… to 297,000 feet.
While it’s an achievement worthy of note, the SpaceShip program has taken so long to get here (and “here” is a Virgin Galactic employee, not a group of paying customers) that I wonder if SpaceX’s orbital plans might wipe out the market for SS2 before they can really start operations.
A step closer to reality:
Under this directive, the USSF would initially be a part of the USAF. The exact cost of creating the USSF is unclear, with estimates ranging from $5 billion to $13 billion. That’s sure a lot of money. Gosh, I wonder if we could afford to spend that much on space…
Seems so. Heck, this is money spent without a single space launch so far. Thirteen billion dollars to create a Space Force seems damned cheap in comparison.
It seems to be a day for high dollar amounts. Such as this:
While the facts seem certain that the WaPo slandered the kid and deserves to pay through the nose, $250 Million is how much Bezos paid for the company. it’s unlikely that a lawsuit would score $250 million. But chances seem fair that a fat, hefty settlement should be in the offing. A settlement big enough to not only set up the kid for life, but to put the scare into a whole bunch of those media and celebrity vampires who jumped on the hatred bandwagon.
I doubt that Nic Sandmann will end up a billionaire out of all this, but it’s an amusing thought. When you go through the tweets of twits like these, who, based on the manufactured hate that the media invented, called for Nick Sandmann’s mother to be fired from her job… well, some accountability seems to be called for. Perhaps Nick can invest his multimillions wisely, become and actual billionaire, and help fund some colonization missions to Mars and the asteroids. A good bit of synergy between a wealth transfer from the racist left to reasonable people, and a leftist-rage-inducing Space Force.
Another early look at US Spacecraft Projects #6, this time showing one of the more unusual space vehicles ever seriously contemplated… a single stage to orbit space station. This one would seem to be especially vulnerable to thrust imbalance, but at least it had enough engines (11,520) so that if one went out, the lack of thrust wouldn’t be *too* hard to counter.
The San Diego Air and Space Museums Flickr account recently added this illustration, showing a Convair “Big Stick” being launched off the back of mobile transporter. “Big Stick” was a Convair concept for a nuclear ramjet powered cruise missile of nearly unlimited range, a less-known competing design against Voughts Pluto vehicle.
A higher rez (though, sadly, not a whole lot higher) version is available HERE.
If you are interested in Big Stick and Project Pluto, I recommend Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N1, which covers both in detail.
One might argue that some of the hijinks shown here are… unwise.
On the one hand, you’ve got people using fireworks in a way that the manufacturer probably does not recommend. You see people holding on to explosive devices *way* too long after lighting the fuse. You see people not understanding that these things, once out of control, have somewhat randomized trajectories.
That said: fireworks are a manifestation of what seems to be an impulse that’s hard-wired into humans, the desire to see things destroyed. That’s all fireworks are, devices that destroy themselves with a loud sound and sometimes with an impressive visual display. They are supposed to be used all by themselves. All too often people use fireworks to destroy property or to harm animals… and sometimes to harm themselves. But blowing up the ice covering a lake? Here you get all the visceral joy of watching stuff get destroyed, without the actual cost of anything *actually* getting destroyed. Ice on lakes and ponds is a transient phenomenon, of little to no intrinsic value. So compared to blowing up cars and sheds and houses and such, this is a fairly benign outlet for the urge to watch the world burn.
Plus, it’s cool. Mheh.
Discussions with Fantastic Plastic about model sets of large boosters is starting to focus on the Nova/Post Saturn collection for the initial release. Scale is likely to be 1/700 ( the smaller boosters aren’t *too* small, the bigger boosters are impressive and it will go with any of a number of existing ship model kits), and the current lineup is shown below.
Picking which designs to include and which to exclude is a bit of trick with the Nova/Post-Saturn line, as there were literally *hundreds* of designs worthy of consideration. If anyone has a suggestion for some other design you’re dying to see, let me know. The “inches” scale bar here is for the models at 1/288 scale… which this model set assuredly *won’t* be. Fantastic Plastic has previously released a 1/288 ROMBUS and a 1/288 NEXUS and *may* release 1/288 scale models of some of the others as individual kits… but the Sea Dragon and the Super-NEXUS would be *huge.* Once the collection is finalized a single display base will be sketched out.
The Vought Hypervelocity Missile program began in the 1980’s as an effort to create a relatively low-cost anti-armor missile. Instead of a massive warhead, the HVM would use kinetic energy to simply punch a hole through the armor of Soviet tanks. it would do this by accelerating to in excess of Mach 4. The HVM program continued on in several modified forms into the 21st century, but eventually did not result in production.
A recent pile of stuff purchased on eBay included two Vought prints of the HVM, one showing either a test round or a mockup, the other an artists concept showing an armored vehicle with a large turret for the storage and launch of HVMs, in the process of ruining the day of the crews of two Soviet T-72s. Sadly the prints have seen better days, having gotten a bit crumpled over the years, but they’re better than nothing. I have scanned them in full color/300 DPI and uploaded the scans to the 2019-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox, available to all APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents subscribers at the $4 level or higher.
On the 29th, APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents program subscribers were sent emails containing links to the January, 2019 rewards. This months set of documents and diagrams included high-rez copies of:
Document: “ASTRO A Manned Reusable Spacecraft Concept,” a Douglas Missiles & Space brochure from August, 1962, describing a two-stage Shuttle-like vehicle
Document: “Status update Ramjet Propulsion 1978” a brochure from the Marquardt Company
Document: “Rocket Blitz Form the Moon” an article from the October 23, 1948 issue of “Colliers” magazine describing the use of the Moon as a missile base, with some helpful Bonestell illustrations of Manhattan getting nuked.
Diagram: A large format color scan of the 1970 North American Rockwell PD-157-17-2 HIPAAS V/STOL jet fighter
CAD Diagram: isometric view, Bernal Sphere space habitat
If this sort of thing is of interest and you’d like to get in on it and make sure you don’t miss any of the forthcoming releases, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
A magazine ad from 1966 depicting a lifting body in space. The design seems reasonable 9sort of a cross between the M2and the HL-10) but could very well be a product not of engineers but of the art department. The angle is not the most informative, but it appears that this design has something of a squared-off nose. Note that the cockpit canopy is exposed, something that very few small lifting body designs had… for the simple reason that the windows would likely melt during re-entry, and that would defeat the purpose in making the thing recoverable. As vehicles get bigger, such as the space shuttle, the windows get further away from the nose and can be made survivable. But little designs like this? not very likely with 1960’s tech. Otherwise, though, it is an attractive illustration.
D’oh.
The first prototype of #Starship hopper will take a few weeks to repair. 50 mph winds broke the mooring blocks late last night & fairing half was blown over.
photos 20 min ago :/ #SpaceXBest of luck to all the hardworking @SpaceX teams. ♡ Y'all got this! pic.twitter.com/JfRX86TyyG
— Evelyn Janeidy Arevalo (@JaneidyEve) January 23, 2019
Additionally, the Blue Origin New Shepard made it officially to space:
Bonus: Popular Mechanics interview with Elon Musk where he describes using methane or water transpiration cooling for the Starship stainless steel structure during re-entry.