It has been a while since I’ve put out a Pax Orionis story, but a new one has just been made available to the Pax Orionis Patreon patrons. This one tells of the maiden voyage of the Columbia and the resulting changes in geopolitics…
The bonus version (available to $2 & up patrons) includes diagrams and data on the Nova-class lofter as well as a bonus news article. If interested, check out the Pax Orionis Patreon. It’s cheap!
For those unaware: Pax Orionis is an alternate history project. In short, the Cuban Missile Crisis goes a little “funny,” resulting in the US fielding nuclear pulse propelled spacecraft (Orions). The goal is hard SF covering a number of decades of events, good, bad and really quite awful.
Here’s something I have some vague recollection of posting before, but couldn’t find after a cursory search: a sketch of the seating arrangement of a 3-man A-4 rocket (might be the A-8 derivative). This is a scan of a photocopy of a photocopy; the original photocopy was found in the files of a researcher at the NASM twenty or so years ago. It’s thought that the sketch was originally made by Werner von Braun during WWII.
Little data is provided; range is given as 500 km. *Presumably* this would have been a winged, landing-gear-equipped derivative of the A-4; replacing the warhead of the V-2 with just three guys seems like a waste of three guys, as well as a not terribly effective weapons system.
The full-rez scan (such as it is) has been made available to APR Patrons in the 2015-12 APR Extras Dropbox folder. If you’d like to help out and gain access to this and many other pieces of aerospace history, please check out the APR Patreon.
Just under the wire, rewards for November have been made available to APR patrons. Three documents and one large-format diagram, and one all-new CAD diagram, have been posted:
NASA diagram (on two sheets) of a NERVA nuclear rocket engine display model, presenting the configuration with detail and clarity
An article on a orbiting nuclear power station
A full-color brochure (via photographs) on the Convair Model 36, their entry for what became the B-36
A North American Aviation presentation on delta wings for the X-15, presenting a few different configurations
An all-new layout CAD diagram of the Bernal Sphere space colony concept
If you’d like to help out and gain access to these and past and future rewards, please check out the APR Patreon.
A few months ago, Airbus Defence and Space Sas received a US patent for a nearly hypersonic passenger transport. The vehicle has a number of different engines… rocket engines for vertical boost and acceleration, ramjets for hypersonic cruise, turbojets for subsonic flight including takeoff and landing. It would take off conventionally with turbojets, fire the rocket to shoot almost vertically to about 35 kilometers altitude (going supersonic in the process), then level off and cruise under ramjet power at Mach 4.5. The extreme altitude, about 3 times higher than normal jetliner traffic, would mean that the sonic boom should be greatly attenuated by the time it got to the surface.
The wingtip fins would rotate through 90 degrees to maintain center of pressure from subsonic through supersonic.
Unusually for a patent, this one provides dimensions. Fuselage length (dimension 11 in Figure 1) is 52.995 meters; overall length (dimension 110, Figure 3) is 57.63 meters; maximum span (dimension 126, Figure 5) is 27.188 meters.
The interior views of the vehicle show one of the problems with rocket-boosted transport aircraft: The majority of the interior volume isn’t people and cargo, but propellant.
Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon. If this sort of thing interests you, please consider signing up… not only will you help fund the search for obscure aerospace history, you’ll gain access to a lot of interesting stuff, not available elsewhere.
I released a two-part tale in the Pax Orionis series back in September, but nothing since. Partially due to travel, partially due to stress not being terribly conducive to creative writing. nevertheless, I’ve been writing, and am within spitting distance of finishing the next yarn, “The Blast from Jackass Flats.” The earlier two-parter told of an incident during the Great War of 1984 from the viewpoint of civilians on the surface, with Orion spacecraft way off in the distance; this next story deals explicitly with an important incident in the history of the Orion program. It will almost certainly be a one-parter rather than two.
