Two pieces of (presumably McDonnell Aircraft) artwork depicting the Mercury capsule:
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SpaceX has been trying to launch Starship serial number 9 for a few days now, with the efforts being held up by FAA regulatory approval. This is of course bad… the only thing worse for a world-changing advance in technology than getting the engineering wrong is to have either incompetent or malignant government bureaucrats involved.
Still… while SN9 is awaiting launch, SN10 has been moved to the pad. Behold:
Someday – probably not during this Presidential Administration, but perhaps during the administration of President Cruz, with NASA overseen by VP Shapiro – we might see whole rows of these things lined up ready to go, some sitting on Superheavies to lob large payloads into orbit, some sitting by themselves for long range suborbital flights or even, just barely, SSTO quick reaction flights. Some will be in NASA colors, some in USSF markings; there will be FedEx and UPS vehicles for intercontinental package transport and for transport to LEO, GEO and the Lunar bases. Maybe even one in Space Force One colors to take the President to visit American bases, cities and industrial exploitation facilities on the Moon and Lagrange points.
Looks good. But then comes the authors bio: “Martin’s interest in the Paranormal, Spirituality, and much more goes back to his childhood. He has had many paranormal experiences and has been a student of Eastern Philosophies and Meditation for 35 years. Seeking Enlightenment; he knows that we are already all Enlightened. We just have to realize this deeply. His books are expressions of his creativity to help others understand what he has internalized through study, experience, and membership in different societies.” Ummmm……
SpaceX is politically troublesome for certain groups. You’ve got your SLS fans, terrified that Starship/Superheavy will make the SLS and all its pork go away. You’ve got people terrified of the idea of capitalism, American exceptionalism, western civilization spreading out to the planets. You’ve got your crackpots who dislike western science and engineering rigor, thinking that such things are tools of the cishet white patriarchy or some such foolishness. Take your pick of villains, they’re opposed to SpaceX. As evidence, behold:
Who are SpaceX being accused of discriminating against? Non-US citizens. A US company that makes rockets and launches Defense Department payloads would rather employ Americans? How is this even remotely controversial?
“The charge alleges that on or about March 10, 2020, during the Charging Party’s interview for the position of Technology Strategy Associate, SpaceX made inquiries about his citizenship status and ultimately failed to hire him for the position because he is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident,” DOJ attorney Lisa Sandoval wrote in a court document filed Thursday.
Ina rational world, this would be laughable. How is it even possible that non-citizens can demand employment at *any* US company, much less one vital to the continued existence of the United States as a going concern?
I just came across this. So far I’ve failed to get it to admit to actually having *anything; no search term or combination of search terms results in any hits. But perhaps it is new; perhaps it’s a work in progress… or perhaps all the good stuff is behind some AF firewall. Dunno. But I thought y’all might find it of interest… and if anyone has any success with it, let me know how and with what.
Just a thought. If someone were to take a model of the CVN-65 USS Enterprise nuclear powered aircraft carrier and modify it with the Douglas “Ithacus Jr.” rocket transport as in the concept art below, what should go along with it? The art depicts the Enterprise modified with a bow extension, two movable “VABs,” and two of the rocket transports (an aft extension is implied but not visible). The flight deck is shown as deserted, which is reasonable under the circumstances… with those VABs, most of the flight deck would be unavailable for takeoffs and landings. Only the angled deck would seem to provide some functionality there.
The concept dates from 1964. If a model was made, it would probably tend to represent a time frame from the mid 1970’s onwards. What should be on the deck in that case, to help dress it up (it seems like it’d be kinda bland without some other things populating the deck)? A few things seem reasonable:
A ca. 1964 Boeing rendering of an HL-10-derived spaceplane in orbit. Numerous companies – Boeing, McDonnell, Lockheed, Northrop, etc. – contemplated the development of a logistics spaceplane based on the HL-10. The spaceplane itself would, rather like the X-20 Dyna Soar, have been minimally functional in space; most of the propulsion and power would have come from the attached adapter module. The conical adapter would have also carried the bulk of the vehicles payload to be delivered to orbit, and would be used to provide a de-orbit burn for the spaceplane. The adapter would therefore burn up on re-entry, leaving the lifting body to glide to a runway landing. The spaceplane itself would be crammed full of astronauts and the life support they’d need; there would generally be little capacity for anything else, certainly not payload going back downhill. This was fine, though, as there were few enough payloads other than humans that made sense to send *back* down the gravity well.
Huh. This got by me… Virgin doesn’t seem to be as media-savvy as SpaceX.
It’s a nice-looking launch. But what it looked like to me was less the launch of a space vehicle, but the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile: with the 747 reaching the end of its passenger carrying life, perhaps the USAF should buy a few thousand of them and modify them into missile carriers for a new generation of air-mobile, air-launched long range nuclear strike system. I’m sure the Harris administration will get right on that.
This would have been a *fantastic* test… in about 1984. Splice it into “Wonder Woman 1984,” and it would have fit right in. But nearly 40 years later, it just looks like an antique. It’s like firing up an F-104 Starfighter: impressive in its way, but no longer top of the line.
A piece of concept art depicting the AMROC Industrial Launch Vehicle 1, circa 1987. AMROC specialized in hybrid launch vehicles, and the privately funded and developed ILV was no different. What the vehicle looks like is a liquid propellant core vehicle with a bunch of solid rocket strap-on boosters… but what it actually is is a core made up of liquid oxygen tanks, surrounded by clusters of solid fuel motors. The motors were fed LOX from the core, firings together to create a sort of plug nozzle using the aft end of the propellant tank to react against (though it appears the bulk of the expansion took place within individual nozzles). When the first stage motors burned out, the whole thing fell off as a single stage. The vehicle had four stages; stages 2,3 and 4 were made of different solid motors around a common liquid tank core. The whole stack was 82 feet long. It was supposed to have been able to deliver 1800 kilograms to a 200 km orbit from KSC, or 1350 kg to 200 km polar orbit from Vandenberg; a little over 1400 kg to a 1000 km KSC orbit or about 1050 kg to a 1000 km polar orbit. First launch attempt was to be in the latter half of 1988… that didn’t happen.
