Yuggoth coming into focus

 awesomeness, Crazy, Hmm..., news, photography, science, spacecraft  15 Responses »
Jul 112015
 

Every day from now until at least the 15th will present “clearest picture ever” of Pluto. But as it comes into view… man, there’s something a bit unsettling about the place. I’m hoping that the black spots are lakes.

New Horizons’ Last Portrait of Pluto’s Puzzling Spots

nh-pluto-7-11-15

New Horizons’ last look at Pluto’s Charon-facing hemisphere reveals intriguing geologic details that are of keen interest to mission scientists. This image, taken early the morning of July 11, 2015, shows newly-resolved linear features above the equatorial region that intersect, suggestive of polygonal shapes. This image was captured when the spacecraft was 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers) from Pluto.

Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

 Posted by at 7:12 pm

Dream Chaser videos

 aircraft, art, Hmm..., spacecraft, youtube  4 Responses »
Jul 102015
 

Here’s one showing the mission profile of the basic HL-20-derived “Dream Chaser” lifting body spacecraft:

Since Sierra Nevada didn’t win one of the big commercial crew transport contracts from NASA, I don’t really know here they stand on developing the manned vehicle. But they are also advertising a somewhat smaller unmanned vehicle for cargo delivery to/from the ISS. I admit to being confounded by this. What cargo is there that’s in need of coming *down* that would merit the development of a new reusable spacecraft?

 Posted by at 9:58 pm

Early Shuttle Launch Artwork

 art, history, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jul 092015
 

Rockwell art of an early Shuttle configuration. The full-rez version has been made available for $10-level patrons at the APR Patreon.

While this is broadly much like the STS as actually built, there are a lot of important differences. The spine down the top of the cargo bay… that was to give room for the cargo manipulator arm without putting it actually in the cylindrical bay, taking up valuable cargo space. The booster rockets have teardrop ports on the cylindrical sections just aft of the nosecones… these are the thrust termination ports that, in the event of an abort, would blow out through the forward dome of the rocket motors. This would not only slash the chamber pressure in the motors, it would provide an escape route for the hot gas to go forward, cancelling the thrust from the aft nozzle. The ET is of a slightly simpler geometry; the small cylinder on the nosecone contained the de-orbit solid rocket motor (because the ET would either go into orbit with the Shuttle, or so close to orbit that the splashdown location would be somewhat randomized).

Old Shuttle Art - Launch

 Posted by at 12:49 pm

US Bomber Projects #15, Transports #04, Launchers #02 Now Available

 aircraft, books, drawings, history, new products, news, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Bomber Projects, US Launch Vehicle Projects, US Transport Projects  8 Responses »
Jul 072015
 

Now available… three new additions to the US Aerospace Projects series.

US Bomber Projects #15

USBP#15 includes:

  • Bell D2001: A 1957 eight-engined Bell VTOL strike plane for the Navy
  • Lockheed “Harvey”: AKA the Hopeless Diamond, Lockheeds first design for what became the F-117
  • Convair Model 35: An early push-pull concept for the B-36
  • Rockwell D661-27: A nuclear powered strategic bomber
  • Boeing Model 464-49: The penultimate major design in the development of the B-52
  • Boeing Model 988-123: A highly agile stealthy strike fighter
  • Boeing Orbital Bomber: An early concept for a Dyna Soar derivative with eight nukes
  • Boeing Model 701-251: A twin engined concept on the road to the XB-59

USBP#15 can be purchased for downloading for the low, low price of $4.

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US Transport Projects #4

USTP#4 includes:

  • Boeing Model 473-13: An early twin-engine jetliner
  • ICARUS Troop Transport: 1,200 marines, anywhere, anytime
  • Republic Model 10 SST: A little known SST competitor
  • Lockheed CL-593: A giant, if slow, logistics transporter
  • Boeing 763-059 NLA: A whole lotta passengers in one place
  • Fairchild M-534: A B-36 converted into a vast cargo carrier
  • Lockheed CL-1201: Probably the largest aircraft ever designed
  • Oblique All-Wing Supersonic Airplane: A supersonic variable-orientation flying wing

USTP#4 can be purchased for downloading for the low, low price of $4.

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US Launch Vehicle Projects #2

USLP#2 includes:

  • Juno V, 4 stage: An early design that became the Saturn rocket
  • Boeing “Space Freighter”: a giant two-stage spaceplane for launching solar power satellites
  • Boeing NASP-D: A rare look at an operational National Aerospace Plane derivative
  • LLNL Mockingbird: The smallest SSTO ever designed
  • Boeing Model 922-101: A fully reusable Saturn V
  • NAR Phase B Space Shuttle: a fully reusable two-stage concept
  • Martin Marietta Inline SDV: A Shuttle-derived heavy lifter
  • Scaled Composites Model 351: The Stratolaunch carrier aircraft

USLP#2 can be purchased for downloading for the low, low price of $4.

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 Posted by at 11:48 pm

Looks like productivity’s going to take another hit

 art, awesomeness, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube  18 Responses »
Jul 072015
 

Footage of gameplay from the forthcoming “No Man’s Sky.” This is a “procedural” open universe… the game generates stars, planets, environments and critters on the spot, so there can be an incredibly large number of each (quintillions of unique planets are possible). You earn in-game money by flying around discovering new stuff. As it’s an online game, what you discover gets uploaded to an “atlas,” as does everything discovered by other folk, so the catalog of what and where will only get bigger.

Times like this I’m glad I don’t have a good computer hooked up to the internet, just a creaky old netbook. Because this sort of thing looks like it could suck me in and that’d be the end of me.

