Ballpoint Pen Bombers

 art, awesomeness, drawings, history, humor, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Apr 232024
 

This is a little outside the usual for APR, as it is satire rather than actual aerospace design. But I thought it appropriate nonetheless; I remember dreaming up just about the exact same ideas when I was twelve. There was something about the design of those pens that just *screamed* for them to be envisioned as spaceships and missiles and whatnot.

The full-rez scan of the article, and a few more bits, been made available as a thank-you to APR Patreon and Historical Documents Program patrons at the $4 and above level, placed in the 2024-04 APR Extras Dropbox folder. If interested in this or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of aerospace histgory, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

 Posted by at 11:29 am

Gyrojet in high speed/high rez

 awesomeness, history, rockets, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Apr 102024
 

For all the documentaries and such about the 1960’s Gyrojet “rocket gun,” this is the first time I’ve seen rounds fired with this sort of clarity. The rounds cost $200 each… which once again makes me wonder why someone hasn’t decided to put them into production. If there’s a market for them at $200 each, you can bet there’d be a market for them at $20 each. And the thing is… they’re not that complex. I imagine the biggest thing holding back someone from making them is legalese and bureaucracy… many layers of government to jump through to build and sell something that I’d bet good money the US FedGuv would slap an ITAR label on for no good reason, as well as whole armies of attack lawyers lining up to line their pockets the first time a round goes off course or rapidly disassembles.

A Gyrojet round is basically four parts: a body made out of machined or extruded steel; a base made of machined steel; a propellant grain; a conventional primer. The base might be manufacturable from modern ceramics.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 11:29 pm

Bell-Boeing LHX Tiltrotor art

 aircraft, art, history, projects  No Responses »
Apr 072024
 

Artwork circa 1983 depicting a one-man combat tiltrotor tearing up a column of Soviet armor. At this time the Light Helicopter – eXperimental program included the possibility of tiltrotors as well as conventional choppers. In the end the RAH-66 won… and was then cancelled before series production. Tiltrotors showed promise, but also promised to be incredibly challenging for a single pilot to manage.

 Posted by at 11:13 pm

Coming to ebay: ships, phasers, books

 aircraft, art, books, eBay, history, nukes, science fiction, weapons  No Responses »
Mar 262024
 

Hansen’s “US Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History” is particularly nice. Contact with ridiculously generous bribes if you’re prefer not to wait:

 

 

 Posted by at 3:47 pm

Starship launch 3 videos

 awesomeness, history, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 172024
 

Giggity:

And…

 

Said it before: this is some sci-fi stuff right here.

 

From one perspective, this was another failure. The booster failed at the end… it had difficulty with engine restart for the final landing burn and either kerploded just before hitting the water, or smacked into the water going *real* fast. Starship itself broke apart during entry. So both recoverable stages failed to demonstrate recoverability. But it *did* achieve the low orbit that was intended. It demonstrated the ability to serve as an expendable launch vehicle. An incredibly capable expendable launch vehicle, much more powerful than even the Saturn V. It could start throwing massive payloads into orbit even while attempting to perfect recovery. Large numbers of Starlinks, of course… but also large numbers of, say, Brilliant Pebbles, or tanks of water, or rolls of sheet aluminum and beam builders and PV arrays.

 

 Posted by at 5:08 pm

“Midgetman” article

 APR, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, rockets, weapons  No Responses »
Mar 052024
 

I’ve just uploaded a 1986 article on the “Midgetman” road-mobile Small ICBM developed but not deployed by the US at the end of the Cold War to Dropbox for above-$10 APR Patrons/Subscribers.

 

 

This is of course on top of the monthly rewards packages and the “Extras” posted rather irregularly. If you’d be interested, consider subscribing:

https://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/monthly.htm

 Posted by at 7:19 am

Must-have coffee table

 art, awesomeness, blather, history, Hmm..., models, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Feb 242024
 

Fortunate is the man who has this coffee table. Fabulously wealthy is he if he has a woman who looks at that table and thinks “that’s awesome, I picked the right guy.”

