Full article is behind the Av Week paywall, but the gist of it is that the Europa Clipper mission is to be launched on a “commercial launcher” rather than the SLS. With luck that means a Falcon 9 Heavy…
Mar 212018
Mar 192018
Elon Musk recently did a Q&A about the BFR and his interplanetary plans. He again says that there will be test hops in the first half of 2019, orbital flights in 2020.
Plus, this:
Space bases could preserve civilization in World War III: Elon Musk
Mar 162018
I think I’m pretty good at 2D drafting and at 3D CAD modeling for 3D printing and such. But I’ve very little experience with texture mapping and rendering for “art.” But while modeling the JPL interstellar precursor spacecraft for the next issue of USSP, it occurred to me that the model didn’t look half bad just with basic coloring of the parts. While this may work for spacecraft, I don’t imagine it’d be all that wonderful for aircraft.
The JPL spacecraft was to be propelled by a bank of 40 ion engines. I tried to simulate that with lights in the engines, but that did some *wacky* stuff… light shining *through* solid objects, not casting shadows, all kinds of stuff that Just Ain’t Right. I don’t suppose my ancient copy of Rhinoceros 3D is really meant for that sort of thing. So I simulated the ion engine exhaust with simple transparent cylinders. Not the greatest but… does it look like it’s doing the job?
UPDATE: A better version. See comments for process.
Mar 042018
Ye gods.
Elon Musk is – probably optimistically – suggesting that the even-more-capable BFR will not only fly before 2025, not only fly people before 2025, but will fly people to *Mars* by 2025. BFR began development approximately 2012, and prototype bits of it are hoped to fly next year. BFR is an all-new giant vehicle using all-new engines and structures. SLS is a kludge of the 1970’s-vintage Shuttle external tank, main engines and solid rocket boosters with an upper stage derived from Delta and Centaur, launching from an existing but modified facility. NASA *should* have been able to slap SLS together in a handful of years.
Feb 272018
Rewards have been issued to APR Patreon patrons for February, 2018. This month, the diagram is a 1/40 scale B-52B diagram. Normally the diagrams are sent out at full 300 dpi (with 125 dpi for the $1.25 patrons), but at 300 dpi the diagram is simply Way Too Big at over 40,000 pixels wide. Most image viewing programs will simply go “nope”and refuse to even try to display such images. so this month the image is sent out at 200 dpi (still slightly over 30,000 pixels wide), and 83 dpi for the $1.25 patrons. The 83 dpi version is also included for the higher level patrons for easier viewing.
Also: the documents this month include a United Aircraft paper on advanced future space propulsion systems as seen from 1969, and a January 1953 Douglas Aircraft design study for the DC-8. The CAD diagram this month is the Ganswindt Weltenfahrzeug… a truly terrible design for a spaceship from 1899. Terrible though it may be, it one of the first designs that is clearly in the Project Orion family tree…
If you are interested in helping to preserve (and get copies of) this sort of thing, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
Feb 262018
Looking towards the future a little…
Feb 222018
Quite number of years ago, AIG ran a commercial that starts off showing rockets failing and ending up with astronauts on the moon. A recitation of bits from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” covers it. The poem itself is a dismal tale of a cowardly paper-pusher, but everything edited together like this comes together really well to illustrate the message of the commercial, “The greatest risk is not taking one.”
It was good in its time, and I felt it personally very affecting. But imagine it redone *now.* Now, you wouldn’t need to splice together old Apollo and ICBM footage to go from fail to spectacular success… everything you need would come from SpaceX.
Feb 212018
NASA’s $1 Billion Mobile Launcher Leans a Little
In short: it seems the 400-foot-tall Mobile Launcher tower leans to the north and has a bit of a twist in it and may only be used for one or two launches.
Feb 202018
A tracking website:
Where is Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster with Starman?
The “Chart” page has an overview of planetary positions w/Roadster that you can view into the future using a slider.
Plus… available on Amazon:
Feb 192018
The NERVA nuclear rocket, studied throughout the sixties into the early 1970’s, would have been a great way to propel spacecraft. But a nuclear rocket is not the same sort of reactor as is generally designed for use in space to generate electrical power. A NERVA can produce *gigawatts* of thermal energy, energy which is carried away with the high mass flow rate of the hydrogen propellant. Power reactors, on the other hand, are generally designed for several orders of magnitude lower thermal power… a few thermal megawatts, perhaps, to produce a few hundred kilowatts of electricity.
However, the fact remains that a nuclear rocket *is* a nuclear reactor. For most missions it would burn for a few minutes, at most perhaps few hours, out of a mission lasting perhaps years. It is thus a bit of a shame to waste all that potential. So over the decades many studies have been made for using a nuclear rocket as a power generator .
One such study was reported by Aerojet in 1970. The abstract is HERE, the direct PDF download if HERE.
In this study, the NERVA would pump out 1,500 thermal megawatts during the propulsion phase(producing 75,000 pounds of thrust), dropping to 250 to 505 thermal kilowatts during the power generation phase, enough to create 25 kilowatts of electricity. This would be a very low-power, low-temperature use of the reactor, reducing system efficiency… but still, making use of a reactor that was already there, and not noticeably using up the fission fuel in the reactor. The reactor would be run at very lower power levels and hydrogen would flow through a closed loop built into the reactor; the warmed gaseous hydrogen would flow through a turbogenerator to create electricity; the warm hydrogen would then pass through a radiator built on the outer surface of the hydrogen tank itself.
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