Back when CNN was a news network

 AARRRGH, history, Hmm..., rockets, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 202018
 

CNN’s live coverage of the Shuttle Challenger launch, January 28, 1986. Compare to modern coverage: here, the event plays out live… and without a constant running commentary of inane babble. A reporter at the time would have no useful information for several minutes; he would not be able to tell the viewers anything they would not be able to figure out themselves. Today… you would expect *someone* to be running his or her damnfool mouth nonstop, apparently living in terror of three seconds of “dead air.”

 

Similarly, later that night President Reagan gave a brief televised speech to the nation. The Great Communicator earned his accurate nickname, one that has not applied to any President since. Sure as hell doesn’t *now.”

Theoretically CNN is *still* a news network. But I have randomly flipped over to the channel from time to time, probably several times a day… and I cannot recall how long it has been that I’ve seen actual news coverage. These days, every time I go to CNN it’s nothing but talking heads complaining about Trump. These days I see the “news” part of CNN to be a vestigial organ from the past, much like the “music” in MTV.

 Posted by at 1:59 am

NERVA to Mars art

 art, history, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 192018
 

A piece of Aerojet artwork depicting the NERVA nuclear rocket engine heading to Mars. This is almost certainly artistic license as the vehicle depicted here is a single stumpy upper stage with an aerodynamic fairing. This is mot likely a RIFT (Reactor In Flight Test) configuration, a simple expendable upper stage test configuration meant to be launched atop a Saturn V to prove out the engine.

 Posted by at 10:06 pm

So, about those arguments against having a “Space Force…”

 Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 162018
 

Mystery Russian satellite’s behaviour raises alarm in US

The satellite is doing some wacky maneuvers that make some experts think that it is a weapon, or a weapon testbed. Most likely explanation is that it is an satellite inspector/destroyer. This accusation of course results in spluttering outrage from the Russian government… the same government crowing about building a nuclear powered cruise missile and a long range nuclear powered autonomous submarine with a multi-megaton warhead designed to take out American coastal population centers.

OK, politicians: if you want the coveted Unwanted Blog Endorsement, I don’t care what your policies are on transgendered bathrooms or gay wedding cakes. You either support the creation of a Space Force equipped with Orion-powered deep-space bombardment forces or you can go pound sand, ya commies.

 Posted by at 11:07 am

Mercury on a Jupiter

 art, history, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 142018
 

Found on ebay a while back, a pre-NASA Army Ballistic Missile Agency illustration dated 25 May 1959 depicting the Mercury space capsule, including smaller views of it atop both a Redstone and a Jupiter. In both cases this would be a purely sub-orbital lob. It’s unclear just what’s going on with the nose of the Jupiter version; it does not have the abort tower the Redstone version has. This may be a purely aerodynamic fairing, with abort motors located underneath the capsule in the sizable adapter section.

 Posted by at 9:49 pm

“Space vehicle for Mars probe”

 art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 092018
 

A 1959 NASA depiction of the Ernst Stuhlinger “Umbrella” ship. This design was nuclear-electric, the electricity powering a bank of ion engines providing a trickle of high ISP thrust. The large circular “umbrella” was the radiator for the nuclear reactor, located at the far end of the “handle.” This design is a little different from the usual depiction with the crew compartment divided into two semi-toroidal segments. Normally this design is shown with a single torus with a maximum diameter much smaller than that of the radiator; here the crew compartments are shown to be relatively gigantic. I assume that this is artistic license as it also depicted the crew compartments as having *vast* circular windows in the floor. The crew compartments would spin (apparently independent of the rest of the ship) to generate some amount of artificial gravity to keep the crew healthy.

 Posted by at 10:26 pm

McDonnell-Douglas early Shuttle concept

 aircraft, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 072018
 

Scanned from a 35mm slide at the NASA HQ some years ago. The basic shape here (FDL-7/McDonnell Model 176) appeared on a great many McD designs for the latter half of the sixties from small one-man experimental designs on up to full Shuttle-sized craft like this one. It had both sharply swept fixed wings on the bottom and stowable high aspect ratio wings for landing up top.