 Posted by at 2:02 am

Two decades of Nuclear Pulse Propulsion

 APR, blather, history, Hmm..., Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, Pax Orionis, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Jul 062015
 

I graduated in 1995 with a degree in aerospace engineering, and promptly put that degree to good use: my first job was moving mufflers from one side of a warehouse to another. After about a week there, I got a call from a former classmate who had got himself an internship at NASA-Johnson; they wanted those of us who’d worked on a  student design project for a moon probe to come and give a presentation. So I told my boss “I’m taking next week off.” When I got back they promptly fired me for ditching work… I wasn’t exactly tore up about that. When you’ve just been given a tour of the innards of a NASA facility, shuffling mufflers seems *really* depressing.

So, I buckled down and put my degree to use getting another job: moving items off one truck and onto another truck at a UPS depot. I was the one non-union, non-management guy there. It was my task to see to it that high-value packages ($5K and up) got off Truck A and onto Truck B, but due to union regs I wasn’t allowed to touch it; I had to beg a union worker to actually carry the package, which of course they did in their own time. A spectacular setup. Truly a model of efficiency.

Anyway, one day (*roughly* this time of summer, so right at 20 years ago) a result of a Freedom of Information Act Request showed up in the mail from NASA: the Summary volume of the General Atomic Project Orion report for NASA. It was a revelation! I took it to work with me one day and read through it on my lunch break (it’s not like I had to waste time socializing during lunch, since nobody would socialize with the one non-management, non-union guy), and a thought occurred to me:

“You know, I aught to take that $1.00  3D CAD program I just bought on floppy disk for my DOS computer and draw up the 10-meter Orion, and write an article describing the concept. I bet people might buy something like that.”

That was the first time it had occurred to me to take a stab at writing aerospace history in that format. I’ve been poking away at writing about Orion ever since.

So the NPP book has been in development for twenty years now. So based on that… how long do you think it’ll take to finish Pax Orionis? Hmmm…

 Posted by at 10:47 pm

New Horizons: Uh-oh…

 AARRRGH, Gah., news, science, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  16 Responses »
Jul 052015
 

New Horizons Team Responds to Spacecraft Anomaly

The spacecraft suddenly went into safe mode and communications was lost for an hour and twenty minutes yesterday. It’s back up and running, but as yet they don’t know what went wrong. And it will be unable to collect science data for “one to several days.”

Just ten days till Pluto flyby. After nearly a decade in flight, to have it start going screwy *now* is not only nerve-wracking, it’s also perfect conspiracy fodder.

Prediction 1: If the probe ultimately fails, expect it to be because THEY Didn’t Want Us To See What Those Spots Are.

Prediction 2: If the probe succeeds, but the spots turn out to be mundane… The Shutdown Was When THEY Turned Off The Spacecraft And Turned On The Fake Image Generator.

Friggen’ Yuggoth.

 Posted by at 8:39 am

Pax Orionis Prelude: The Cuban War

 blather, books, My Fiction, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Pax Orionis, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft  104 Responses »
Jul 042015
 

Here is the first completed chunk of Pax Orionis. The irony is that I’m not sure that if I finish the work I’ll include this. What we have here is a history of the Cuban War that is the point of divergence from history as we know it to the history that results in Orion battleships fighting a massive nuclear war. The final book might not include this for the reason that it’s a big chunk of exposition that might not be needed… a book on World War II might not have a complete chapter laying out the history of World War I, but would instead just touch on bits and pieces of it. But, what the heck. I figured some of y’all might find it interesting, and some others might like to tear it apart and tell me where I’m dead wrong.

It is available in two formats… a PDF which you can DOWNLOAD RIGHT HERE, formatted for good old 8.5X11, and a Kindle epub version available at Amazon. The PDF is free; the Kindle version is the cheapest price available… 99 cents. If that seems like too much for an admittedly dry short story, don’t worry… I only get 35 cents of that.

If you read this and like it, feel free to toss a few nickles into the tip jar (notice how I haven’t put out a US Aerospace Projects since April? Yeah, pretty much this is why). And feel free to tell anybody you want that this literary masterpiece, or literary abomination, is available here. Constructive criticism – especially on factual matters, of which there are a number here I just handwaved – is appreciated.

The Cuban War.pdf

 

 

If you  don’t see the standard Amazon ad-box thing for “The Cuban War” immediately above this… it’s probably a browser issue. So, try HERE as another link.


Fiction TipJar


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LEGAL NOTICE:

I have, hopefully, much more coming. It is possible, though exceedingly unlikely, that it might be publishable in some form or another. And while I have a lot of ideas and plans for what’s going to happen, story-wise, I don’t plan on just giving it all away. So feel free to comment your ideas and suggestions below, but be advised that I may well already have thought the same thing. So if you don’t want to see *your* idea show up in *my* book… well, don’t post it.

This sort of thing happened 20 or so years ago with “Babylon 5.” The creator, J Michael Straczynski, used to hang out on the B-5 Usenet groups. And that was awesome. but he eventually had to bail because people were posting speculations about things that wouldn’t be seen for another year or three, and he could get in trouble if someone had posted an idea that wound up on screen, even if the idea was created entirely independently.

 Posted by at 7:45 am

Pluto looks like Mars

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, photography, science, spacecraft  11 Responses »
Jul 032015
 

Color-wise, at any rate:

New Horizons Color Images Reveal Two Distinct Faces of Pluto, Series of Spots that Fascinate

nh-7-1-15_pluto_charon_color_hemispheres_annotated_jhuapl_nasa_swri

Those large black spots on the “opposition” hemisphere had damned well better come into view clear enough to make out what they are… or we’re in for *decades* of inane whacko conspiracy theories along the lines of the “Face on Mars.”

 Posted by at 11:48 am
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