Hey! Anybody hereabouts interested in unbuilt variants of the North American B-70 bomber? I know a guy who can hook you up:
https://media.defense.gov/2020/Nov/23/2002540204/-1/-1/1/B-70%20VARIANTS.PDF
An official publication from the AFMC History Office, edited by noted aerospace author Tony R. Landis. Recommended.
Construction is underway of an unmanned rocket-powered aircraft to be carried by the Stratolaunch “Roc” aircraft. The Talon-A is supposed to be something like the proposed X-24C… a lifting body hypersonic platform that can have various experimental units – including scramjets – attached to it. The Roc would be capable of carrying three Talon-A’s at a time, though it seems unlikely that there’s a really good reason to do so.
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket successfully launched from New Zealand and put 30 small satellites into orbit. Additionally, the first stage seems to have come down under parachutes for a splashdown in the ocean; it seems recovery operations are planned and/or underway. The eventual goal is to air snatch the booster with a helicopter; not as elegant as SpaceX’s hoverslam recovery, but, hey, better than anything Soyuz or Atlas or Delta does.
The view of the main chute from Electron's first stage as it returned to Earth. https://t.co/3YcSvrYIGi
— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) November 20, 2020
This art was posted a decade ago. But behold! Now there’s dimensional and weight data. Woo.
An early-1960’s idea for a one-man “space pod.” Similar in concept to von Braun’s “Bottle Suit,” the Remora would allow an astronaut to work in a more comfortable setting than a full pressure suit, while giving the astronaut more tools and greater protection from radiation, meteoroids and other space hazards.
The name “Remora” comes in part from the fact that the “suits” would not, unlike normal EVA suits, have to be put all the way through an air lock. Instead, the “head” of the Remora would enter a small port on the spacecraft, lock in, the pressure would equalize and the transparent dome would open allowing the astronaut to climb right out. The pressure in the spacecraft/space station would be the same as that within the Remora, meaning no prebreathing and no dangerous and time consuming steps up and down in pressure. The art shows the astronaut wearing a pressure suit; this would presumably be a safety measure in case the Remora was breached. So long as the Remora stayed pressurized, the astronauts suit could have had little to no relative pressure, meaning that it would not be stiff and difficult to work in. The Remora was to be equipped with a reaction control system of some kind, but exactly what remains unclear. Options would include:
1: Cold gas, like pressurized nitrogen
2: Monopropellant like hydrogen peroxide or hydrazine
3: Bipropellant, either hypergolic storables or something like hydrogen peroxide/kerosene. Cryogens seem unlikely.
The Remora was clearly meant to remain tethered to its spacecraft/space station. One wonders if the astronaut was supposed to remove his suit gloves before putting his hands into the external gloves of if the one would fit in the other. Additionally, it seems like there should have been little pressure doors on the inside of the glove in case a finger gets punctured.
A vastly higher resolution version of this art is HERE.
Currently scheduled for 7:27 PM eastern time, SpaceX is planning on launching a Dragon capsule to the ISS with *four* astronauts on board. This will be the first time since the Space Shuttle that more than three at a time have gone up.
UPDATE: thirteen minutes into the flight and first stage has successfully landed, capsule is in orbit and separated from the second stage. It’s dull and repetitive… Which is *exactly* what ya want to see. WoO!
A black and white bit of concept art that was sold on ebay a while back showing the Lockheed STAR (Space Transport And Recovery) Clipper space shuttle concept from the late 1960’s. This was a promising concept that used a lifting body orbiter with a wide, flattened rear fuselage that was liberally covered with rocket engines (a large range of engines and layouts were considered, including liner aerospikes). The shuttle was filled with liquid oxygen tanks and some hydrogen tanks; the bulk of the hydrogen was stored in a large V-shaped drop tank. This component would have been larger but reasonably inexpensive, jettisoned after deletion to be destroyed during re-entry or splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The vehicle would have continued on to orbit using the propellant remaining in the internal tanks.
A vast amount of information on the STAR Clipper is available HERE.
The STAR Clipper lasted a lot longer than many contemporary designs and went through a multitude of design revisions. it always seemed like it should have worked reasonably well… and it had the benefit of being aesthetically beautiful.
Assembly has begun… and it’s expected to only take a month or two. Woo!
It certainly doesn’t seem like it will belong to NASA:
Satellites looking down on Earth, measuring temperature and atmospheric makeup? Sure, useful. But someone PLEASE explain to me why *NASA* is meant to do this and not the NOAA.
The people who dreamed as children and struggled through college to get science and engineering degrees with the goal of working for NASA did so because they want to send Men to the Moon, Mars and beyond. It must surely be a small minority indeed who were enthralled not with visions of exploration and going out to the frontiers, but with looking at clouds.
So if the new administration does not use regulations to strangle SpaceX (including jacking up taxes so that SpaceX simply can’t afford to work here anymore), I would be utterly unsurprised to see a mass exodus of talent from NASA, heading to SpaceX.
I’d pay to watch this series. note: I recently tried watching some of the Gerry Anderson marionation series. Yeeeeesh.
Scheduled for November 9 to 11, the first cosmetically-complete Starship is expected to make an attempt to reach an altitude of 15 kilometers. This isn’t very high as space launchers go – barely to the edge of the stratosphere – but it will be high enough that the Starship will attempt the “bellyflop” maneuver.
It’s probably rational to expect it to make a smoking hole in the water or the vicinity of Boca Chica. That is of course not a slam on SpaceX… they’re trying something new, and history has show that Rockets Are Hard. History has also showed that SpaceX is willing and, importantly, eager to learn from failures. So, while it is of course to be preferred that the test flight goes off without a hitch, if it doesn’t it’s just a step towards making it work.
