Just under the wire, rewards for November have been made available to APR patrons. Three documents and one large-format diagram, and one all-new CAD diagram, have been posted:
NASA diagram (on two sheets) of a NERVA nuclear rocket engine display model, presenting the configuration with detail and clarity
An article on a orbiting nuclear power station
A full-color brochure (via photographs) on the Convair Model 36, their entry for what became the B-36
A North American Aviation presentation on delta wings for the X-15, presenting a few different configurations
An all-new layout CAD diagram of the Bernal Sphere space colony concept
If you’d like to help out and gain access to these and past and future rewards, please check out the APR Patreon.
Blue Origin seems to have flown their New Shepard craft yesterday… booster rocket and capsule. The video shows the launch, a CGI version of the separation, video of the capsule landing and video of the booster landing. The booster landing video, especially the view at 2:39, is just about the sportiest ride imaginable that doesn’t end with an Incident Review Board.
In some ways this is similar to the SpaceX Falcon 9 + Dragon capsule. Important difference is the much lower performance of Blue origins system… straight up into space, but no attempt at orbital flight (and nowhere near capable of it). But with a second stage… who knows.
In 1963 the Curtiss Wright Corporation ran an ad in Missiles & Rockets magazine illustrating their participation in the Titan III/Dyna Soar program. The main illustration in the ad depicts the launch vehicle in flight; it is not, sadly, a wholly accurate depiction. The N2O4 thrust vector fluid tanks for the SRBs aren’t included, nor are the separation motors; the two engine bells on the Titan core are shown clocked out of alignment. Still, a reasonably nice illustration.
Boeing got its contract in May. The two companies are now competing to see who will fly the first mission to the ISS in late 2017. So with luck and vigilant FBI and CIA operatives to keep “meddling” to a minimum, America will be a manned spacefaring nation again in about two years.
A poor-quality photo of a display model of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, made partially of plexiglas to permit a view of the interior. Appears to have been made by or for Air Force Space Systems Division. Image published in the February 17, 1964, issue of Missiles & Rockets magazine. This would have been an early design of the MOL. It’s difficult to determine size/scale of the model, but it looks reasonably large… probably at least 1/24 scale. Note that the transstage is shown attached, but it represented at low fidelity.
A General Dynamics illustration of the Atlas/Centaur launch vehicle with the Surveyor lunar probe payload. This was shown in the September 14, 1964 issue of Missiles & Rockets magazine.
The title alone points out that this is about something from an earlier time, as “Wonder” seems in short supply these days and “Power” is something you’re supposed to be ashamed of. The New York Public Library has digitized a series of “cigarette cards” (predecessors of the sort of cards that used to be sold with gum, and now are sold by themselves) from 1935-38, originally sold in packs of “Max Cigarettes.” The 250 cards in the “This Age of Power and Wonder” series are all over the place, covering history, fairy tales and future speculation, but a few are kinda interesting. For example, the value of atomic power to propel ships:
And speculation on the possibility of space travel, illustrated with a stereotypical art deco 1930’s spaceship:
A few months ago, Airbus Defence and Space Sas received a US patent for a nearly hypersonic passenger transport. The vehicle has a number of different engines… rocket engines for vertical boost and acceleration, ramjets for hypersonic cruise, turbojets for subsonic flight including takeoff and landing. It would take off conventionally with turbojets, fire the rocket to shoot almost vertically to about 35 kilometers altitude (going supersonic in the process), then level off and cruise under ramjet power at Mach 4.5. The extreme altitude, about 3 times higher than normal jetliner traffic, would mean that the sonic boom should be greatly attenuated by the time it got to the surface.
The wingtip fins would rotate through 90 degrees to maintain center of pressure from subsonic through supersonic.
Unusually for a patent, this one provides dimensions. Fuselage length (dimension 11 in Figure 1) is 52.995 meters; overall length (dimension 110, Figure 3) is 57.63 meters; maximum span (dimension 126, Figure 5) is 27.188 meters.
The interior views of the vehicle show one of the problems with rocket-boosted transport aircraft: The majority of the interior volume isn’t people and cargo, but propellant.
Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon. If this sort of thing interests you, please consider signing up… not only will you help fund the search for obscure aerospace history, you’ll gain access to a lot of interesting stuff, not available elsewhere.
Color artwork from NASA circa 1964 depicting Apollo-derived logistics spacecraft. The BALLOS (BALlistic LOgistic Spacecraft) was studied by several corporations such as Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas as well as NASA; the artwork was done *for* NASA, but it’s unclear if it was done *by* NASA.
The full resolution versions of these artworks have been posted into the 2015-11 folder in the APR Extras Dropbox. Please check out the APR Patreon!
