The most useless machine in the universe. So far.

 art, Hmm..., science, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 022022
 

A gearbox with a gear ratio of ten to the power of 169. The last gear will *never* turn once; it’s unlikely to turn even a detectable amount. Not just because there are probably no plans to hook the *first* gear up to a perpetual motion machine, but the fact that mo matter how fast it’s spun, that last gear will succumb to proton decay before it could turn the least bit. never mind the fact that it’s made of plastic and will crumble to dust in less than geological timescales.

Someone will doubtless improve upon this.

 Posted by at 1:13 am

APR Rewards: October 2022

 aircraft, APR, art, CAD diagrams, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Nov 012022
 

The October 2022 rewards are available for APR Patrons and Subscribers. This latest package includes:

Large format art: A Bell Aerospace painting of the D188A VTOL fighter/bomber

Document: “Standard Aircraft Characteristics – Convair Class VF Seaplane Night Fighter (SKATE)” diagrams and data for seaplane jet fighter

Document: “21St Century Aerospace – The 20th Century Challenge,” General Dynamics presentation, late 80’s about hypersonics/NASP. From photographs.

Document: “Prototype X-14 VTOL Aircraft,” Bell Aerospace presentation, 1971, on the “SeaKat” operational naval VTOL. From photos, but art and diagrams were also scanned for clarity.

CAD Diagram ($5 and up): XB-70 Valkyrie forward fuselage configuration

 

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.



 Posted by at 1:30 am

Orbital Transfer Vehicle

 art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 302022
 

A Boeing concept from 1983 for an Orbital Transfer Vehicle. This vehicle would change the orbit of the payload not only propulsively, but by using aerodynamic drag to slow the vehicle at perigee. When returning a payload from geosynchronous orbit, it would dive into the upper atmosphere and use aerodynamic lift and drag to slow into a much lower orbit, with propulsive adjustments to put it into a circular orbit for rendezvous with a space Shuttle for recovery or servicing. This particular design was inflatable (creating a lifting body akin to a stretched-out “ASSET” shape) and used an extendable/stowable nozzle. Note that it is entering “upside down” so that the lift forces generated are trying to force it *closer* to Earth, rather than trying to bounce off the atmosphere.

 

Orbital velocities at geosynchronous are  slower than in low Earth orbit… about half the speed. So a relatively small change in velocity at geosynchronous will turn the circular orbit into a sharply elliptical one, with a perigee close to Earth. But that velocity at perigee is much faster than circular orbit velocity, so shedding speed using “free” aerodynamic forces makes sense… if you can pull it off.

 Posted by at 8:11 am

This is *spectacular*

 art, awesomeness, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Oct 292022
 

YouTube is filled to overflowing with “fan edits” of this or that movie, or fan-made videos showing spaceships from Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Battlestar Gallactica, etc. The quality of these vary greatly. Lots are *terrible.* But every now and then, you get THIS:

It’s a reworking of the “launch” scene from Star Trek VI. The original was fine, but this is *way* better. And note that the artist didn’t decide to redesign the Enterprise or Spacedock; he respected the canon.

 Posted by at 3:19 am

Art DOOOOOOOOOOM

 art, blather, Hmm..., politics, science, War With The Deep Ones, youtube  No Responses »
Oct 262022
 

It’s a long video, but it’s interesting to listen to an artist rail against AI text-to-image art generators. The guy knows that his field is as endangered as a factory workers; even if AI never get *quite* as good as human artists (doubtful), the sheer volume of art – images, music, videos, whole movies – will simply overwhelm the pitiful output that a finite number of humans can produce. Hell, my “War With The Deep Ones” stories, currently something like 400 pages, could be overwhelmed by ten thousand pages of adequate AI-generated content on the same subject in a matter of seconds. Once AI “writers” are there, I stand no chance of making a dime off fiction. I suspect it won’t be too long before “US Supersonic Bomber Projects” could be written and fully illustrated by an AI, with a thousand-page tome full of readable, factually accurate descriptions and beautiful general arrangements and inboard profiles and full-color 3D renderings. Humans like myself have some current advantages due to the fact that most of the archives are not scanned and available online… but *that* probably won’t last long. On the other hand… as AI start taking history-writing jobs away from humans, these humans will have neither the incentive nor the funds to go to archives or pay archives to scan stuff. So it may be that a number of archives end up closing the doors and turning off the lights due to lack of interest. And thus history that *could* be written won’t be.

Hmmm.

 Posted by at 7:25 pm

JVX Art

 aircraft, art, history, projects  No Responses »
Oct 252022
 

Bell artwork circa 1983 depicting the proposed JVX tiltrotor, which would become the V-22 Osprey. The cockpit and the sponsons display the greatest obvious differences from the aircraft that would eventually be built, but the design seems to be largely just about there.

 

 Posted by at 6:05 pm
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