Patreon: September 2014 rewards

 aircraft, drawings, history, new products, news, Patreon, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 202014
 

After a bit of a delay, the September rewards have been released. These include a large-format inboard profile of the North American Aviation F-108 Rapier Mach 3+ interceptor:

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And “Notes on Space Technology,” a compilation of notes by the Flight Research Division of the NACA Langley Research Center based on a space technology course given in the early part of 1958. A hefty 670+pages in length, this covered just about every aspect of space travel as understood in 1958. While I haven’t read the whole thing, it appears to be not only of historical interest, but also useful to get a pretty good general grasp of space travel science, principles and technologies.

2014-09 ad1

Also included for the higher level patrons are three CAD diagrams:

Boeing Bird of Prey stealth, manufacturing and materials testing prototype aircraft from the 1990’s

Zenith Star experimental space based laser anti-missile system, 1988

Hypersonic Test Vehicle 2, a maneuverable hypersonic glider for missile-launched warheads

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The September rewards are about a week and a half late in being released. Since I hope to get the October rewards out a little earlier than normal, that means that the September releases will probably be available for a short time.

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.

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 Posted by at 9:41 pm

Almost, but not quite, the final Dyna Soar/Titan III

 APR, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  11 Responses »
Sep 152014
 

Artwork showing the major Dyna Soar/Titan III contractors. The Titan IIIc show here includes the large pitch stabilization fins (and small yaw fins) attached to the solid rocket boosters. Not depicted are the thrust vector control fluid tanks. At the time, the fins were thought needed to counteract the pitch moment that would be produced by the wings of the spaceplane way up front. In the end, it was concluded that thrust vector control would be more than adequate for the task; and while the Titan IIIC never launched a Dyan Soar, it retained the TVC capabilities that were produced to deal with the Dyna Soar.

DynaSoarProgramEarly1960s

Much, much more on the Dyna Soar, including the final few Titan III variants, can be found in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N4.

 Posted by at 9:54 am

Instant Aerospace Archive

 aircraft, awesomeness, blather, books, drawings, history, Hmm..., news, rockets, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 092014
 

Well, here’s a new one. I’ve been put in touch with a guy who has an entire aerospace archive he’s selling off. He wants $4000 for the complete set of stuff, a catalog of which is included here as a PDF (the items actually available in the collection are bounded in red). There’s some undeniably interesting stuff in there that I really want, but $4K is well beyond what I can pony up. But I think this stuff might be of interest to a whole lot of other folks. So what I’m thinking… crowdsource this purchase.

There are two groups of documents that I think would be of most interest, so I will provide high-rez scans of the docs for $150 for group A, $100 for group B, or $225 for both).

Group A: shown on page 3, “Space Shuttle Systems Handbook” and “Hubble Space Telescope Systems Description Handbook.” These are fairly enormous collections of diagrams; the original sales price of these two items back in 1993 was $558. I’ve seen a much more recent version of the Shuttle Handbook,” and it was fairly spectacular.

Group B: shown on page 6, a number of “Shuttle Systems Data Reports” which would seem to illustrate just about everything on the Shuttle program. These I have *not* seen personally, so I’m kinda guessing here. The total sales price in 1993 was $258.

As for all the other stuff: I think the best approach would be to auction them off – after scanning, of course – to those who have bought in for either Group A or B. Right now I’m not asking for cash. There are some details I need to confirm first (such as getting photos of the collection… not that I don’t trust the guy, but I don’t trust anybody). But I *do* want to gauge interest, to see if I will actually be able to afford the full $4K. So if you’d like to get in on this, please send an email to scottlowther@ix.netcom.com letting me know if you wants Group A, Group B or both. If I go ahead with this, I’ll need the funds up front.

WSN catalog

 Posted by at 10:35 pm
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