April 2023 APR Rewards

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
May 012023
 

The rewards for April, 2023, have been released. They include:

Document: *Partial* Martin report on the M329 Mach 2 jet seaplane bomber

Document: “Flexible Wing Manned Test Vehicle, Final Program Report,” Ryan, December 1961. report on the development of the “Rogallo Wing” test vehicle.

Document: “10 Jahre TKF/J-90 Vorentwicklung,” conference paper from 1983 from Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm Gmbh describing (in German) the development of advanced fighter jets

Large Format: “NASA’s Space Launch System,” poster with detailed diagrams of the Block 1 and Block 1B SLS

CAD Diagram: B-1B weapons loads. This diagram was created and intended for my “US Supersonic Bomber Projects Volume 1” but had to be cut for space reasons. This includes gravity bombers, cruise missile sand the Vought T-22 “Assault Breaker.”

 

 

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.



 

 Posted by at 2:13 pm

Starship: RUD

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, news, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Apr 202023
 

Well, it got off the pad. That’s good. But at least six of the engines didn’t seem to be burning, and the whole stack started tumbling just before stage sep… and then the stages didn’t sep.

 

 

But it got not just off the pad, but away from the pad, and made it a good way toward first stage burnout before things went sideways. So… a qualified woohoo.

EDIT: Just saw a different launch angle: It clawed its way off the pad at something of an angle. The thrust vector seems to have been off from the beginning; SpaceX is probably lucky they didn’t lose the pad.

Seems relevant:

Six of the 33 engines weren’t running:

 

 

 Posted by at 8:46 am

Problem for Starship

 AARRRGH, Hmm..., news, rockets, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 152023
 

Something failed on the launch tower and fell the full length of it, sending out a shower of sparks. Seems like the man-carrying elevator suffered a problem and the counterweight plummeted. This is doubtless not great news for the planned Monday launch.

So, yeah. Another “infrastructure oopsie.” Hmmm.

 Posted by at 6:46 pm

Starship to launch as soon as Monday

 awesomeness, history, news, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Apr 152023
 

They’ve got FAA approval:

Green light go: SpaceX receives a launch license from the FAA for Starship

If it goes to plan, as soon as 7AM Texas time on Monday Starship/Superheavy will launch. The booster will splash down 30+ kilometers from the Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico; Starship will climb to 235 kilometers, get into *almost* a circular orbit, and re-enter and bellyflop into the Pacific 225 kilometers north of Oahu. Of course the chances of everything going right are probably low; I would not be surprised to see an enthusiastic unassembly early in the flight (though hopefully far enough away to not tear up the launch site). If it claws its way off the pad, it’ll be the most powerful rocket ever launched.

With the state of the world, and especially with the plethora of mysterious “accidents” happening to industrial facilities around the country, I expect to see things not go quite to plan. I hope to be be proven wrong.

 Posted by at 4:42 am

And more stuff on eBay

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, history, models, news, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 172023
 

I’ve added some more things to my eBay: “Dynascott.” There are some new cyanotypes, some books, a piece of vintage NASA test equipment that I bought *years* ago to serve as a prop for The Alternate History Movie That Shall Not Be Named. Some cyanotypes I’ve had before; the photos are of the *actual* prints I’m selling. I have more cyanotypes and a lot more books to add soon, but this gets the ball rolling. I’ve included Buy It Now for them.

 

Large Convair “Super Hustler” Mach 4 bomber Cyanotype Blueprint

 

 

– – – – –

And some old listings that are still up:

Aerofax Minigraph #14 Lockheed F-94 Starfire by Francillon & Keaveney 1986

 

 

– – –

Wasserfall German WWII Surface to air missile Cyanotype Blueprint

 

 Posted by at 12:47 am

So much for Virgin Orbit

 AARRRGH, aircraft, Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 162023
 

Not every idea pans out.

Virgin Orbit pauses operations for a week, furloughs nearly entire staff as it seeks funding

In a world where SpaceX is doing it’s thing, other small launcher companies had damned well better have a *really* good idea. And while dropping an expendable rocket from a 747 might have been neato-keen in the 1990’s… right now it looks kinda dumb. Sure, the ability to launch from anywhere with a big enough airport is nice… but it doesn’t seem to be enough.

 Posted by at 4:30 am

Sea Dragon as cyanotype

 APR, art, cyanotype blueprints, history, Hmm..., projects, rockets  No Responses »
Mar 122023
 

My preference with the cyanotype diagrams is to not tinker with the actual image other than the needs of cleaning them up. However, in a few cases the diagrams are such that they make inconvenient fits, or could be made into convenient sizes… or need additional stuff added to them to flesh them out. One such case is the Aerojet Sea Dragon launch vehicle. The diagrams I have come from reports, rather than blueprints; this stripped them of the usual data blocks, and left them with just the diagrams. Putting the external profile next to the internal profile gives an aspect ratio that is *almost* perfect to fit within an off-the-shelf 11/75X36 inch frame. I need to do a bit more to add a bit of something to the blank spaces.

The question here is whether the cyanotype-buying public would rather have this formatted to display horizontally as shown here, or vertically?

 

As an aside, I just noticed that the original GIF that I’d put together (for APR issue V4N6) was dated as March 9, 2003, just over twenty years ago. I posted the full-rez diagram on my website many, many years ago; since then it has filtered out into the wider world, such as HERE, HERE and HERE.

 Posted by at 10:41 am

More cyanotypes

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, CAD diagrams, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, new products, news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 102023
 

I will be posting some more cyanotype blueprints to ebay in the coming days. These were made from old transparencies I’d had made prior to the move from Utah. But I also hope to have some “brand new” cyanotypes in the near-ish future. The transparent film remains astonishingly elusive; two separate companies are trying to obtain it… and have been for a few months now. Every other print shop in the area has flat refused to try. A print shop a few hundred miles away made a few transparencies for me a few months back; I just sent them files to have a few more made. With luck they’ll come through. I have a *bunch* more I’d like to have done. Here are what I recently sent off:

Martin XB-51. The original print was 1/40 scale; this blueprint will be 1/72 scale.

The Avro “Arrow” structural layout.

Two sheets from NASA illustrating the Saturn V.  One sheet is very likely more interesting than the other, so what I might end up doing is ebaying the two sheets and cataloging just the one.

The US-1205 and UA-1207 solid rocket motors for the Titan IIIC and IIIM, respectively. I have the originals of these framed and hanging on my wall; conveniently, they fit in off-the-shelf 11.75X36 panorama frames that you can get at Hobby Lobby and the like. I will probably tinker with some of the other blueprints that are *close* to this size to massage them to fit into that frame. Because as awesome as the prints are on their own, they’re spectacular framed.

I have also sent a revised version of my SR-71 CAD diagrams to be re-printed. The first print’s lines came in too light/fine. Live and learn…

 

 Posted by at 6:34 pm
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