NASA’s New Horizons Detects Pluto Surface Features, Including Possible Polar Cap
Durned if Pluto doesn’t look… lumpy. Probably a trick of the light, as Pluto is far too big and massive to have much of a divergence from spherical.
Apr 302015
Apr 282015
I’m currently working on a series of Shuttle Orbiter tile “maps” to massage them into a form where they’d look good as cyanotype blueprints. Two are shown below; what I have on hand are about a dozen, covering every surface of the Orbiter. The centerline diagram is sized for 40 inches wide by 160 inches long; this is *way* beyond reasonable size for cyanotyping. But at 18 inches wide, it’d be 72 inches long… just about what I can handle.
Another option might be to stitch the separate views together, rather than two wings and a centerline. Printed out B&W on paper, it’d be pretty durned impressive.
Apr 282015
Thank Odin we’re finally coming to an end on our complete reliance upon Russian transport to the ISS…
In short: the Progress 59 spacecraft, launched yesterday to resupply the ISS, has tumbled out of control and ground control has had trouble contacting it. Wheeeee!!!!
Apr 272015
Just added five more issues to Amazon for $2.99 each. These are Kindle-fied versions of the issues otherwise available as PDFs here.
There aren’t a whole lot of reviews… seven in total, I think. Six on one issue… and three are 5 out of 5, while three are 1 out of 5. It seems that those who went to the effort of reviewing either loved them or hated them. The negative reviews are at least honest – although I can’t makes heads or tails out of one of them. One of the complaints is that the drawings are too small, but I’m thinking that that might be an issue with the reader, dunno.
Apr 272015
Scheduled for 6:14 PM Eastern time. Not sure if they’re going to try to recover this one. And on May 5 there is a pad abort test of the Dragon V2 capsule.
Apr 232015
And the Hubble is an amazing piece of engineering. Imagery of the Gum Nebula and star cluster Westerlund 2 was used to make this flythrough video.
Neato.
Apr 212015
Along with the knowledge that you’re helping support the cause of preserving and spreading aerospace history, if you become an Aerospace Projects Review patron you get the first crack at stuff that might be of interest. For example… a little while back I sold off some one-off test prints, and more recently 85 or so old issues of Analog/Astounding science fiction magazines dating from the 1940’s into the 1970’s.
APR Patreon patrons get not only the first crack at these things (more such sales are coming, including a whole bunch of aerospace books), but also get them at a discount. The $10-level patrons have the opportunity at first dibs, followed by $4 and up patrons.
If interested, check out the APR Patreon HERE.
More stuff will be coming soon…
Apr 212015
Neato:
NASA 3-D Prints First Full-Scale Copper Rocket Engine Part
It’s come equipped with internal cooling channels; this sort of thing is kind of the dream of rocket designers. A thin-walled highly thermally conductive combustion chamber with built in regen cooling? Sign me up! But don’t start planning on your rocket powered cars just yet; neat as it is, there are still some problems. First: cost.
A selective laser melting machine in Marshall’s Materials and Processing Laboratory fused 8,255 layers of copper powder to make the chamber in 10 days and 18 hours.
A terribly expensive machine ran (presumably non-stop) for a week and a half to make one part. The direct cost of the part wasn’t given but I’d guesstimate somewhere between “A Lot” and “A Whole Lot.”
Second: quality. If you look closely, you’ll find not only the rough surface standard with 3D printed parts, but also some spots that look like something went a little off, like the part slumped locally:
With all the nitpicks, though, the importance of the piece isn;t the piece itself, but what it represents. A combustion chamber like this would be essentially *impossible* just a few years ago. In a few years more, the quality of this sort of chamber will be much improved, while cost will go down.
Apr 182015
NASA Says Nobody’s Getting to Mars Without Its Help
… NASA administrator Charles Bolden went so far as to say that “No commercial company without the support of NASA and government is going to get to Mars.”
This can be taken two ways:
1) “NASA is just plain essential and nobody else has the smarts to do it.”
2) “Just you try, and we’ll drop on you like a ton of Federal bricks.”
Let’s *hope* that the true meaning is the arrogance inherent in #1. #2 would indicate serious trouble.
Apr 182015
Earlier this week, the United Launch Alliance announced the development of the semi-reusable “Vulcan” launcher meant to replace the likes of the Delta IV. 
Regardless of the merits or problems with this new design, there’s one issue that may cause prompt legal trouble:
Paul Allen Launches ‘Vulcan Aerospace’ to Boost Private Space Travel
Vulcan Aerospace will operate the “Stratolaunch” booster system now being built in California. 
Vulcan Aerospace, it turns out, is part of Vulcan, Inc., which was formed in 1986 and has a trademark on the “Vulcan” name. 
And Vulcan, Inc, seems like it wants to enforce that.
Ooops.
You’d think ULA would have checked on that. 
The article says that ULA looked into the name and found no legal issues… but that seems to perhaps be not entirely correct.