Blues for a Red Planet

 Hmm..., photography, science, spacecraft  7 Responses »
Jun 012015
 

From the ESA:

The effect of the winds of Mars

On the Red Planet, strong winds whip dust and sand from the surface into a frenzy, moving it across the planet at high speeds. These winds can hit 100 km/h, enough to create giant dust storms that settle across huge swathes of Mars, lasting for many days or even weeks.

As these winds travel they carve their surroundings, eroding and smoothing and gradually wearing away the planet’s surface features over millions of years.

Evidence of these processes can be seen in this image from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter. The image shows part of the Arabia Terra region, which is scattered with craters of varying sizes and ages. The craters in this image, caused by impacts in Mars’ past, all show different degrees of erosion. Some still have defined outer rims and clear features within them, while others are much smoother and featureless, almost seeming to run into one another or merge with their surroundings.

The largest crater in this image also has the steepest rim. With a diameter of some 70 km, this crater dominates the left, southern, side of the frame. At first glance, this image seems to show something amazing in this crater, and in one of its neighbours to the right: is this a hint of blue liquid water? No, it is an optical illusion caused by the image processing. The blue-hued patches lying within the ragged craters are actually dark sediments that have built up over time. Again, this is due to the winds, which carry dark, volcanic, basalt-rich deposits across the planet.

This colour image was taken by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera on 19 November 2014, during orbit 13728. The image resolution is about 20 m per pixel.

The_effect_of_the_winds_of_Mars

 Posted by at 5:04 pm

Benefits From Space Industrialization

 art, history, Hmm..., rockets, science, spacecraft  1 Response »
May 292015
 

From a 1977 Rockwell brochure touting the forthcoming benefits to be expected from the era of space industrialization that the Shuttle was soon to usher in:

rockwell 77 space industrialization

Note that some of the illustrations here were constantly re-tasked. For example, the image in upper right with the cop and the bad guy: here is shows the advantages of the Lunetta, lighting up scary urban areas at night, allowing The Man to spot and chase down criminals. But in other publications, the same small painting was used to show other advantages of space industrialization, nothing to do with Lunetta. Not shown in *this* illustration is the police officers right hand. Elsewhere, the image is published with him holding his hand sort of in front of his face, as if he was wearing a Dick Tracey-esque two-way video/radio watch… because that’s what he was wearing (same sort of thing shown in the center-left image on the right-hand page). Space technology would, it was claimed, allow police officers to carry small, easily portable communications devices of effectively unlimited range, unlike the bulky and short-ranged walkie-talkies they had at the time.

Admittedly, it was a crazy, far-out notion of the future.

 Posted by at 11:29 pm

Limited edition cyanotypes: update

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, new products, science fiction, spacecraft  2 Responses »
May 262015
 

As mentioned HERE I have some cyanotype blueprints that are available for a limited time, until May 29. Time runs short. As previously mentioned, only those sold in this period will be made, so the production run will be necessarily limited. In fact… I have so far sold none. So if you *do* pull the trigger on this, you will get something *extremely* rare.

 Posted by at 8:46 pm

Aerospace Transportation Costs

 history, rockets, spacecraft  6 Responses »
May 262015
 

A photo (because I couldn’t be bothered to scan it) of a page from a 1967 edition of “TRW Space Data,” recently arrived in my mailbox via eBay. Shown here are current (1967) and projected capabilities and costs of American launch vehicles. The Saturn V is noticeably cheaper on a dollars-per-pound basis than anything else, with the Titan IIIC and the Saturn Ib coming in behind it. For the future, hypothetical fully reusable vehicles were expected to greatly reduce those costs further, with a recoverable booster expected to run somewhere about $50/lb by 1970. The graph leads me to believe that the data was dated even at this point; Reference 3 mentioned in the graph was from 1961. Further, the Aerospace Plane was an ongoing project in ’61, but was long kaput by ’67.

$50 would be about $354 in todays money; the $540 for a pound of Saturn V payload would be $3825 today.

WP_20150526_001

 Posted by at 1:39 pm

Lunetta

 art, history, projects, spacecraft  4 Responses »
May 232015
 

The idea of orbital mirrors to shine sunlight down onto the night side of Earth precede WWII; Hermann Oberth proposed such at thing in 1923. Today if someone were to seriously propose an orbiting space mirror the probably use would be to *shade* the Earth from sunlight in order to reduce insolation and very, very slightly cool the planet. Still, it might prove an interesting mathematical study… if an orbiting mirror is used to alternately shade the Earth and then light up the Earth, is it a net positive? When you factor in that the night-time sunlight beamed down would presumably offset artificially generated lighting – say, by lighting up a city, replacing streetlights – it may be that the result would be to reduce planetary temperature.

