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US Bomber Projects #08, Large formats 01-03 and 04-06 Now Available

aircraft, art, awesomeness, books, drawings, history, new products, news, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Bomber Projects No Responses »

Feb 162014

Now available:

Issue number 08 of US Bomber Projects is now available (for background, see HERE). This issue includes:

Boeing Model 464-27: a slightly-swept turboprop B-52 progenitor
Rockwell D645-6: A minimum-weight spanloader missile carrier
Martin Mach 4.25: A large, manned nuclear ramjet
Boeing Model 484-2-2: A swept-wing, slightly supersonic B-58 competitor
Douglas System 464L: A many-surfaced Dyna Soar spaceplane
Martin Model 223-8: a 1944 step on the road to the XB-48
Boeing Model 801-11A: A Mach 3.5 hydrogen fueled design of incredible range
Martin MAMBA: A mid-1960’s A-10-analog

USBP#08 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:

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Brand new: larger format drawing collections

The CAD drawings created for USBP reformatted an rescaled for 11X17 collected in separate volumes. Drawings have in some cases been corrected, improved and added to.

USBP 11X17 01-03 collects the diagrams created for issues 01, 02 and 03, including:

Rockwell D 645-1; NAA 1495-25 PAMSS; Boeing Model 701-273-0; Convair B-58-C-1; Lockheed CL-2102-2; Lockheed Model 195-A-13; Martin Model 223-1; Boeing Model 444 A; Rockwell D 645-1: LH2; NAA High Performance Penetrator; Boeing Model 701-273-1; Lockheed GL-232; Boeing Space Sortie; Martin Model 223-2; Boeing Model 461; Northrop Low Altitude Penetrator; Rockwell D 645-4A; Lockheed System 464L; Convair Mach 4 “Rollover;” Boeing Model 701-273-3; Boeing HSCT Model 1080-854; Martin Model 223-3; Boeing Model 462

USBP11x17-01-03 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $10:

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USBP 11X17 04-06 collects the diagrams created for issues 04, 05 and 06, including:

McDonnell System 464L; Lockheed-Martin Falcon; Lockheed Senior Peg; Boeing Mobile Missile Carrier; Boeing Model 701-273-4; Lockheed Cruise Missile Carrier; Boeing Model 462-5; Martin Model 223-4; McDonnell-Douglas ATB; McDonnell-Douglas/Boeing DF-9; Boeing Model 701-273-5; Fairchild N-9; Martin Model 223-5; Rockwell D645-5;North American 464L; Boeing Model 464-17; Boeing Model 464-18; Convair WS-125A; Martin MX-2092; GD AMPSS; Republic System 464L; Martin Model 223-6; Boeing Model 701-273-6; Martin Water-Based Attack Aircraft

USBP11x17-04-06 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $10:

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Huh. I’m published… sorta.

aircraft, art, blather, books, drawings, history, news, projects, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft 5 Responses »

Feb 042014

So a year and a half ago, a well-known science fiction author contacted me and wanted to know if I could produce an illustration for a novel he was working on. Why… yes. Yes, I can. And I did. So fast forward to today, and the book (and the illustration) have come out.

Allen Steele’s “V-S Day,” an alternate history of World War II where the Germans produce the “Silverbird” sub-orbital hypersonic rocket bomber, contains two illustrations: my diagram of the Silverbird, and Ron Millers diagram of the US military’s response. Of the two, you can pretty much tell who’s the professional artist…

Anyway, Steele writes good stuff. “V-S Day” is a pretty good yarn. Give it a look!

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That’s no way to treat a library

AARRRGH, APR, blather, books, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., history, I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ 9 Responses »

Jan 122014

As I mentioned on the Space Show interview a while back, one of the events that started me working on Aerospace Projects Review was the reported destruction of the Bell Aerospace technical library. It turns out that aerospace libraries aren’t the only technical libraries to suffer that sort of fate. Behold:

This apparently is – or, more correctly,”was” – a good chunk of the Fisheries and Oceans Canada library in Mont-Joli, Quebec. Now it’s dumpster-filler. THIS STORY describes what’s going on at a number of Canadian government Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries where vast reams of irreplaceable data is being simply chucked as a cost-savings measure. Replace “fish” with “rockets” and “oceanography” with “aerospace,” and the story is virtually identical to what has happened time and again in the US aerospace industry.It also describes why “just digitize it” is an insufficient response.

The vast bulk of the technical information generated by and kept at United Tech near San Jose, CA (former manufacturers of the Titan SRMs) was simply chucked, either into recyclers or into vast storage facilities where the information was un-indexed and irretrievable. The main technical library, fortunately, was passed on to CPIA… or at least those bits of the library that hadn’t been appropriated by managers who came in in the last days and simply walked off with stuff (something that did *not* please the chief librarian, but she couldn’t stop it).

