books – Page 22 – The Unwanted Blog

Pax Orionis: Next installment nearly ready

books, drawings, My Fiction, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, Pax Orionis, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft 1 Response »

Sep 182015

Just a few minor things (conversion to PDF & EPUB, uploading, stuff like that) and the second Pax Orionis installment will be posted. This will be “The Deadliest Catch, Part Two,” the conclusion to that particular tale. The bonus will include diagrams and data on the first generation Casaba Howitzer weapon (which has evolved substantially from when i first illustrated it for the pages of APR issue V2N2, years ago), derived from the Orion pulse unit, and a short media piece that fits in with the one included last time. I plan on posting this tomorrow (Saturday).

Patrons who are signed up *before* the story is released will automatically get the story as soon as it’s published. If you sign up *after* the story is published, you won’t automatically get it… but you won’t be charged for it, either. However, patrons may purchase “back issues” for the same price, so you can catch up without any trouble. Each tale is only a buck; with the bonus diagrams and technical discussion, only one additional buck.

If interested, check out the Pax Orionis Patron.

Feel free to tell anyone you think might be interested.

USBP 16, USSP 03 Now Available

aircraft, books, drawings, history, new products, news, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Bomber Projects, US Spacecraft Projects 7 Responses »

Sep 132015

Now available… two new additions to the US Aerospace Projects series.

US Bomber Projects #16: The B-52 Evolution Special

Boeing Model 444 A: A late war turboprop heavy bomber
Boeing Model 461: An early postwar turboprop heavy bomber
Boeing Model 462: A large six-turboprop ancestor of the B-52
Boeing Model 462-5: A six-turboprop B-52 ancestor
Boeing Model 464-17: 1946 four-turboprop strategic bomber, a step toward the B-52
Boeing Model 464-18: a reduced-size version of the 464-17 turboprop strategic bomber
Boeing Model 464-25: a modification of the 464-17 turboprop bomber with slightly swept wings, among other changes
Boeing Model 464-27: a slightly-swept turboprop B-52 progenitor
Boeing Model 464-33-0: A turboprop B-52 predecessor
Boeing Model 464-34-3: A turboprop B-52 predecessor
Boeing Model 464-40: The first all-jet-powered design in the quest for the B-52
Boeing Model 464-40: The first all-jet-powered design in the quest for the B-52
Boeing Model 464-046: A six-engined B-52 predecessor
Boeing Model 464-49: The penultimate major design in the development of the B-52
Fairchild M-121:A highly unconventional canard-biplane
Convair B-60: A swept-wing turboprop-powered derivative of the B-36
Douglas Model 1211-J: An elegant turboprop alternative to the B-52
With additional diagrams of the B-47, XB-52 and B-52B

USBP#16 can be purchased for downloading for the low, low price of $6.

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US Spacecraft Projects #03

Northrop ST-38 Space Trainer: a rocket-powered T-38 for trips to space
“Have Sting:” A General Electric design for a gigantic orbital railgun
JPL Thousand Astronomical Unit probe: A spacecraft into interstellar space
Integrated Manned Interplanetary Spacecraft: A Boeing concept for a giant spacecraft to Mars and Venus
Convair Inflatable Spacecraft: an early spaceplane concept
One Man Space Station: A 1960 McDonnell concept for a tiny space station
Astroplane: A lightweight aircraft for the exploration of Mars
Reactor-In-Flight Test: A Lockheed nuclear-powered stage for the Saturn V

USSP#03 can be purchased for downloading for the low, low price of $5.

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Pax Orionis: First story up at the Patreon

art, books, drawings, My Fiction, new products, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, Pax Orionis, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft 4 Responses »

Sep 112015

The first story is now available for Pax Orionis patrons. This is available for the low, low price of only a buck. But if you pledge $2 or more, you get not only the story – “The Deadliest Catch, Part One” – but also a Technical Diagram and description of the USS Orion test flight article, and a bonus news article, the first of a number that will tell a tale.

Pax Orionis Patreon: Now Online

art, blather, books, drawings, My Fiction, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, Pax Orionis, projects, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft 2 Responses »

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.

