SL-1: 260-inch solid rocket motor test firing

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, history, Hmm..., Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, photography, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jul 042021
 

Back when NASA dreamed big (the early 1960’s), there were many ideas for how to make really, REALLY big space launch systems. Solid rocket motors had a place at the time serving as either the first stage, or strap-on boosters for the first stage, for Saturn-class boosters. Most solid rocket production facilities are far from Cape Canaveral, so getting rockets from the manufacturer to the launch site could be a problem. Due to rail line restrictions, a case diameter of 156 inches was the limit: anything bigger wouldn’t fit through existing tunnels. But Aerojet and other companies had ideas for even bigger solids… I’ve seen drawings for boosters up to 396 inches in diameter, though 260 inches seems to be the largest given serious engineering.

In order to conveniently manufacture and transport these giants, Aerojet set up a manufacturing plant and static test site in Florida. Aerojet built several half-length versions of the 260-inch-diameter boosters, dug a hole in the ground, upended the rockets and fired them towards the center of the Earth, with the results being a small earthquake, a gigantic brown plume of solid rocket exhaust shooting into the sky and no production contract. The first test firing was in September, 1966, by which time NASA’s horizons had contracted substantially.

Solid rockets as an economical way to get to space, especially as a way to launch humans, is a technology whose day has passed. As military technology they remain as valid as ever; unlike liquid rockets, you can stuff a solid rocket into a silo and somewhat ignore it for years and then launch it on a moments notice. Having ICBM-sized boosters stocked up and stored away ready to launch a fleet of replacement GPS, communication and spy satellites when the Chinese swat our current fleet from the sky makes a lot of sense… but using solids to launch missions to the Moon or Mars is now a rather silly notion.

 

 

The full rez scan of the photo (and 4 others) has been made available at 300 DPI to all $4/month patrons/subscribers in the 2021-07 APR Extras folder at Dropbox. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 Posted by at 1:37 pm

Incoming from the depths of space…

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 212021
 

Now this is interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_UN271

2014 UN271 is a trans-Neptunian object on a cometary-like orbit from the Oort cloud. It is currently approaching the Sun at a distance of 20.2 AU (3.02 billion km) and will reach its perihelion of 10.9 AU (just outside of Saturn‘s orbit) in January 2031. Announced in June 2021, it was discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein in archival images from the Dark Energy Survey.[1] When first imaged in October 2014, the object was 29 AU (4.3 billion km) from the Sun and almost as far as Neptune‘s orbit.

2014 UN271‘s absolute magnitude of 7.8[2] suggests the body could be in the range of a 100 km in diameter. However, if there is undetected cometary activity[6] from supervolatiles such as CO and CO2, it could be significantly smaller. Cometary activity has previously been observed as far as 25.8 AU (3.86 billion km) from the Sun on a few comets, for example C/2010 U3 (Boattini).[7]

2014 UN271 took around 1.5 million years to complete half an orbit from its furthest distance of 40,000 AU (0.6 ly) in the Oort cloud.[4] It will come to perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) around 20 January 2031 at a distance of 10.95 AU[5] which is just outside of Saturn’s orbit. The outbound orbital period will be approximately 3.5 million years with an aphelion distance of about 55,000 AU (0.9 ly).[4] The object is only very loosely bound to the Sun.

Basically a *gigantic* comet will come within the orbit of Saturn in nine and a half years. Time enough for SpaceX to build and launch a flyby probe?

Doubtful that this will be something visible even with sizable “personal” telescopes, but it’d certainly be interesting to see such a thing up close. It’s the size of a “dwarf planet” and has spent the bulk of its existence far from any star.

 Posted by at 8:41 am

“Mastering the Transatmosphere”

 aircraft, art, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 192021
 

The June 1986 issue of “Air Force Magazine” had a cover article about the next big thing for the Air Force… aerospaceplanes capable of attaining orbit. Those who have been paying attention since 1986 might have noticed a dearth of aerospaceplanes, but at least the article has some spiffy cover art, along with interior art of what it claims is a 1965 McDonnell Douglas aerospaceplane. Two problems, though… McDonnell Douglass didn’t exist until 1967, and the art sure looks more like an SST to me. Shrug.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded a 300DPI scan of the article (and two ads… one depicting what appears to be a neutral particle beam space weapon, the other for a series of space-based nuclear powerplants) to the 2021-06 APR Extras folder on Dropbox, available to all APR patrons and subscribers.

 Posted by at 2:49 am

Cosmic horror: You know, for kids

 art, awesomeness, science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 152021
 

The season three finale of “Final Space” just aired. This show seems to be slipping under the radar, but I’ve become quite impressed with it. In short, it’s an animated sci-fi “comedy” show starring one “Gary Goodspeed,” a somewhat standard goofy loser type who gets into legal trouble while trying to impress a woman, takign control of a military spaceship and causing a great deal of damage to a spaceport because he has no idea what he’s doing. The first season started off pretty uneven; the attempts to be funny sometimes worked, sometimes seemed like they were trying too hard. But as the series has progressed, the humor, while still there, has settled down and the focus of the show has shifted to really quite effective Lovecraftian cosmic horror.