Man, there was a *lot* of stuff there that I wish I could’ve walked off with. I’d give someone else’s left nut for their complete CPIA Motor Manuals…

Five New Air & Space Documents

aircraft, books, drawings, drawings&documents, history, new products, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Bomber Projects No Responses »

Dec 272013

Be sure to check out the Complete Catalog for all the drawings and documents.

Saturn I Summary

A 44 page NASA brochure (from somewhen around 1965) describing all the Saturn I vehicles that were launched. Includes diagrams showing the different configurations and provides mission data and highlights.

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The Retro-Glide Booster Concept

A 20-page collection of information on the Martin-Marietta “Retro-Glide Booster,” an early Shuttle idea for using a winged and recoverable derivative of the Saturn V first stage. A 1971 NASA Space Shuttle History Project document.

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NB-36H Aircraft Descriptive Data

30 pages of Lockheed data on the Convair NB-36H (the B-36 equipped with a nuclear reactor for test purposes). This comes from the Lockheed “Competitive Data Group,” which was Lockheed’s collection of intelligence data on *other* companies designs and proposals. This report, largely hand-written, provides a program history as well as weight and dimensional data, with a number of sketches showing the general arrangement and internal layout.

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Handbook on Guided Missiles

212 pages of a 1946 War Department report on German and Japanese rocket powered missiles and aircraft. This rarely-seen classic (scanned from a photocopy) provides a vast pile of information, including a great many diagrams.

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Saturn Foldout

A NASA-Marshall publicity brochure on the Saturn V, dating to the mid-late 1960’s. Prints out full-size to 34 1/4 inches by 9 1/2 inches

2707 SST now closed

aircraft, art, blather, books, drawings, eBay, history, projects 2 Responses »

Dec 142013

For those of you following along with my email-listing updates regarding the Boeing 2707 eBay listing and how to get in on it… it has now closed. The package of proposal books, art & diagram showed up today, and now the process of scanning begins.

For those of y’all reading this going “WTF?” and wondering why you don’t know what I’m yapping about and why you’re not on the list to receive a gigabyte or so of SST stuff… probably has something to do with you not being on the emailing list.

AIAA is holding a book sale

aircraft, blather, books, history, Hmm..., news, RAINBOW to GUSTO, rockets, sales & specials, spacecraft 2 Responses »

Dec 062013

Until December 18, the AIAA is selling 25 books for $25, and ten books for $10. Some good stuff here at some pretty substantial discount. You don’t have to be an AIAA member to get the discount.

NOTE: I have no relationship with the AIAA, and don’t make a nickel off these sales. So.. if you want to buy stuff and still feel like you are Supporting The Cause, feel free to navigate to Amazon.com through the “Search’ box that’s to the upper right of this page. i get a tiny fraction of the sales prices for items purchased via search & referral. I suggest buying stuff like laptops and computers and cars and such. So long as I’m getting a small percentage, it might as well be a small percentage of a large dollar value…

The Aircraft Designers: A Grumman Historical Perspective
Michael V. Ciminera
$39.95
NOW $25!

Meeting the Challenge: The Hexagon KH-9 Reconnaissance Satellite
Phil Pressel
$39.95
NOW $25!

Space Shuttle Legacy: How We Did It and What We Learned
Roger D. Launius; John Krige; James I. Craig
$49.95
NOW $25!

Augustine’s Laws
Norman R. Augustine
$39.95
NOW $25!

100 years of Flight
Frank H. Winter and F. Robert van der Linden
$69.95
NOW $25!

Have Blue and the F-117A: Evolution of the “Stealth Fighter”
David C. Aronstein and Albert C. Piccirillo
$59.95
NOW $25!

Advanced Tactical Fighter to F-22 Raptor: Origins of the 21st Century Air Dominance Fighter
David C. Aronstein, Michael J. Hirschberg, and Albert C. Piccirillo
$49.95
NOW $25!

Aerodynamic Principles of Flight Vehicles
Argyris Panaras
$49.95
NOW $25!

Voyager Tales: Personal Views of the Grand Tour
David W. Swift
$74.95
NOW $25!

Hans Von Ohain
Margaret Conner
$54.95
NOW $25!

Road to Mach 10: Lessons Learned from the X-43A Flight Research Program
Curtis Peebles
$39.95
NOW $25!

Eleven Seconds into the Unknown
Curtis Peebles
$39.95
NOW $25!

Blazing the Trail: The Early History of Spacecraft and Rocketry
Mike Gruntman
$39.95
NOW $25!

The Rocket Company
Patrick Stiennon and David Hoerr
$34.95
NOW $25!

Rocketdyne: Powering Humans into Space
Vince Wheelcock
$39.95
NOW $25!

Space Exploration and Astronaut Safety
Joseph N. Pelton
$49.95
NOW $25!

Shades of Gray
L. Parker Temple III
$49.95
NOW $25!

Unmanned Aviation: A Brief History of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Laurence R. Newcome
$44.95
NOW $25!

