Two decades of Nuclear Pulse Propulsion

 APR, blather, history, Hmm..., Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, Pax Orionis, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Jul 062015
 

I graduated in 1995 with a degree in aerospace engineering, and promptly put that degree to good use: my first job was moving mufflers from one side of a warehouse to another. After about a week there, I got a call from a former classmate who had got himself an internship at NASA-Johnson; they wanted those of us who’d worked on a  student design project for a moon probe to come and give a presentation. So I told my boss “I’m taking next week off.” When I got back they promptly fired me for ditching work… I wasn’t exactly tore up about that. When you’ve just been given a tour of the innards of a NASA facility, shuffling mufflers seems *really* depressing.

So, I buckled down and put my degree to use getting another job: moving items off one truck and onto another truck at a UPS depot. I was the one non-union, non-management guy there. It was my task to see to it that high-value packages ($5K and up) got off Truck A and onto Truck B, but due to union regs I wasn’t allowed to touch it; I had to beg a union worker to actually carry the package, which of course they did in their own time. A spectacular setup. Truly a model of efficiency.

Anyway, one day (*roughly* this time of summer, so right at 20 years ago) a result of a Freedom of Information Act Request showed up in the mail from NASA: the Summary volume of the General Atomic Project Orion report for NASA. It was a revelation! I took it to work with me one day and read through it on my lunch break (it’s not like I had to waste time socializing during lunch, since nobody would socialize with the one non-management, non-union guy), and a thought occurred to me:

“You know, I aught to take that $1.00  3D CAD program I just bought on floppy disk for my DOS computer and draw up the 10-meter Orion, and write an article describing the concept. I bet people might buy something like that.”

That was the first time it had occurred to me to take a stab at writing aerospace history in that format. I’ve been poking away at writing about Orion ever since.

So the NPP book has been in development for twenty years now. So based on that… how long do you think it’ll take to finish Pax Orionis? Hmmm…

 Posted by at 10:47 pm

Pax Orionis Prelude: The Cuban War

 blather, books, My Fiction, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Pax Orionis, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft  104 Responses »
Jul 042015
 

Here is the first completed chunk of Pax Orionis. The irony is that I’m not sure that if I finish the work I’ll include this. What we have here is a history of the Cuban War that is the point of divergence from history as we know it to the history that results in Orion battleships fighting a massive nuclear war. The final book might not include this for the reason that it’s a big chunk of exposition that might not be needed… a book on World War II might not have a complete chapter laying out the history of World War I, but would instead just touch on bits and pieces of it. But, what the heck. I figured some of y’all might find it interesting, and some others might like to tear it apart and tell me where I’m dead wrong.

It is available in two formats… a PDF which you can DOWNLOAD RIGHT HERE, formatted for good old 8.5X11, and a Kindle epub version available at Amazon. The PDF is free; the Kindle version is the cheapest price available… 99 cents. If that seems like too much for an admittedly dry short story, don’t worry… I only get 35 cents of that.

If you read this and like it, feel free to toss a few nickles into the tip jar (notice how I haven’t put out a US Aerospace Projects since April? Yeah, pretty much this is why). And feel free to tell anybody you want that this literary masterpiece, or literary abomination, is available here. Constructive criticism – especially on factual matters, of which there are a number here I just handwaved – is appreciated.

The Cuban War.pdf

 

 

If you  don’t see the standard Amazon ad-box thing for “The Cuban War” immediately above this… it’s probably a browser issue. So, try HERE as another link.


Fiction TipJar


———–

LEGAL NOTICE:

I have, hopefully, much more coming. It is possible, though exceedingly unlikely, that it might be publishable in some form or another. And while I have a lot of ideas and plans for what’s going to happen, story-wise, I don’t plan on just giving it all away. So feel free to comment your ideas and suggestions below, but be advised that I may well already have thought the same thing. So if you don’t want to see *your* idea show up in *my* book… well, don’t post it.

This sort of thing happened 20 or so years ago with “Babylon 5.” The creator, J Michael Straczynski, used to hang out on the B-5 Usenet groups. And that was awesome. but he eventually had to bail because people were posting speculations about things that wouldn’t be seen for another year or three, and he could get in trouble if someone had posted an idea that wound up on screen, even if the idea was created entirely independently.

 Posted by at 7:45 am

The ships of Pax Orionis

 blather, books, drawings, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Pax Orionis, science fiction, spacecraft  30 Responses »
Jun 292015
 

I’ve been pecking away at various aspects of Pax Orionis lately. Most of my writing has been involved with various aspects of the history leading up to The War. I could have started with the war first, and backfilled the history after, but it seems to me better to start at the beginning, work through the course of events leading to the war, and then staging the war with the world that the history gives.

Since the US fights the war with Orion ships, I figure it’s a good idea to figure out how many ships the US has, of what type, and what their capabilities are. Below is a very preliminary chart of the ships of the USSF and NASA in chronological and to scale. Names and numbers will likely change; the designs are currently in flux. The double vertical line at the right indicates the war, so the two craft introduced after that are post-war designs.

pax orionis-Model

 Posted by at 3:45 pm

Pax Orionis: 1/10 of a novel

 blather, Hmm..., My Fiction, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Pax Orionis, science fiction  3 Responses »
Jun 212015
 

Today I finished the first really rough draft of the “Cuba” portion of Pax Orionis. It is currently one heck of a mess… part dry laying out of facts (this city gets hit with this, that city loses so many, things happen at this time, blah, blah, blah) and part Some Guy Describing What Happened. A whole lot of editing is needed, but it currently stands at over 9,000 words. Not much… but at 300 words per novel-page, that’s about 30 pages. And that’s at least ten percent of a good-sized novel right there. So… maybe this might be doable after all.

