Space Shuttle Enterprise visits Vandenberg

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, photography, rockets, spacecraft  5 Responses »
Oct 122014
 

A page with some good photos showing the Enterprise on an ET with SRBs stacked up at the Slick Six western launch site:

1985: Space Shutle at Vandenberg

Whether it would’ve made good sense to fly the Shuttle from California can be debated… but undeniable, I think, is the view that it would have been a damn fine show.

Had Challenger not gone FOOM in ’86, the SLC-6 site *might* have been used for Shuttle launches to high inclination orbits. This, presumably, would ahve opened the door for the Shuttle to be more useful. *Perhaps* it would ahve led to a better system. With launch and recovery processing done by the USAF rather than NASA, *maybe* Vandenberg would have been able to fly Shuttle for much cheaper, more reliably and more often than NASA in Florida. Maybe.

 Posted by at 11:01 am

Patreon: October 2014 rewards released

 aircraft, drawings, history, new products, news, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  2 Responses »
Oct 102014
 

The October rewards for the APR patrons have been released. They include:

PDF document: “A Recoverable Air Breathing Booster,” A Chrysler study from 1964 for a strap-on booster system for the Saturn Ib incorporating additional H-1 rocket engines and jet engines for recovery.

PDF Document: “XF-103 Descriptive Data,”a Lockheed collection of information on the then-current XF-103. This is from a Lockheed collection of information on competitors designs.

Large format diagram scan: the Boeing Advanced Theater Transport. A later version of the tilt-wing “Super Frog.”

And for the higher-end patrons, a CAD diagram of an early NACA-Langley design for what would become the X-15.

2014-10 ad

 

If you would like to access these items and support the cause of acquiring and sharing these pieces of aerospace history, please visit my Patreon page and consider contributing.

patreon-200

 Posted by at 12:32 am

Inflatable “room” for ISS

 blather, Hmm..., news, projects, spacecraft, youtube  18 Responses »
Oct 092014
 

Private Inflatable Room Launching to Space Station Next Year

The “Bigelow Expandable Activity Module” will go up next year on a SpaceX “Dragon” capsule and will, if successful, add some much needed habitation volume to the ISS. It is a fairly small module, however. Doesn’t seem to have windows.

This Bigelow PR video shows the BEAM, along with the BA 330 stand alone inflatable space station. Put a few of those together connected by a truss and tumble ’em end-over-end to generate “artificial gravity,” and maybe finally there will be a truly useful space station, good for studying something other than just how bad long term needless weightlessness is on the human body.

If you have a rotating “bar bell” of habs connected to a non-rotating core station, that would permit the study of what we *really* need to study: the long term impacts of variable G levels. We already know that zero G is bad enough that we’ll almost certainly never accomplish much using crews subjected to it non-stop over long periods. But how about crews who spend part of their day in zero G, and part at, say, 1/10 G?

Since the BEAM can be carried up with a Dragon, this leads promptly to the obvious speculation about launching a Dragon and a BEAM somewhere *other* than the ISS. Lunar flybys, asteroid rendezvous, etc. using the BEAM as a sizable mission module.

[youtube isQU84Kc0Y0]

 Posted by at 11:05 am

See Apollo 17 from the Statendam!

 AARRRGH, Gah., history, Hmm..., new products, Patreon, rockets, ships, spacecraft  5 Responses »
Oct 072014
 

In 1972 the Holland America cruise ship S.S. Statendam set sail for a spot off the coast of Florida where the passengers got to watch the launch of Apollo 17. Also held on board was the 4th Conference on Planetology and Space Mission Planning. This conference, as described at http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=6879 , was a complete disaster. It was a sad, sad tale of lost opportunities and odd choices. It has also largely faded from memory.

I have a photocopy of the brochure selling the cruise and conference, and have scanned it in as a PDF. The quality is not spectacular, but it’s nevertheless an interesting bit of aerospace history. I’ve posted the PDF for $5 APR Patreon patrons over HYAR.

 Posted by at 10:30 am

XCOR Lynx progress

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, news, photography, projects, rockets, spacecraft  17 Responses »
Oct 072014
 

While the going seems to be slow, it’s nice to see actual physical progress on a new spacecraft (suborbital, sure, but still…). Over HERE XCOR has released a few high-rez photos of their Lynx spaceplane being assembled. The cockpit is now attached to the fuselage. The aft of the pressurized cockpit is an odd looking structure, a very complex carbon fiber single-piece bulkhead. Usually such things are simple metal pressure vessels made from cylinders and spheroids, but this one features a more-or-less flat aft bulkhead (presumably for space-saving purposes) with a whole lot of ribs for strength. Must’ve been fun to mold…

I keep hearing ominous things about the hybrid rocket propulsion system on the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two. It’s getting to where I won’t be surprised if Lynx beats ’em into space with a paying customer. And if that does happen, I wonder at the possibility of VG switching out the hybrid for an XCOR liquid system…

 Posted by at 8:08 am

Latest arrivals

 awesomeness, drawings, drawings&documents, history, news, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 062014
 

A box of documents showed up today. They are loans, to be scanned and returned, but I figured some of y’all might find a few of interest. If you are interested in making sure that these sort of things are preserved, I recommend wandering by the APR Patreon and signing up. And just as importantly… tell anyone else you know who might be interested. The more people signed up, the more I’ll be able to do (and the more of these documents will be made available to you).

documents

 Posted by at 3:38 pm

Endeavour: 2

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, photography, rockets, spacecraft  7 Responses »
Oct 062014
 

More photos from Dennis R. Jenkins. “The doors will be closed again on the 21st. When we go vertical (in 2018), we will open one door so people can see in from our “gantry””

DRJ_4995 DRJ_4919 DRJ_4860 DRJ_4864 DRJ_4664

I’ve seen the Shuttle up close (Discovery, specifically), when it was stacked up in the VAB getting ready for a launch. Something that’s rarely apparent is just how *used* and rough the orbiters look.

 Posted by at 9:11 am

Private manned mission to the Moon: 2018

 Hmm..., news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Oct 062014
 

I’ll believe it when I see it…

From 2018, Space Adventures flights will take members of the public on the first commercial journeys to the moon

 

Space Adventures is the company that has sent a handful of paying customers up to the ISS over the years. Their goal is to send two customers to the ISS for ten days, and then send them on to the moon for an Apollo 8-style flyby (no landing). SA has been pushing this concept for a number of years. Not really sure why they got this bit of press recently but… shrug. If they can pull it off, more power to ’em.

14476550730_75b9bc77f6_b

There’s no indication of price for this on the Space Adventures website. However, when SA first started sending people to the ISS, the ticket prices was, IIRC, $20 million. Today it’s $50 million. And when SA first announced their lunar mission idea some years ago, I recall the price being $100 million for each of the two passengers. So I would assume there’s been roughly similar price inflation. Gotta wonder what SpaceX could do it for…

 Posted by at 7:52 am

Endeavour: 1

 aircraft, history, news, photography, rockets, spacecraft  1 Response »
Oct 052014
 

Noted aerospace author Dennis R. Jenkins has shared some photos of the Space Shuttle Endeavour being  modified at the California Science Center. When originally put on display, the cargo bay doors were closed, but here you can see the doors being opened (a non-trivial task). A replica airlock and a Spacelab will be added.

DRJ_4650 DRJ_4623 DRJ_4612 DRJ_4595 DRJ_4592 DRJ_4585 DRJ_4538

 Posted by at 8:36 am
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