Starting Something Big: The Commercial Emergence of GE Aircraft Engines
Robert V. Garvin
$39.95
NOW $25!

The Power to Fly: An Engineer’s Life
Martin Ducheny and Brian Rowe
$39.95
NOW $25!

Aerospace Engineering Education During the First Century of Flight
Barnes McCormick; Eric Jumper; Conrad Newberry
$89.95
NOW $25!

The History of North American Small Gas Turbine Aircraft Engines
Richard Leyes II; William Fleming
$49.95
NOW $25!

Methods to Extend Mechanical Component Life: Lessons Learned with Space Vehicle and Rocket Engine Components
Dieter Huzel
$44.95
NOW $25!

The Engines of Pratt & Whitney: A Technical History
Jack Connors
$49.95
NOW $25!

From Rainbow to Gusto
Paul A. Suhler
$39.95
NOW $25!

Experiments in Aerodynamics
S. Langley
$29.95
NOW $10!

Skycrane: Igor Sikorsky’s Last Vision
John A. McKenna
$39.95
NOW $10!

Hired Minds
Bryan Gardner
$19.95
NOW $10!

Terminal Chaos: Why U.S. Air Travel Is Broken and How to Fix It
George L. Donohue; Russell D. Shaver II
$29.95
NOW $10!

Space: The Fragile Frontier
Mark Williamson
$39.95
NOW $10!

Rocketeers and Gentlemen Engineers
Tom Crouch; Buzz Aldrin
$39.95
NOW $10!

The Superpower Odyssey: A Russian Perspective on Space Cooperation
Yuri Karash
$49.95
NOW $10!

Centennial of Powered Flight
Gerard Faeth
$24.95
NOW $10!

When the Airlines Went to War
Robert Serling
$24.95
NOW $10!

Advice to Rocket Scientists
Jim Longuski
$19.95
NOW $10!

Looking for report covers

aircraft, blather, books, history 2 Responses »

Nov 202013

For reasons which I suspect would seem obvious, I am looking for interesting – “iconic,” if at all possible – covers to US military reports from the WWII era up into the 80’s or so. My preference would be for 300dpi full color scans, but whatever ya got. The report itself need not be interesting… it could be a 450-page manual on proper use and maintenance of a mop for all I care. As an example, the fake cover on the recent book “Command and Control” looks like the sort of thing I’m interested in:

As further example, none of which are *quite* right, some scans of report covers I’ve come across over the years:

My preference would be for USAF reports., over USN and US Army reports, and all those over corporate reports. Internally generated NASA reports can also be good. Email, post ’em in comments, post links, email links… whatever.

Any help appreciated.
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Old-School Aerospace Reports

aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, blather, books, drawings, drawings&documents, history, news, projects, rockets, US Bomber Projects 13 Responses »

Nov 142013

A decade ago I released Aerospace Projects Review solely in printed form… in the form of simple 11X17 sheets stapled down the centerline. In recent years I’ve released it – and other aerospace documents – instead in PDF format, and also as a high-quality print-on-demand version. While the PDF versions are quick and cost effective, they don’t fit on a bookshelf. The Magcloud versions are good, but a bit limiting… one page size. No foldouts.

And one common feature of both PDF and MagCloud: They’re very “modern.” Most of the time, that’s just fine. But sometimes… old-school just seems a whole lot more appropriate.

I’ve picked up some old-fashioned report covers that use the folding metal prongs, the type that used to be pretty ubiquitous in aerospace offices. A generation and more ago, if you wanted to put out a report, or just bind together a bunch of stuff, this is what you’d use. In recent years, of course, these binders have fallen out of fashion, replaced with spiral bindings, 3-ring binders, or just plain scanned PDF documents and the like. It’s been a number of years since I’ve seen these things in the wild, either in office supply stores or in use. But they *scream* “this is how it’s done, son.” I’ve used large format versions of these on the recent X-20 Dyna Soar diagram set I out on eBay.

I’ve got the harebrained notion of making available a number of old reports, and things like Aerospace Projects Review, in this format. This is a lot of work (for me) compared to the PDF/print-on-demand options, but the end result is quite a bit different from the others. As a first test, I’ve re-worked the first four US Bomber Project issues into one publication, with the diagrams reformatted and rescaled for 11X17 foldouts. Here are photos of the first test :

If people are interested, I’ve already pulled out a fat stack of reports to release in this format (a number of Saturn program reports, aircraft pilots manuals, design studies, rocket engine manuals, etc.). Price would be variable, based on length, but they’d be less than a print-on-demand version, as well as including foldouts where appropriate. So, the question is… how much interest is there?

There is a bit more formatting needed for the US Bomber Projects version, obviously. Anyone want this prototype? Call it $20 plus postage.

Might come a time when I embark on true Aerospace Hispter Art Overload: using these binders to put together collections of cyanotype blueprints on vellum… that would be awesome.