Since I have no delusions about finding a publisher for this, what I’ll probably do when it’s all edited is just post the thing in PDF form free for the downloading. And put the tip jar next to it. And put a link to an Amazon Kindle version next to that, at the cheapest price that Amazon allows (fifty cents, I think?). And see how it goes from there.

 Posted by at 10:11 pm

Sci-Fi Cyanotypes: Limited Editions

 art, awesomeness, blather, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, Hmm..., models, new products, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft  2 Responses »
May 152015
 

I’ve made a number of science fictional CAD models for Fantastic Plastic. Wonderfest, an annual hobby convention in Louisville, Kentucky, is coming up at the end of the month, and Fantastic Plastic is going to set up there. A while back I thought it might be interesting to take some of the CAD models I’ve created for current and forthcoming Fantastic Plastic model kits, specifically the Helicarrier, the Prometheus and the Messiah, and create 2D layout drawings… and then make cyanotype blueprints. Further, the blueprints would be at the same scale as the kits.

The end results? A moderately sized Helicarrier blueprint, two big Prometheus sheets (one showing the craft in flight, the other showing it in landed configuration), and one enormous Messiah blueprint, a full six feet long.

I don’t know if there is a market for such things. The Prometheus and the Messiah in particular are just gigantic. Were I to really try to commercialize them, I’d probably scale them down to at least 2/3 and more likely 1/2 the current size. Still, creating them was not a minor effort… so what the heck. I’m going to make them available for a limited time. Yes, they’re pricey. But they’re also *huge.* And a pain to make. And there won’t be very many of them on the entire planet (right now, two copies each of the Helicarrier and the Messiah; a grand total of one of the Prometheus prints).

These will be available for a two-week period, starting now. If some dark miracle occurs and I sell a hundred of them within that span, then, great! But however many, at the end of the two weeks, that’s it. All done, no more. I will total them up, and hand notate  each one as numbered limited edition (“1 of 5,” or whatever, based on the order that orders come in) plus I’ll initial each one. Because why not.

Feel free to order as many of each as you want. Don’t forget postage… and don’t forget that with this one-time postage you can order as many *other* cyanotype prints as you like.

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Prometheus prints:

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Helicarrier:

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 Posted by at 10:49 pm

Anyone skilled at “ripping” models from video games?

 art, models, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, science fiction  19 Responses »
May 122015
 

I’m interested in getting the models of the USS Bush and the ISS from the video game “Iron Sky: Invasion.” Can anyone  help out? Purpose: as aids in creating diagrams for the NPP book (which I have gotten back to working on… since finishing the Deep Impact “Messiah” model, I have created two more “pop culture Orion” models. Obviously, much simpler models than the Messiah…).

 Posted by at 1:13 pm

Messiah: Halleluiah!!

 art, awesomeness, models, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Apr 172015
 

Finally done modelling this thing. Took long enough!

2015-04-17d 2015-04-17c 2015-04-17b 2015-04-17a

The multiview layout drawing generated from the model would take a good deal of effort to clean up proper, but it’s needed for the “Nuclear Pulse Propulsion” book. Now that the model is very nearly complete (I need to convert each part, individually, into a separate STL file… bleah), I can devote more time to other stuff, including potentially getting back to work on NPP. But before I let the Messiah go entirely… anyone interested in large format blueprints based on the layout drawings?2015-04-17h

 Posted by at 1:34 am

Get 10% to 20% off APR, US Aerospace Projects, Drawings & Documents

 aircraft, APR, drawings, history, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, sales & specials, spacecraft, US Bomber Projects, US Launch Vehicle Projects, US Spacecraft Projects, US Transport Projects  No Responses »
Mar 272015
 

I have made some adjustments to the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon campaign. The first is that I’ve reduced the number of rewards levels, which I was informed was previously Too Many. More importantly, I have added some new rewards: if you become a patron at $5 or more per month, you receive 10% off all future purchases of APR, US Aerospace Projects and downloadable Documents and Drawings. If you become a patron at $10 per month, you will receive 20% off any such purchases. Check of the APR Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=197906

Additionally, the campaign has reached the point where the rewards are now *three* aerospace documents, one high-rez historical diagram and one all-new CAD diagram per month. This is in addition to the random “Extras” I throw in for $4 and up patrons. The most recent extra is a full-rez restoration of a three-view diagram of a 1978 McDonnell-Douglas concept for modifying Skylab to be serviced by the Space Shuttle. You can see a smaller-rez version of that here: http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/blog/?p=2153

If you sign up now you will get the latest rewards which include:

  • A Bell Aircraft presentation on the SR-126 Bomber Missile, a manned ICBM predecessor of the Dyna Soar
  • A Lockheed paper on the history of the Polaris to Trident Fleet Ballistic Missile
  • A large poster illustrating the missiles and rockets of the Orbital Sciences Corporation
  • An all-new CAD diagram detailing the 10-meter Orion nuclear pulse propulsion vehicle designed by General Atomic for the USAF
 Posted by at 6:36 pm
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