An advertisement from 1963 illustrating a quite-possibly artistic license nuclear powered space probe heading towards Jupiter. The probe was to use the SNAP-50/SPUR powerplant (300 to 1200 kilowatts of electricity) to power a circular bank of ion engines. The realistic nature of the design should be questioned due to the lack of any apparent communication system… no great big radio dish, in other words.
Patrons of the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon received last month:
Diagram: A foldout diagram of an Apollo-derived logistics spacecraft
Document: “The Piasecki Story,” an illustrated history of the company and its products
Document: “The N.S. Savannah,” a brochure about the sole nuclear powered merchant vessel
Document: “Lunar Spacecraft Design” A paper describing the evolution of the General Electric Apollo design, quite similar to the later Soyuz spacecraft
CAD diagram: 1985 design of the British HOTOL spaceplane
If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
We’re finally going back to the Moon, but this time we’re going to stay.
Uh-huh.
I’ve seen this sort of thing before. But maybe *this* time we’ll actually get that Moon base, with blackjack and hookers.
Circa 1960, courtesy Douglas Missile and Space Systems. Both the “flying saucer” and the lunar lander in the background are actually familiar designs, each having appeared from time to time in various media outlets. it’s unclear how *serious* either of these designs were, however. I do know that United Technologies, where I worked from 2000-2004, had an old model of a similar flying saucer on non-display in one of the shops. It was something like 3 to 4 feet in diameter and actually semi-functonal: it was mounted on a gimbal and fitted with a number of small plexiglas-fueled hybrid rocket motors. For displays the motors could be fired up and the saucer would, I believe, rotate and tilt and whatnot, responding to inputs from joysticks on the display stand.That always seemed a terrible idea: not due to the risk of fire or explosion, but because of the brain-melting screech those little rockets would put out.
I have no idea what happened to that display piece. Might’ve wandered home with someone. Might’ve moved on to another company. And chances are quite good that, like a whole lot of United Tech, it was simply trashed.
Satellites are getting *really* small, one of the things that makes me a little leery about the success of large boosters such as the BFR. There are now a surprising number of nanosats and cubesats in orbit, so this database might be of interest:
An ad for Thompson Products from 1958. The cargo rocket shown here is pure artistic license, with almost certainly no actual engineering behind it. It’s pure science fiction for the purpose of advertising razzmatazz. And yet… the similarity to the latest design of the SpaceX BFS is pretty remarkable.
“Thompson Products” may not be immediately familiar. But in October 1958 (about two months before this ad was published in Av Week, so… shrug) Thompson Products merged with the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, forming Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc. … TRW. So… huh, how about that.
Huh. I’m not sure which is more unusual-seeming: that the second-in-command at SpaceX said that they would indeed launch American space weapons… or that it seems odd that an American aerospace firm would even be questioned about such a thing.
During an appearance on Monday at the Air Force Association’s annual symposium, Shotwell was thrown a question she said she had never heard before: “Would SpaceX launch military weapons?”
“I’ve never been asked that question,” Shotwell said somewhat surprised. Her response: “If it’s for the defense of this country, yes, I think we would.”
This should be such an uncontroversial point of view that you wouldn’t even expect it to be raised. But we do indeed live in a time different from when Republic advertised their fighters, Boeing advertised their bombers and Martin advertised their nuclear weapons-delivering rockets.
Reminds me of one of the more disturbing moments from my university education. I was in a class on orbital dynamics (of of my favorite subjects back in the day) when we got to ballistic suborbital trajectories: ICBMs, in other words. Who wouldn’t want to study that? Well… turned out half a dozen or so of my classmates decided that they didn’t, and refused to study that section. This baffled both the teacher and myself; but where I saw their position as foolishness worthy of nothing but mockery, the teacher buckled and allowed them to do something else (details escape me). Even if the idea of lobbing nukes to the far side of the world fills you with existential dread, studying the subject is just math. And getting better at the math of lobbing nukes makes you better at… oh, I dunno, getting better at the math of lobbing reusable first stages to land them on floating landing pads.
Vaguely related: promo art from 1961, published in Aviation Week, with a number of corporations proudly proclaiming their involvement in aerospace weaponry.
… will be livestreamed at 9PM eastern time. Billionaire, certainly. Japanese, possibly. Anybody want to make guesses?