 

It’s a spectacular piece, and I kinda really want one. However… before I’d plunk down money I don’t have for this sort of thing, I’d demand some improvements. From a distance it looks great, but in the closeup shots you can see the pretty strong layer lines. This appears to have been filament-printed, and little effort seems to have been made to smooth out a lot of it. But as a prototype, it’s fantastic.

 

It’s also interesting to point out that with 6 years worth of Star Trek to choose from, the stuff people *really* seem to like, to the point they’ll spend time, money and effort on, is the TOS and TNG stuff. A similar coffee table using the 1701D bridge? I can definitely see it. Ops from DS9? Meh. Bridges of NX-01 or Voyager? *Maaaaybe.* Kelvinverse Enterprise bridge? Unlikely. STD or SNW bridges? Literally no.

A lot of that is because the TOS and TNG designs were brilliant, while the later ones have been kinda bleh. But also, TOS and TNG are beloved. The shows themselves inspire interest in the designs. nuTrek inspire little more than dismay and fatigue.

I’d be interested to see a kickstarter for a production run of these, with the layer issues dealt with. Pretty sure it’d be far beyond my means, but I’d wish ’em well.

 Posted by at 4:33 pm

First Lunar Outpost artwork

 art, awesomeness, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Feb 202024
 

In 1992 NASA had a flurry of PR about the “First Lunar Outpost” concept which would see the US return to the moon using large lunar landers launched by a single Saturn V derived heavy lifter. A fair deal of concept art was released; much of it used the relatively new technology of computer generated imagery. Five of these images recently appeared on ebay as 16X20 prints; what the heck, I went ahead and bought them. They arrived today and I was pleasantly surprised at the production quality. They weren’t simply printouts glued to cheap foamcore, but instead are very glossy, hard plastic bonded to higher quality foamcore.

I believe I’ll have these professionally scanned and made available to APR Patrons/subscribers.

 Posted by at 3:46 pm

Orion Space Battleship

 APR, awesomeness, blather, CAD diagrams, history, Hmm..., Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, projects, rockets, weapons  No Responses »
Jan 222024
 

With all the little publications I’ve written and illustrated, and all the years of blogging ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT political opinions and the like, it seems that at least *one* of my efforts will go down through the ages: my design for the Orion Battleship. We know to a fair certainty that such a craft was designed in the early 1960s, and that a mockup the size of a car was built; we know some of the components and features of that design. But other than that… we don’t know much. The overall size and configuration are unknown. So, fifteen years ago when I was working on an article for Aerospace Projects Review about large Orion vehicles, I went ahead and made a speculative reconstruction design. I did my best with what was available… and in the years since, nothing seems to have come out to refute the design. I do not contend that the design is an accurate reconstruction; I was never able to get in touch with anyone who knew the Battleship design first-hand to confirm my reconstruction. I could well be *badly* wrong, especially since the descriptions of the original design tend to be second-hand. One day we might find out for sure.

But in the years since I showed my design to the world, I’ve seen it recreated here and there. It seems to be the accepted Actual Design.

Huh.

Behold:

That second video uses a model based on my design, more renders of which are HERE.

Shipbucket:

A purchasable 3D printed, lower fidelity copy of my design on Etsy:

 

My renders – unimpressive even by 2009 standards – even made it into meme format:

If you want to see the Orion Battleship as I designed it in its original format, check out Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N2.

 Posted by at 12:41 am

B-1A concept art

 aircraft, art, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects  No Responses »
Dec 032023
 

Black and white concept art, Rockwell illustration from the early 70’s represents the almost-final B-1A configuration, from back when being very supersonic was the goal rather than being stealthy at low altitude. Most obvious differences between this and the as-built B-1A are the ride control vanes (the small canards) and the discontinuity in sweepback angle between fixed and movable portions.

 

 

The full image  has been made available as a thank-you to APR Patreon and Historical Documents Program patrons at the $4 and above level, placed in the 2023-12 APR Extras . If interested in this piece or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

 Posted by at 8:54 am
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