“The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001”

AARRRGH, art, books, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., history, Hmm..., Meh., news, photography, science fiction, ಠ_ಠ 5 Responses »

Sep 062015

I’m of two minds on this book:

On one hand, this book is filled with *amazing* images… set photos, diagrams and best of all concept paintings that would make damn fine art to hang on the wall. It’s a treasure trove.
On the other hand… whoever laid out this book needs to have his ass removed.

Quoting from some of the reviews on Amazon:

In what will go down as one of the most horrific decisions in book making history… these amazing and rare photos and illustrations are force fit into pages that have a useable space of about 6 inches wide, and 14 inches tall. This makes presentation of these glorious visuals an impossible task… either the images have to be shrunk to postcard size… or, and this is almost criminal… the image must be split, down the center, across the book spline. OH. MY. GOD. The CENTER of these amazing images… hopelessly lost in the curving folds between adjacent pages.

and…

There ae incredible, beautiful, never before seen wonderful pictures and illustrations, with often interesting notes that fill up the book. VERY SADLY they are almost all cut in half by enlarging them to take up two pages, separated by the books binding. Even the many foldouts have a crease going down otherwise great pictures. This is totally annoying and disappointing and distracting. I guess they wanted the book to look like the Monolith. Instead, it should have looked like a book and given us all these pictures with no “interruptions.”

Basically… WTF were they thinking?

I have high hopes that someone will re-release the imagery in this book in a format that isn’t mind-bogglingly *stupid.*

Sigh.

The people who laid out this book should have used “2001: The Lost Science” as a guide. While not near as much stuff in a book that costs about the same, the format and size of the book is *excellent.*

Pax Orionis: The Patreon underway

art, blather, books, My Fiction, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, Pax Orionis, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft 4 Responses »

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.

10-Meter USAF Orion

art, books, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, history, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, projects, spacecraft 8 Responses »

Sep 032015

I continue to tinker with the CAD diagrams for “Nuclear Pulse Propulsion,” as well as creating new ones. I decided to see what the diagrams for the 10-Meter design for the USAF would look like in a larger format… in this case, two sheets 40 inches by 10, at 1/96 scale. A fair bit of formatting needed as yet, but on the whole I think they look pretty good.

Anyone interested? I’m thinking a combination of prints (folded into a book or rolled) and cyanotype blueprints on vellum. If this idea is popular (I’m going to take at least this design to print, just for myself), I’d do something similar for the 10-meter NASA vehicle, the 20-meter NASA vehicle and the 86-foot 4,000 “battleship.”

Pax Orionis: The Patreon?

art, blather, books, Hmm..., My Fiction, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, Patreon, Pax Orionis, science fiction, spacecraft 6 Responses »

Sep 022015

Patreon works two different ways. The first way, the way used on the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon campaign, is that patron are charged once a month, and they get rewards once a month. The other way Patreon can work is to only charge patrons when the content-creator actually has new content. This seems to be used a lot for web-comic creators… when they produce a new comic, the patrons get charged and get the comic. Whether that happens once a week, once a month or with a gap of three months, the patrons only get charged when there’s new stuff.

I’ve been contemplating using that second model as a way to help get Pax Orionis going. Use Patronage to write the book a bit at a time. But there are a few questions:

The book will be composed of many different bits of wildly different lengths. A one-page memo here, a thirty-page narrative there. Charge the same for the release of a self-contained section, regardless of page count? Or charge for the release of sections of particular page counts (which might mean that it’ll take several releases to get a complete section out)?
And then, how much to charge? Obviously not very much… fifty cents, seventy five, a buck at most. Given fees and such, i don’t think it can go below fifty cents.
What to do for “premium” patrons? One the APR Patreon, patrons who pledge more per month get higher-rez versions of the rewards and additional CAD diagrams and other bits and pieces. For the Pax Orionis Patreon, I’m thinking that higher-level patrons would get a bonus technical illustration… anything from a CAD diagram of an Orion vehicle, to a weapons system, launch vehicle, spacecraft, aircraft, a map, etc. I don’t think I’d do more than two, maybe three levels of patronage.

So… what do y’all think? Suggestions? Worth doing? Anyone know of a similar sort of thing with someone successfully creating a novel a bit at a time via Patreon?

A good case can be made that I’d be better off simply making P.O. available for free bits at a time, available to all. So perhaps… the P.O. Patrons get these releases, say, three months before the world as a whole? Get to see ’em in the first draft, and get to critique and perhaps see their suggestions incorporated?