Rotating space station art

art, history, Patreon, projects, spacecraft No Responses »

Aug 282018

An artists concept of a rotating space station circa 1962. It has a NASA ID number but it *may* be North American Aviation, as they designed a space station essentially identical to this, as described and illustrated in an article written by Dennis R. Jenkins for Aerospace Projects Review issue V1N6. This space station was designed to be launched as a single payload atop a two-stage Saturn V; it would unfold once in orbit to form the pseudo-toroidal shape. This piece of art depicts a central docking hub that must have been intended to be rotationally decoupled from the station. The space station must have been non-rotating at the point in time illustrated, or those spacewalking astronauts are going to have an interesting time doing their job.

A high-rez scan of this piece of art has been uploaded to the 2018-08 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

XP-55 Ascender Cutaway

aircraft, art, drawings, history, Patreon No Responses »

Aug 152018

The Curtiss-Wright XP-55 Ascender was a tailless fighter design from WWII. It was intended to be an improvement on then-current designs in terms of performance, but proved to be disappointing. After years of development and flight testing, it was overtaken by jet propulsion and failed to make it into production.

I have made the much-larger full-rez scan of the cutaway available to $10+ APR Patreon patrons. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Bell fold-back tiltrotor

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Aug 122018

A photo of a 1960’s Bell Helicopter concept for a high-speed tiltrotor. In this design the aircraft would operate in hover and low speed much like the V-22, but at higher speeds the prop-rotors would stop rotating and fold back to reduce drag. Forward thrust would be provided by pure jet exhaust from the convertible turboshaft engines within the fuselage.

I have uploaded high-rez scans of the color glossy photo to the 2018-08 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patrons at the $4 level and up.

If you are interested in this image and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. What else are you going to spend $4 a month on? Taxes? Bah. Invest in the APR Patreon instead.

PDF Review: Feasibility of Nukes vs Solar…

history, Hmm..., nukes, Patreon, projects, science, spacecraft No Responses »

Aug 042018

…for extracting water from rocks on the moon. This dates from 1963-65 and was part of a North American Aviation study relate to post-Apollo lunar exploration… which at the time was fully expected. The LESA (Lunar exploration Systems for Apollo) program would land habitats on the moon for extended exploration; the later phases of the LESA program were expected to occur in the late 1970.s The conclusion was that solar was preferred for the earliest phases, transitioning to nuclear. Basically, either system would cook rocks till the water came out as a thin vapor, which would be collected.

In the more than fifty years since this came out, the technologies involved haven’t changed a whole lot, especially solar: it remains a mirror and sunlight. Nukes should – hopefully – have improved. So it might still be a bit of a tossup on the moon; of course, any long-term lunar exploration is going to need nukes anyway for the simple reason that two weeks of night is a *real* long time if your base is solar powered. Going further out – asteroids, outer planet moons, comets and such – the math increasingly works in nuclears favor. But then, what’s needed is power, and mirrors in microgravity can be made extremely large.

It’s an interesting report. If not for the technology and techniques described, then for the basic worldview that suggested to engineers more than half a century ago that they’d soon have to crack water out of lunar rocks.

A Study of the Feasibility of Using Nuclear Versus Solar Power in Water Extraction from Rocks.

Direct PDF download link.

Help support the APR Patreon.

PDF Review: “Fluorine Systems Handbook”

history, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft 2 Responses »

Jul 092018

here was a time when rocket engineers and launch vehicle/spacecraft designers felts reasonably comfortable proposing the use of propellants that today would be considered *insane.* One of these was fluorine, an oxidizer so powerful that it will oxidize *oxygen.* Liquified it is denser than LOX and provides a higher specific impulse than LOX when burned with the same fuels. On paper, liquid fluorine is spectacular. In reality, fluorine is toxic and just about all of the combustion compounds are toxic (burn it with hydrogen and you get hydrofluoric acid, which will eat your bones). Fluorine has the added bonus that it will merrily combust with a whole lot of structural materials, so you have to be careful in your design and preparation for tanks, pumps, lines, etc.

Consequently, it was important to know your stuff. To that end, Douglas Missile & Space Systems Division produced a Fluorine Systems Handbook.

This Handbook contains criteria for the design of airborne fluorine feed
systems and associated components. Two types of information are presented:
1) philosophical information defining general methods, and 2) detailed specifications
and procedures. Although the major emphasis has been upon
criteria for components exposed to elemental fluorine, the information is
general applicable to systems utilizing other cryogenic oxidizers which contain
fluorine as a constituent.

So if you are planning on fueling your rocketship with liquid fluorine… here ya go. You’re welcome.