UPDATE: yup, the paying passenger is Japanese online entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, who is paying an unstated but clearly substantial sum. The plan is that in 2023 a BFR/BFS will launch around the moon carrying Maezawa and six to eight artists of his choosing in the hopes that they’ll come home and make an art.
If they said what the *total* crew and passenger complement will be, I didn’t catch it. But it should be substantially more than one billionaire and eight artists.
Musk estimates that the development cost of BFR will be no less than $2 billion, probably around $5 billion, no more than $10 billion. Compare to SLS/Orion, which has so far spent in excess of $11 billion on the SLS and will spend something like $6 billion for the Orion capsule.
It has been *years* since I have released any “Air & Space Drawings & Documents,” high rez scans of vintage aerospace items. At last, I’m adding new items. The complete catalog can be seen HERE.
New items. Each are available for $4.
Air Document 27: “Design Study for an Air Force Model F-82E Airplane Modified to a Ground Attack Airplane” A 24-page study from 1949 for a twin-bodied F-82 modified with Allison turboprop engines. The engines would be mounted in the mid-fuselage, about where the cockpits originally were; the cockpits would be moved forward to compensate. The document, taken from a vintage copy printed from microfilm, includes numerous diagrams and B&W art.
Air Document 28: “This Is The Life With Lockheed” A 36-page booklet produced by Lockheed, Georgia Division, showing the wonders of working there in 1959. Includes not only descriptions and photos of the local environment and amenities but also photos of Lockheed facilities, products and projects. An interesting view of a very different era.
Air Document 29: “SAM-D Air Defense Weapon System” A 1973 Redstone Arsenal information booklet on the Surface-to-Air Missile, Development, which became the “Patriot” anti-aircraft/ anti-missile missile. The booklet describes the various elements of a SAM-D deployment.
Air Document 30: “V-397 (Regulus II) Summary Report” A 42-page 1955 Chance-Vought report on the Regulus II supersonic cruise missile. Includes data and glorious diagrams on the tactical missile as well as the flight test vehicle with landing gear. Scanned from a vintage printout from microfilm.
Air Document 31: “Republic XF-103 data” Dating from the mid-50’s, this collection of data and diagrams of the Mach 3+ XF-103 interceptor comes not from Republic, but from Lockheed. A rare look into corporate “competition data gathering,” this 21-page data file shows the sort of information that Lockheed put together on the designs put forward by their competitors.
Several of these were released *four* *years* ago to patrons of the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon. Patrons receive items such as these at a low cost and years earlier than waiting for them to appear on the Drawing & documents catalog… and most of the Patreon items *won’t* appear here.
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I have two lots of Trek books. The first is a collection of old-school books, including “Spock must Die” (the first published Trek novel), “The World of Star Trek” and “The Making of Star Trek,” two good books on the making for the original series, from back when people didn’t really write many books about the making of TV shows; “Star Trek Logs One through Five” by Alan Dean Foster, which had the stories from the Animated Series turned into literature; and “Star Treks One through Twelve,” which included original series episodes written as long stories (from when that was just about the only way people could experience Trek unless they were lucky enough that the local UHF station broadcast scratchy re-runs). All are in decent enough shape. Twenty books for… let’s call it $60 (a mere $3 per book) plus postage to be determined at buyers request.
Also: a collection of “technical stuff.” Included are twelve Eaglemoss magazines, each covering one Star Trek spacecraft (“Krenim Temporal Weapon Ship,” “Nausicaan Fighter,” “Vulcan Surak class,” Andorian Battle cruiser,” “Romulan Drone,” “Xindi Aquatic cruiser,” “Goroth’s Klingon Transport Ship,” “Baxial,” “Xindi Reptilian Ship,” “Vahklas,” “Orion Scout Ship,” “Starfleet Academy Flight Training Craft”). Each magazine provides many illustrations of the ship, an in-universe description of the ship and its history, a description of how the ship was designed and, where relevant, the phyical model was made; how it was used in what episode of which Trek series. Also included in this lot is a set of “General Plans” for the “Joshua Class Starship.” This ship class was fan produced and is thus non-canonical (or is it?), but it well produced and a fine example of the sort of plans that used to be produced back in the day (and which I’d like to produce myself). The magazines seem to have an asking price of $12 on ebay, but I’m doing $6 each, with $10 for the Joshua class, for a total of $82… let’s call it $80 plus postage.
As always, if you want one or both of these lots, either comment below or end me an email. 
First come, first served… unless someone asks for both lots within the next day or so.