Most of the Pax Orionis stories will be in different styles. This one is in the style of an author trying to tell the story from some time later. The author is perhaps overly interested in technical details…
If interested, please take a look at and consider signing on to the Pax Orionis Patreon. Only a buck!
Color artwork from NASA circa 1964 depicting Apollo-derived logistics spacecraft. The BALLOS (BALlistic LOgistic Spacecraft) was studied by several corporations such as Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas as well as NASA; the artwork was done *for* NASA, but it’s unclear if it was done *by* NASA.
The full resolution versions of these artworks have been posted into the 2015-11 folder in the APR Extras Dropbox. Please check out the APR Patreon!
All through the 1960’s – or at least up until the last few years, when “Great Society” spending ate into NASA’s budget – the assumption was that NASA would soon have numerous space stations in orbit and some preliminary lunar bases, with Mars missions soon to follow. In order to support those, NASA would have to have a cost effective means to launch sizable crews into orbit. A number of approaches were proposed, including Big Gemini and, in the end, the Space Shuttle. One approach that probably would have been quite workable was to simply scale up the Apollo capsule into something capable of holding more than three; a slight scaleup seats six, a further scaleup seats twelve. These would have been launched atop the Saturn Ib and/or Saturn V boosters, and would come with their own basic orbital maneuvering systems, and could carry up some amount of cargo in the conical transition/propulsion sections. At the end of the mission, the capsule would return to Earth for recovery, refurbishment and reuse; the propulsion module would be allowed to burn up.
Of course, none of these were ever built.
The full resolution versions of these artworks have been posted into the 2015-10 folder in the APR Extras Dropbox. Please check out the APR Patreon!
A Convair illustration of the Model 54, a proposed operational version of the NX-2 nuclear powered aircraft. The Model 54 was a missile carrier, but with an internal bomb bay. It was also strictly subsonic, so its survivability over Soviet territory would undoubtedly have been seen as minimal in the supersonic-obsessed 1950’s. By carrying long-range cruise missiles (type unclear), the Model 54 could spend days orbiting outside Soviet controlled airspace and, when war breaks out, dash in at low altitude, unleash its missiles hundreds of miles from the target (and from the air defenses), and then run home. Of course, the Model 54 was never built.
A full-rez version of this has been made available to $4+ Patrons of the APR Patreon, in the 2015-10 Extras Dropbox folder. If you’re interested in obtaining this, and/or helping the cause of preserving aerospace history, please check out the APR Patreon.
I’ve been pondering the Casaba Howitzer weapon system for a decade now. When I re-issued Aerospace Projects Review V2N2 some years back I published a few images of what I thought it might look like; since then I’ve done some rethinking. As to the weapon itself, and exactly how it worked, and how well it worked… I’ve got no data, and no good idea of how to make it work, so that hasn’t changed. But the control systems for the weapon? Those have evolved in my thinking.
Here’s an overall view of my idea for a Casaba Howitzer preparing to fire:
And here’s a layout drawing of the same:
Feel free to discuss.
The full-rez version of the layout drawing is available in the second Pax Orionis installment. If interested, check out the Pax Orionis Patreon.
Just a few minor things (conversion to PDF & EPUB, uploading, stuff like that) and the second Pax Orionis installment will be posted. This will be “The Deadliest Catch, Part Two,” the conclusion to that particular tale. The bonus will include diagrams and data on the first generation Casaba Howitzer weapon (which has evolved substantially from when i first illustrated it for the pages of APR issue V2N2, years ago), derived from the Orion pulse unit, and a short media piece that fits in with the one included last time. I plan on posting this tomorrow (Saturday).
Patrons who are signed up *before* the story is released will automatically get the story as soon as it’s published. If you sign up *after* the story is published, you won’t automatically get it… but you won’t be charged for it, either. However, patrons may purchase “back issues” for the same price, so you can catch up without any trouble. Each tale is only a buck; with the bonus diagrams and technical discussion, only one additional buck.
If interested, check out the Pax Orionis Patron.
Feel free to tell anyone you think might be interested.