Fluorine Systems Handbook

June 2018 APR Patreon Rewards

aircraft, art, history, nukes, Patreon, projects, spacecraft 1 Response »

Jun 302018

In just under the wire for June, 2018 are the rewards for APR Patreon patrons. Included this month:

A sizable January, 1945 technical description of the YP-80 “Shooting Star” by Lockheed. 300 or so pages, filled with illustrations of the aircraft and components.
“On The Utility of the Moon in Space Transportation: the Lunatron Concept.” A 1963 NASA concept for using an electromagnetic accelerator to hurl payloads from the lunar surface onto high energy trajectories, up to solar system escape.
A scan of a large-format Sikorsky lithograph of an ABC (advancing blade concept) VTOL airliner (basically a 727 fuselage turned into a high-speed helicopter).
An all-new CAD diagram of the Soviet Chelomei LKS spaceplane with an inboard profile showing the military (nuclear bombardment) payload. The first in a series on the LKS.

If you are interested in helping to preserve (and get copies of) this sort of thing, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

“Life With Lockheed”

aircraft, history, Patreon, projects 3 Responses »

Jun 302018

In 1959 Lockheed printed up a self-promotion booklet to sell to new and prospective employees the advantages of their Georgia facility. It includes a lot of photos showing the joys of working in the deep south in the era before universal adoption of air conditioning while wearing three piece suits and ties, as well as photos and art of the various facilities, aircraft and projects then at work at Lockheed-Georgia.

I have posted the full-rez scan of the booklet, available to $10+ APR Patreon patrons. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Reusable Atlas model photos

history, models, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft 4 Responses »

May 182018

In the 1960’s, prior to the Space Shuttle program, General Dynamics/Convair studied using the Atlas ICBM as a space launch system. no surprise there. But one concept called for a nearly fully reusable Atlas, equipped with wings, jet engines, landing gear and a cockpit to recover the booster in one reusable piece. It would be topped with either an expendable Centaur and satellite/space probe upper stage or a smallish manned lifting body spaceplane with its own built-in propulsive capability. At the time General Dynamics released sizable “educational” cards with information and photos of models of the reusable Atlas. Unlike the normal Atlas, this version did not drop the outboard “booster’ engines, but kept them throughout the mission. An inflatable, deployable afterbody was proposed to fair over the engines after burnout to reduce base drag.

I have uploaded righ-rez scans of both sides of this poster-sized card to the 2018-05 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patrons at the $4 level and up.

Additionally, a report on this concept is available as Space Doc 52.

If you are interested in these Reusable Atlas model images and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. What else are you going to spend $4 a month on?

Convair VL-3A model photos

aircraft, history, models, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Spacecraft Projects 2 Responses »

May 102018

The Convair VL-3A was a 1966 concept for a space station logistics spacecraft. It was a sleek, flat-bottomed lifting body featuring a twin tail and flip-out wings that would deploy shortly before landing to reduce the landing speed. It would be fitted with flip-out turbofan engines for range extension, self-ferry and control during landing. General Dynamics released sizable “educational” cards with information and photos of models of the spaceplane showing how the wings would deploy from within the lower fuselage.

I have uploaded righ-rez scans of both sides of this poster-sized card to the 2018-05 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patrons at the $4 level and up.

I also wrote about and illustrated the VL-3A in US Spacecraft Projects #2, showing the general arrangement of the design along with the disposable propulsion stage and the launch configuration atop the Titan III.

USSP #02 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $6:

If you are interested in thes VL-3A model images and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. What else are you going to spend $4 a month on?

Huh.

history, Hmm..., Patreon, projects, spacecraft 1 Response »

May 032018

With recent hair-pulling issues, other things have fallen by the wayside of have been forgotten, ignored, etc. But this morning I noticed something vaguely interesting, if not terribly exciting.

A week-ish ago I bought a document off of eBay. Normally I wouldn’t have bought this *specific* document, because it’s available on the NASA tech report server. No point in spending money on something that’s available for free. But I bought it because the NASA PDF is, like a lot of them, scanned rather poorly, especially the art and diagrams. The intent is to scan the graphics from this and make it available to APR Patrons. The document is a 1980 DOE/NASA conference proceedings on the solar power satellite program.

The document is in fairly good shape except for a torn-off corner on the aft cover:

I saw the mailing label on the aft cover. The conference proceedings were originally mailed to one Peter Glaser of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Something about the name seemed familiar, so off to Wikipedia. Turns out he has his own entry:

Peter Edward Glaser (September 5, 1923 – May 29, 2014) was a Czechoslovakian-born American scientist and aerospace engineer. He served as Vice President, Advanced Technology (1985–94), was employed at Arthur D. Little, Inc., Cambridge, MA (1955–94); subsequently he served as a consultant to the company (1994–2005). He was president of Power from Space Consultants (1994–2005). Glaser retired in 2005.^[1]

OK, not too surprisng that the guy who originally owned this conference proceedings on the Solar Power Satellite program back in 1980 would ahve been an aerospace engineer. but here’s the one kinda interesting bit:

In 1968 he presented the concept for,^[6] and in 1973 was granted the US patent on,^[7] the Solar Power Satellite to supply power from space for use on the Earth.

Huh. Turns out the SPS document I just bought was originally owned by the guy who patented the SPS.

Not world shatteringly important, just kinda spiffy.

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