As the show proceeds, the “drama” transitions from a somewhat stock Space Opera bad guy in the form of the “Lord Commander,” to trans-dimensional demigods called Titans that can destroy worlds at a whim, and finally to an entity that terrifies the Titans. Characters grow and characters die, and it’s emotionally affecting when they do so. The good guys fail; whole worlds die; reality itself is warped and broken. Good characters turn villainous because they’re tragically flawed, traumatized and influenced by powers beyond their reckoning. There are some neat ideas; the sci-fi is good and the animation is at times spectacular. More than once my eyebrows popped up and I muttered “damn,” watching something vast that I kinda wish I’d thought of. The show does not try to be “Futurama,” fortunately, but is its own thing. Some people have a problem with the fact that this show tries to be funny and silly… but to me the dissonance of silliness mixed with some really horrific things *works.*

The first two seasons are on HBO max, DirecTV, Adukt swim and TBS; the third is on Hulu. The first two seasons are also on Blu-Ray.

Here’s the final scene from the season 3 finale. It is a bit spoilery, of course… but try to imagine *any* other western animated series ending a season with a scene like this:

The use of music, both the score written for the series and songs from elsewhere that they’ve used, is really very well done. It’s too spoilery to give the details but one scene is heartbreaking and powerful in no small part to the use of “Enter One:”

 

 

 Posted by at 3:43 am

SLS partially assembled

 blather, Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 122021
 

Photo at the link:

SLS: First view of Nasa’s assembled ‘megarocket’

You can tell without even touching the link that this is the BBc because they insist on spelling “NASA” as “Nasa,” event though everyone else on the planet uses “NASA.” I imagine that the BbC has rules in place that they are supposed to use the preferred personal pronouns of everyone they report on, but for some reason they insist upon insulting NASA.

Bah.

And, oh, yeah, giant obsolete rocket.

 Posted by at 6:10 pm

This seems a bit much

 awesomeness, Crazy, Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 122021
 

An 11-Minute Flight To Space Was Just Auctioned For $28 Million

If I had $28 million to spend on an 11 minute flight to space… I wouldn’t. I’d save that money to fly to *orbit.* Or buy myself a SPECTRE-class lair somewhere in the mountains with a CIWS and a nuclear powerplant. But it is an undeniable social good that there are people rich enough to splurge on frippery like this; by blowing *vast* sums on adventures that us po foke could never dream of, the price of such ventures will come down due to increased investment. Those jackholes who want to limit income to $500K a year, or tax wealth out of existence, are working to make sure that trips to space, whether short joy-hops like this or emigrant flights to Mars or Ceres, never happen.

 Posted by at 4:49 pm

Starship/Superheavy animation

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, Hmm..., projects, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Jun 092021
 

An interesting piece of “fan animation” depicting a test flight of a Starship/Superheavy stack with subsequent water landings. I have high hopes that a flight will look this good… but realistically, we can expect a few flights with a bit more energetic ends. And that’s ok: failure is an option here. Failure can be a fantastic teacher. Certainly a far better teach than “not trying.”

Also of note: there are some bits of the animation here that are distinctly not “Hollywood A-Game.” But compare what just a few guys managed to do with, say, the first couple seasons of Babylon 5.  Technology progresses.

 Posted by at 12:54 am

Rocket Cargo

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, Hmm..., news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 012021
 

Hmmmmm…..

Department of Defense Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Budget Estimates

Page 215

Title: Rocket Cargo

Description: The Department of the Air Force seeks to leverage the current multi-billion dollar commercial investment to developthe largest rockets ever, and with full reusability to develop and test the capability to leverage a commercial rocket to deliver AFcargo anywhere on the Earth in less than one hour, with a 100-ton capacity. The Air Force is not investing in the commercialrocket development, but rather investing in the Science & Technology needed to interface the capability with DoD logistics needs, and extend the commercial capability to DoD-unique missions. Provides a new, faster and cheaper solution to the existing TRANSCOM Strategic Airlift mission. Enables AFSOC to perform current Rapid-Response Missions at lower cost, and meet a one-hour response requirement. Rocket Cargo uses modeling, simulation, and analysis to conduct operational analysis, verify military utility, performance, and operational cost. S&T will include novel “loadmaster” designs to quickly load/unload a rocket,rapid launch capabilities from unusual sites, characterization of potential landing surfaces and approaches to rapidly improve those surfaces, adversary detectability, new novel trajectories, and an S&T investigation of the potential ability to air drop a payload after reentry. This is not a rocket engine or launch vehicle development program. It is an S&T effort to leverage the commercial development into a novel new DoD capability.FY 2021 Plans:Utilize modeling, simulation, and analysis to conduct operational analysis of Rocket Cargo concepts, trajectories, and design considerations and verify military utility, performance, and operational cost. Gather operational data from on-going commercial large-scale, instrumented, reusable launch events.FY 2022 Plans:Mature effort in leveraging commercial space launch to create military capability in Rocket-based Cargo delivery. Complete S&T testing leveraging the current commercial prototype testing. Perform site measurements needed to integrate the capability onto DoD missions including plume-surface physics and toxicity, loads, detectability, and acoustics. Also, complete initial AFRL wind tunnel testing to assess novel trajectories needed for air-drop capability, and high-speed separation physics. Under contract and CRADA, partner with Commercial to test and demonstrate an initial one-way transport capability to an austere site. Seek to perform an early end-to-end test to fully identify the technical challenges. In addition, complete Industry outreach for load master concepts including novel container designs, load/unload concepts, and testing the compatibility of AF cargo with rocket launch and space environments. Issue solicitation and award contracts.FY 2021 to FY 2022 Increase/Decrease Statement:FY 2022 increased compared to FY 2021 by $38.169 million. Funding increased due to planned program requirements and the development and maturation activities described above.

HMMMMM….

Sounds vaguely familiar. I wonder where I’ve seen ideas kinda like that before.

 Posted by at 8:30 pm
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