The forward “Shuttle” of the Messiah is, at long last, done. Some 2D diagrams created from the model.
Mar 222015
Mar 212015
Eugen Sanger was an Austrian engineer from the early/mid 20th century. While largely forgotten by the vast majority of everybody today, he is remembered, at least in aerospace circles, as the originator of the Silbervogel (“Silverbird”) rocket-powered suborbital bomber. This work was performed during WWII for the German government, and included some substantial rocket testing; the odd thing – though wholly in character for the Nazi regime – was that this work was entirely separate from the development work on the V-2 rocket. Had the efforts been brought together, chances are that German rocketry would have been further advanced by the end of the war.
In 1934, Sanger published a paper on advancement in liquid propellant rocketry, work that would later feed into his Silverbird effort. “Recent Results in Rocket Flight Technique” not only reported upon work done in developing a gas-oil and liquid oxygen burning rocket engine, but also proposals for manned rocket powered aircraft. The paper was originally written in German and granted the catchy title “Neuer Ergebnisse der Raketenflugtechnik,” but it was translated into English by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in April of 1942. Why was it was translated just then? Depending on the speed of the translators, the work may have begun just after the American entry into WWII, which might indicate a bit more interest in German rocketry in certain portions of the US Government than has generally been understood.
The abstract & such for the report can be seen on the NASA Technical Report Server HERE. Or it can be directly downloaded as a 33 meg PDF HERE.
Note: my original plan for this writeup was to include verbiage along the lines of “Sorry that the two-bit black-and-white scan quality is so poor, but whatcha gonna do.” But in looking it up, I found that the original bleah-quality scan has been replaced with a higher quality full-color scan. This is a good thing!
Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon.
Mar 202015
I am nearing completion of the “Deep Impact” Messiah model. Basically I’ve gone through most of the parts and hollowed them out and chopped them up into “kit parts” for printing. Some yet to do… the photoetched brass bits – shown here in yellow – need some work. The nose landing gear leg is a simple placeholder just yet. And a few other details I’d like to add.
Not shown here are the “booster rockets” the vehicle was shown with.
While a lot of the design replaced practical aerospace functionality with “huh? wut?” it’ll still be an impressive display model when available in 1/200 scale from Fantastic Plastic.
Mar 162015
An apparently vintage 1/96 scale Saturn V display model on ebay, apparently built at the NASA-MSFC model shop back in the day. Just a smidge above my pay grade at a Buy It Now price of 20 large. I’ve seen thespiffy, to say the least.se in museums…
GEORGE C. MARSHALL 1/96 SCALE APOLLO SATURN V MODEL — RARE
Mar 162015
I’ve mentioned off and on that I did some work (well, a lot of work) as a technical advisor on the Australian independent alternate history movie “Man Conquers Space.” This project started, at least for me, not long after the turn of the century. Issues of what I assume were the usual sort kept pushing the movie back and back; eventually I fell out of touch with the filmmaker, David Sander. In the past year or three I’ve made a handful of attempts at contacting him, to no avail.
And now, the website seems to have been dumped:
http://manconquersspace.com
It now pulls up a “godaddy” page letting you know that that domain is for sale. Additionally the Wikipedia page for it has been deleted.
Feh.
Anybody have details? I’ve found a few recent discussions here and there with people lamenting the fact that the movie seems to have evaporated. Some are hopeful that the intentional dumping of the films webpages down the memory hole indicate that it might have been picked up by a major studio, and they want full control, but that sounds like wishful thinking to me.
Mar 122015
I have a batch of new large format cyanotype blueprints coming along (the files for the transparencies are at the print shop now). Weather permitting, I should start producing these in a week or so… but the question is: how many to print up? I’m not yet taking orders, but I am trying to gauge interest. So if you see something here you think you’ll want, please let me know via either comment or email. Remember that as well as the cost of the prints there will also be postage… $10 in the US, $18 elsewhere, regardless of how many prints are ordered.