As recently as 1977, Rockwell International (after Krafft Ehricke) examined the use of orbiting mirrors called “Lunetta” to provide illumination.

rockwell 77 lunetta

 Posted by at 9:25 pm

Recent Acquisitions

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, books, drawings, history, Patreon, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  1 Response »
May 192015
 

Photos of some of the aerospace history I’ve been able to purchase lately thanks to the APR Patreon. If you’d like to help out and get in on this action, please check out the APR Patreon page.

WP_20150519_009 WP_20150519_010 WP_20150519_011 WP_20150519_004 WP_20150519_005 WP_20150519_006 WP_20150519_007 WP_20150519_008 WP_20150519_012 WP_20150519_013

And then there’s this. While I haven’t managed to get hold of the actual item, I have gotten full-color scans of this, in chunks. I am now piecing it together into one gigantic whole.

triebflugel

 Posted by at 10:09 pm

Hotels in space: 1967

 drawings, history, Hmm..., Patreon, projects, spacecraft  10 Responses »
May 182015
 

In May of 1967, Barron Hilton – of Hilton Hotels – gave a presentation at the 13th Annual Meeting of the American Astronautical Society where he discusses the possibilities of orbiting and lunar hotels. Even as far back as ’67, Hilton considered such concepts to be perfectly feasible, and essentially inevitable. A shout-out is given to the Hilton depicted on Space Station V in “2001: A Space Odyssey” which would come out about a year later.

This being the 1960’s, of course there would be a “Galaxy Lounge” where guest could enjoy a martini.

Following Hilton was a presentation by Krafft Ehrike (then of North American Aviation) on the subject of “space tourism.” Once again, the concept was treated as wholly valid. He presented a design for a large orbiting tourist destination. While it featured zero-gravity facilities, it wisely was a rotating artificial gravity station, providing for the comfort and convenience of the guests. There would be several “world rooms” with different environments… artificial gravity levels matching the moon and Mars, say.

One assumption was that space launch costs would drop to $10/pound ($71/pound in 2015 dollars). At the time, with the rapid advances in space launch – remember, the first satellite had, at that time, only been launched less than a decade earlier, and now giant Saturn V rockets were preparing to send men to the moon – a price drop to those levels seemed a reasonable assumption. This would be done by having many, many launches of fully reusable vehicles, capable of reliably transporting the guests. The hotel would hold 1100 guests at a time, for 400,000 guest-days per year, and would have an in-orbit weight of 1,000,000 pounds. Profit would be a glittering $5 per guest per day… a total of about $39K/day in 2015 dollars.

orbitaltouristfacility

I have scanned the Hilton and Ehricke papers and made them available for $4 and up APR Patreon patrons. If interested, please check out the APR Patreon.

A piece of artwork depicting Ehrickes space hotel. At some point Ehricke took to calling this “Astropolis.”

astropolis

 Posted by at 9:57 pm

Sci-Fi Cyanotypes: Limited Editions

 art, awesomeness, blather, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, Hmm..., models, new products, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft  2 Responses »
May 152015
 

I’ve made a number of science fictional CAD models for Fantastic Plastic. Wonderfest, an annual hobby convention in Louisville, Kentucky, is coming up at the end of the month, and Fantastic Plastic is going to set up there. A while back I thought it might be interesting to take some of the CAD models I’ve created for current and forthcoming Fantastic Plastic model kits, specifically the Helicarrier, the Prometheus and the Messiah, and create 2D layout drawings… and then make cyanotype blueprints. Further, the blueprints would be at the same scale as the kits.

The end results? A moderately sized Helicarrier blueprint, two big Prometheus sheets (one showing the craft in flight, the other showing it in landed configuration), and one enormous Messiah blueprint, a full six feet long.

I don’t know if there is a market for such things. The Prometheus and the Messiah in particular are just gigantic. Were I to really try to commercialize them, I’d probably scale them down to at least 2/3 and more likely 1/2 the current size. Still, creating them was not a minor effort… so what the heck. I’m going to make them available for a limited time. Yes, they’re pricey. But they’re also *huge.* And a pain to make. And there won’t be very many of them on the entire planet (right now, two copies each of the Helicarrier and the Messiah; a grand total of one of the Prometheus prints).

These will be available for a two-week period, starting now. If some dark miracle occurs and I sell a hundred of them within that span, then, great! But however many, at the end of the two weeks, that’s it. All done, no more. I will total them up, and hand notate  each one as numbered limited edition (“1 of 5,” or whatever, based on the order that orders come in) plus I’ll initial each one. Because why not.

Feel free to order as many of each as you want. Don’t forget postage… and don’t forget that with this one-time postage you can order as many *other* cyanotype prints as you like.

WP_20150430_005

WP_20150430_006 WP_20150430_007

 

Prometheus prints:

WP_20150430_008 WP_20150430_009 WP_20150430_010

WP_20150430_014 WP_20150430_015 WP_20150430_016

Helicarrier:

WP_20150430_011 WP_20150430_012 WP_20150430_013

 

 

 

 Posted by at 10:49 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries