The next set of stuff… including diagrams being worked for the Pax Orionis Patreon. The Spacecraft diagrams have taken a *lot* longer than expected.
Sep 092015
Sep 082015
The Pax Orionis Patreon is now online. It’s a little bare, but it at least seems to be up and running. The first piece of fiction and a tech diagram will be ready in a few days, so the first patrons will be kinda guinea pigs. With this system, patrons get charged when new stuff is made available, rather than on a strict monthly schedule.
So if’n you’ve got a hankering for stories about an alternate history with extra nuclear wars and spacelanes filled with atom bomb powered spacecraft, I got ya covered.
Sep 082015
The image quality is admittedly terrible (being a scan of a print of a microfilm), but this might be of interest… a piece of NASA art circa 1963 depicting the Saturn V with an S-N third stage rather than an S-IVb third stage. The S-N was not a fixed design, but varied over the years; here, it was a fairly stubby stage ten meters in diameter, same as the S-IC and S-II stage. The S-N would vary in diameter and length from design to design, but one common element was the use of a single NERVA solid-core nuclear thermal rocket engine. As shown here, the distance from the nuclear rocket to the Apollo capsule up front just isn’t terribly far; consequently, this depicted a design with extraordinary levels of shielding, or depicted an unmanned Apollo (but then, why the abort tower), or it was just artistic license.
Sep 052015
I’m in the process of setting up a Patreon for Pax Orionis. It’s not yet public; still scribbling on it. As previously mentioned, it’s not a “monthly” thing, but instead a “creation” thing… patrons only get charged when I actually produce a new creation.
Still a little uncertain about a few things. There are currently only two reward levels:
$1.00 per creation: “One dollar per release gets you – as you might expect – the latest piece of Pax Orionis fiction in PDF and EPUB formats.”
$2.00 per creation: “Two dollars per release gets you not only the latest piece of the story but also a Technical Data Sheet… a diagram of some piece of technology (a spacecraft,a weapons system, a launch vehicle, a military aircraft, etc.) relevant to the world of Pax Orionis.”
Sound fair? Comments? Critiques? Ideas for further reward levels?
One idea that was floated was for a patron to pay something extra to include the patrons name in the story somewhere as a character. While I’m not opposed to the idea, I’m not sure how to do it in the context of Patreon, which is a continual subscription system.
Sep 042015
The idea was floated a few days ago of trying to do Pax Orionis via Patreon; it seemed to go over like a tungsten balloon. Oh, well. I suggested that something I’d include at certain levels of patronage would be diagrams of PO-related technological goodies, along with data and description. As examples… something like these, which are designs specifically for Pax Orionis. Obviously they incorporate real-world design elements, but what are depicted are vehicles from the PO timeline.
Sep 032015
China shows off secret ‘carrier-killer’ missile at Victory Day parade
While the US has spent decades and many millions of dollars throwing money down the rat-hole of scramjets to create airbreathing hypersonic missiles, the Chinese have apparently fielded a Mach 10 anti-ship missile with a range of 900 miles. They’ve done this by just building a sizable ballistic missile, a straight-up solid propellant rocket. Not as advanced or as neato as a scramjet cruiser, but it’s faster than any conceivable airbreather and, big as it is, it’s transportable by truck. One of these would presumably be able to poke a hole straight through the likes of an aircraft carrier. Of course, nobody in the west is all that sure about how accurate this thing is; it has some form of terminal guidance, so at least in theory is should be pretty accurate.
Photos of the truck-transportable missiles (in canisters) at the link. (Might be copyrighted, dunno)
If the Chinese demonstrate that this missile is accurate and is capable of trashing a carrier, it could really mess with the balance of power in the region. Missiles like this would be difficult to intercept, and would likely push US Navy aircraft carriers well away from Chinese territory. Not just mainland China, of course, but also away from Taiwan and the South China Sea
Also note just how old-school Commie Chinese military parades look.
Aug 312015
Boeing art from the late 1970s depicting the construction of a base in low Earth orbit, which in turn would be used to construct components of solar power satellites, which would then be slowly boosted to geosynchronous using electric propulsion. Even though the base would be dwarfed by the SPS itself, the base was monumental in scale compared to any other manned space facility proposed before or since.
The artwork (scanned from a brochure that was folded down the middle, thus there’s a half-repaired fold line) depicts not only a Space Shuttle orbiter, but also the second stage of a ballistically recoverable Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle.
I have posted the full-rez version at the APR Patreon Extras Dropbox folder for 2015-08 (while it’s 2015-09 now, the file began the process of uploading at 11:59 PM by my watch, so…). If interested, please check out the APR Patreon and consider joining. Lots of benefits!
Aug 302015
Say what you will about the Shuttle being a reusable payload shroud rather than a reusable launch vehicle… it was a beautiful machine.
Aug 272015
Today I picked up four large format scans from a local print shop. All were scanned in full color at 300 DPI; the B-52 diagram was so large that I had to reduce it in size a bit – from 300 to 250 DPI – to make it work in most of my image processing programs. Still… with an original 110 inches long, scaling down a bit really isn’t much of a loss.
First: a Boeing model shop diagram of a B-52B display model at 1/40 scale. Model shop diagrams are often the best bets for clear, accurate aircraft diagrams.
Second, an old Boeing diagram of the Model 80 trimotor:
Then the USAF “supersonic escape capsule” which sure looks a lot like Fat Man:
And then a Rocketdyne diagram of the Atlas booster rocket engine:
These will likely be offered up to APR Patreon Patrons. If you want in on that, and to help out on the effort to procure these things (trust me, they’re *not* cheap!), please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
Aug 262015
Proof that even the mighty M-1 Abrams main battle tank can be converted into scrap metal by a small anti-tank missile if it gets hit just right. This is reportedly a Saudi M-1 taken out by Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Note that just after the strike, the videographer utters the phrase the world has come to associate with things blowing up.