 Posted by at 8:21 pm

PDF Review: Feasibility of Nukes vs Solar…

 history, Hmm..., nukes, Patreon, projects, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 042018
 

…for extracting water from rocks on the moon. This dates from 1963-65 and was part of a North American Aviation study relate to post-Apollo lunar exploration… which at the time was fully expected. The LESA (Lunar exploration Systems for Apollo) program would land habitats on the moon for extended exploration; the later phases of the LESA program were expected to occur in the late 1970.s The conclusion was that solar was preferred for the earliest phases, transitioning to nuclear. Basically, either system would cook rocks till the water came out as a thin vapor, which would be collected.

In the more than fifty years since this came out, the technologies involved haven’t changed a whole lot, especially solar: it remains a mirror and sunlight. Nukes should – hopefully – have improved. So it might still be a bit of a tossup on the moon; of course, any long-term lunar exploration is going to need nukes anyway for the simple reason that two weeks of night is a *real* long time if your base is solar powered. Going further out – asteroids, outer planet moons, comets and such – the math increasingly works in nuclears favor. But then, what’s needed is power, and mirrors in microgravity can be made extremely large.

It’s an interesting report. If not for the technology and techniques described, then for the basic worldview that suggested to engineers more than half a century ago that they’d soon have to crack water out of lunar rocks.

A Study of the Feasibility of Using Nuclear Versus Solar Power in Water Extraction from Rocks.

Direct PDF download link.

Help support the APR Patreon.

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 Posted by at 3:17 pm

STAR Clipper

 APR, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Launch Vehicle Projects  No Responses »
Aug 032018
 

A piece of color art, scanned from a 35mm slide at NASA HQ some years back. The Lockheed STAR Clipper was an early concept for a reusable 1.5 STO launch vehicle, a predecessor to the Space Shuttle. The STAR Clipper was described and illustrated in unnecessarily *vast* degree in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N2 and in US Launch Vehicle Projects #2.

The STAR Clipper was an interesting design which was popular and well known for a while, receiving lot of kinda-press… it, or shuttles very much like it in appearance, appeared in a lot of publicity art produced by Lockheed, NASA, the USAF and even other companies. For a while it was the Shuttle Stereotype.

 Posted by at 1:45 am

Embarrassment of riches

 art, awesomeness, models, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 012018
 

For nearly fifty years, “2001” nerds like me waited for a decent, kinda-affordable model of the “Discovery” spacecraft. And last year Moebius  produced just that, a 1/144 scale injection molded kit that anyone with somewhere between $150 and $200 could get.

And now Kaiyodo has shown their 63-inch-long 1/96 scale Discovery, which will apparently retail in the area of $400.

Also coming is a 1/8 scale Space Pod complete with interior detail.

 

 Posted by at 8:18 pm

Ultra-Large Single Solid Booster

 art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jul 312018
 

Today, the notion of building a space launch system that uses solid rocket boosters is kinda… silly. Liquids have much higher performance and, as SpaceX has conclusively demonstrated, liquids are quite recoverable and reusable, far easier than solids. But fifty, sixty years ago, solids made a *lot* of sense. They worked, they were reliable, they did not require a whole lot of delicate , constant babying. And for military purposes, they were (and remain) fantastically useful; load them up, stick them in a tube, forget about them for a few years, fire them at a moments notice.

This piece of Aerojet artwork dates from 1961 at the latest and depicts a large solid rocket booster, presumably for space launch. The diameter was 288 inches… larger than the largest actually-tested solid rocket motor at 260″, smaller than the 396″ diameter of the Saturn V (also the diameter of the largest solid rocket motor design I can recall seeing). Note that it uses four nozzles. This is not uncommon on military solids such as the first and second stages of the Minuteman and some sea launched ballistic missiles; it’s costlier and weighs more than a single nozzle, but it give you the same performance at a shorter length. And when your missile is stuffed into a silo or, worse, a submarine, compactness is important. but those missiles all also constrain the maximum dimensions of the nozzle assemblies to be no greater than the motors they are attached to… again, so the missile can fit in a tube. THIS design went another way, with nozzles well outboard. This precludes silo launch. The advantage for a non-silo launched space booster to split up the nozzles like this is unclear. Some small reduction in total length, and some roll control authority.

Vaguely related: US Bomber Projects #17 has an article and diagrams of a somewhat smaller 260″ diameter solid rocket boosted ICBM from Thiokol.

 Posted by at 6:32 pm
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