” room key. This was a transitional design, shaped similar to a standard mechanical door lock key, it didn’t have the teeth used to position tumbled, but instead had the small holes that would be later used on plastic keycards. It appear that at least two types of these keys were produced… a stamped metal key with wood inlay, and an injection-molded or machined plastic key with wood “stickers.” Same basic configuration. These may have been produced in order to piggyback publicity for “2001: A Space Odyssey.” They certainly seem like they would have fit in with the design aesthetic of the film… futuristic, but firmly based in 1960’s tech.
The design of the plastic key seems easy enough to replicate in CAD. Might there be a market for replicas? Perhaps something for 3D printing at Shapeways?
May 232016
I’ve been trying and failing to find a copy of an article (“Extraterrestrial Colonies”) from a 1960 copy of “Navigation – The Journal of the Institute of Navigation”- Vol 7 Issue 2-3 pp 83-98. If you can help out, let me know.
I’ve found the Wiley online citation for it, but can’t seem to register for it, and they don’t make it easy.
May 212016
Two CAD models in progress which will be 3D printed to form the basis of resin kits:
May 202016
I really want to think that the next Star Trek movie will be good, but I dunno. I guess I’ll find out in July. Anyway, here’s the latest trailer where we see, once again, the starship USS Enterprise getting destroyed:
Several very brief shots near the end show another ship that looks a lot like the NX-01 Enterprise from the Star Trek: Enterprise series, but reportedly it’s actually this ship, the USS Franklin:
It seems the Enterprise gets trashed, the surviving crew lands on an alien world covered in wrecked ships, and they just happen to find what I presume is an old Federation vessel just lying around on the surface. Scotty wipes down a few bits with WD-40, McCoy kicks an instrument panel and the thing coughs back to life.
May 192016
This video explains the limits on how far humanity can go in space, assuming that we never figure out FTL but are restricted to sublight speeds. You might at first think that we should be able to go just about everywhere, even though it might take a ridiculously long time to get there… but you’d probably be wrong. In short, the Local Group of galaxies is gravitationally bound together, so we should be able to go where we like among the nearest hundred trillion or so stars. But the more distant groups of galaxies? The expansion of the universe is not only moving them away at a good fraction of the speed of light, that rate of expansion is increasing. A sublight ship might be capable of reaching speeds faster than the current rate of recession, but the starship will not be able to catch up with those distant galaxies as they accelerate away. At some point in the distant future, the other galactic groups will have receded so far that no light from them will ever make it here, and the skies at the edge of whatever remains of the local group will be utterly dark, without even cosmic background radiation. Some far-future observers will look out into the universe and see nothing… and so they won’t see evidence of the expansion of the universe, and thus won’t understand anything about the Big Bang. For them, it really will look like the universe is eternal and static.
Best to get on that hyperdrive program, I guess.
May 172016
From back when General Motors was studying spacecraft, here’s an early 1960’s video showing tests of three means of surface propulsion for lunar vehicles:
The Archimedes Screw system was interesting, but it seems to me that there’s virtually no chance that it would be a good idea on the moon. The rough, razor-sharp regolith would seem likely to sandblast those shiny metal screws in little short of no time.
May 172016
A 1977 Rockwell concept for how to expand the utility of the Shuttle system: move the payload from the Orbiter and put it in a shroud ahead of the External Tank. This would have allowed for much larger-diameter payloads to be carried. The ET would of course have had to go into orbit with the Orbiter itself. More info and diagrams of this are in US Launch Vehicle Projects issue 1.
May 122016
A vintage NASA film about the Lunar Module and Apollo 5. Some interesting footage of the Lunar Landing Research Facility.
May 112016
A 1961 NASA film about the Saturn I. An improved version of a previously posted YouTube video.