2707-200 Supersonic Transport, 48 inches by 22: $50
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B-36D, 61 inches by 22: $60
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Shuttle diagrams, set A: 41 inches by 11 (two sheets): $50
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Shuttle diagrams, set B: 41 inches by 11 (five sheets): $125
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Trident SLBM: 49X11, $25
Mar 112015
There were a *lot* of people at today’s test, far more than I expected after the rather paltry number from the last test in 2011. I had three cameras… a point-n-click for zoomed-in video, the Nikon for telephoto stills and the cell phone for wide-angle video. Like a damn chucklehead I managed to screw up the cellphone video… when the time came to start recording, I hit the frackin’ *off* button. D’oh. So the wide-field video starts something like 10 seconds into the test rather than several seconds before. Gah.
Anyway, here’s the P-n-C video:
There seemed to be a second or two’s delay on ignition, or the countdown clock (dutifully recited by a group of nearby children) was a little fast.
Mar 072015
I went to watch “Wanderers” again on my good laptop and found it wasn’t there, so I downloaded another copy… and found that the Sagan narration has been removed. Personally I thought the narration was just perfect, but a narration-less version is good too. Fortunately I found a copy of the original I’d downloaded, so now I have both versions.
I have no idea why Sagan was removed. Anyway, here’s the new narrationless version. if you haven’t watched it… you really gotta. “Wanderers” is the greatest Hollywood space movie that Hollywood never bothered to make. Just short of four minutes, it’s more worth the price of a ticket than any movie I can think of with *maybe* the exception of “2001.”
And here’s the original that someone else uploaded to YouTube, with the narration intact:
Mar 062015
This is actually kinda brilliant… “Go!” by the band Public Service Broadcasting:
Holy crap… music that is actually “space-positive.” The sad thing is that they have to reach so far back to get audio this awesome.
Mar 042015
In looking through some aerospace artifacts that were auctioned off (or at least attempted to be auctioned off) back in 2004, one was a memo written by Werner von Braun while he was director of NASA-MSFC in March 1964. You’d expect there to be a bagrillion of these sort of things, mostly pretty bland stuff like scheduling appointments and the like. But this one… something seems to have happened that I’d like to know more about.
801: Dr. Wernher von Braun Autograph
Dr. Wernher von Braun Autograph on a 3/11/64 pencil memo on a red/white printed “Office of Director – MSFC” note paper addressed to Dr. von Braun that reads: “There was no letter from Dr. Welsh. He requested this information from Dr. Stuhlinger on Jan. 16th at a luncheon meeting in Washington. He asked for a written reply”. Dr. von Braun has written an extensive reply in pencil on both sides of the notepaper. He has marked this “URGENT”. The reply reads, in part: “Frank – Attached letter (not included) is a rather disastrous critique of Max Hunter’s proposal (likewise attached) (not included). I’ve known Max for many years. He is a super ? with boundless imagination and little constraint. That’s why he left Douglas and became a member of the Professional Staff of the Nat. Space Council. He hoped to “get Washington into high gear”. I hate to antagonize him and turn him into an enemy of Marshall. But Welsh apparently wants a reply. Please explore ALL political aspects of this (incl. advice from key Washington men familiar with Nat. Space Council affairs) and get the best top-level advice as to how to react to Welsh’s inquiry. (I wish we didn’t have to comment on Max’s letter at all!!). Unless you are urged to do so, don’t mail reply until I’m back from my vacation. This thing is political dynamite. So it might as well smolder a little longer. PS. The trouble is, our appraisal is properly quite right.”. He has signed this with his characteristic “B” and the date “3-11”. Fascinating.
I’d sure like to know what this “disastrous” proposal from Max Hunter was. My hand-wavy guess is that it’d be something to do with nuclear propulsion, perhaps an evolvement of his RITA concept for a nuclear SSTO.
