Star Raker Art

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, history, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  57 Responses »
Aug 202015
 

In the late 1970’s Rockwell international studied the “Star-Raker,” a large airbreathing horizontal takeoff and landing SSTO designed to support the Solar Power Satellite program. This 2,268,000 kg gross weight vehicle would have a payload of 89,200 kg; the claim was that this vehicle could fly roughly daily and very cheaply. Of course, at about the same time Rockwell was claiming that the Space Shuttle would have a two-week turnaround and would be the cheapest ticket to space…

While Star-Raker was far from the biggest or most powerful launcher studied for SPS, it was certainly one of the more interesting concepts. While a number of SPS reports have described the Star-Raker, to my knowledge a dedicated Star-Raker design report has not come to light. If anybody knows of such a thing, by all means let me know.

Star-Raker garnered a bit of press back in the day, likely due in part to the fact that Rockwell released a number of pieces of concept art, like the one below showing the vehicle in orbit.

2015-08-200353

I have uploaded the full-rez version of this to the APR Patreon “Extras” folder for 2015-08 on Dropbox. It is available for all $4 and up APR Patrons.

 Posted by at 6:14 pm

PEPCON & Co.

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, blather, Crazy, history, nukes, rockets, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  6 Responses »
Aug 152015
 

With the recent explosion in China, it’s worth reflecting on vaguely similar explosions in the US.

Most famous is perhaps the PEPCON explosion in Henderson, Nevada, in 1988. This was a fire at an ammonium perchlorate production facility;  the AP – a solid salt that is used as an oxidizer in solid rocket motors from ICBMs to the Shuttle boosters – was stored rather densely packed in barrels made from plastic and aluminum – which are used as rocket *fuel.* Added excitement came from the fact that this rocket propellant manufacturing plant was built directly on top of a 16-inch high-pressure natural gas pipeline feeding into Las Vegas. The yield of the explosions has been estimated in the area of one kiloton. When PEPCON blew up, it took out the plants ability to produce ammonium perchlorate. This was bad, due to the strategic value of the stuff; fortunately, there were at the time two major manufacturers of AP at the time, the other being Kerr-McGee. But due to what can only be considered bad planning, the Kerr-McGee plant was only 1.5 miles from the PEPCON plant and also received some damage.

Another exciting blast was a fertilizer plant in West, Texas. While nowhere near as energetic as the PEPCON blast, this one had the benefit of happening in 2013, well into the era of cell phone video cameras. Also well into the era of people not having a whole hell of a lot of common sense.

Of course, these all pale compared to the Texas City explosion of 1947, where 2,100,000 kilos of ammonium nitrate fertilizer detonated on the cargo ship SS Grandcamp. One of the ships damaged in the blast was the SS High Flyer, which had an additional 872,000 kilos of ammonium nitrate; after 15 hours of onboard fires, this, too, detonated, tossing the ships propeller a mile inland. Some 580+ people were killed at Texas City.

 

Of course, not every explosion is unintentional. Back when the US had a spine and was developing and testing nukes, the military would from time to time set of monumental chemical explosions in order to do some calibration testing and the like. One such as the “Sailor Hat” test in 1965, where 500 tons of high explosives were detonated on the shore of Kaho’olawe Island, Hawaii, trashing several nearby ships.

 

 Posted by at 7:25 pm

Early Shuttle Launch Artwork: 2

 art, history, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 142015
 

A Rockwell illustration showing an almost-but-not-quite-final Space Shuttle design. The only obvious major difference between this design and actual Shuttle is the rounded dome on the nose of the ET. This *may* have been a cover over a de-orbit solid rocket motor, but if so it was a small one. Other changes include differences in the booster sep motors; this painting shows four nose BSMs in a straight vertical line and four tail BSMs in a straight vertical line. As built, the forward BSMs were in a 2X2 square array, while the at BSMs were arrayed around the nozzle. Some minor difference in thermal tile pattern on the forward fuselage of the Orbiter.

The full-rez version has been made available for $10-level patrons at the APR Patreon.

Old Shuttle Art - SRB Sep

 Posted by at 6:16 pm

PDF Review: European Space Launch projects

 art, history, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  14 Responses »
Aug 112015
 

Here’s a presentation describing a number of European space transport concepts, including the HOTOL, Sanger II and Hermes spaceplanes, Automatic Transfer System and a few others. As a presentation, it is loaded with illustration. I have clipped out some of the better Hermes illustrations and included them below.

 

European Space Transportation System Projects since 1998

hermes 1hermes 2 hermes 3 hermes 4

Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon.

patreon-200

 Posted by at 12:07 am

This should be good…

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, blather, Crazy, Gah., history, projects, rockets, science, science fiction, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  2 Responses »
Aug 102015
 

Checking out tonights TV listings, at 8 PM and 11PM (Mountain Time… go ahead and convert it yerself, ya coastie buggers) on the “American Heroes” channel (287 on DirecTV) is:

Hitler’s Death Ray: Nazi scientists work on  developing a solar mirror that could destroy any city on Earth while situated 5,100 miles in space.

I have the feeling that I’ll wish that I had the capability to record this. VHS doesn’t work anymore, don’t have DVR, so there ya go. I’ve got the urge to yell at something monumentally stupid, and this would seem to have a full hours potential for “Ancient Aliens”-level dumbth coupled with either lazy CGI or potentially surprisingly spiffy CGI.

UPDATE: Well, unshockingly, that was crap. Spent a total of maybe two minutes on the Nazi Space Mirror, providing exactly zero new information. *Claimed* that there were detailed plans, showed zero evidence of it. The rest of the “documentary” was a generic “Nazis had advanced technology and built rockets, blah, blah” schtick. Even threw in Die Glocke to round out the quota of requisite bullshit.

Cripes, the narrator couldn’t even get Eugen Sanger’s name right: repeatedly called him “Sanager.” Bah.

 Posted by at 3:48 pm

Shuttle-Derived Vehicle art

 art, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Aug 012015
 

I have added the full-rez version of this to the 2015-07 sub-folder of the APR Patreon “Extras” folder on Dropbox. What is depicted is a 1985 Martin Marietta design for an Unmanned Launch Vehicle, a Shuttle derived vehicle that replaced the Orbiter hanging off the side with an inline payload shroud up top and a small propulsion/avionics module that would have three SSME and two OMS engines, in much the same positions as the Orbiter engines. This would allow the booster to lift off from existing Shuttle facilities with minimal modifications. The P/A module would be a biconic lifting body allowing recovery and re-use. Not only would the P/A module go into orbit, but so would the external tank. Each flight of this vehicle would have the potential to orbit the shell of a fantastic space station. This vehicle was described in greater detail in US Launch Vehicle Projects #2. MM Inline Shuttle Derived Vehicle 1985 If you are interested in the high-rez version of this, it and many more are available to all $4 and up patrons at the APR Patreon.

 Posted by at 9:12 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries