Here’s a YouTube video from a year ago, some guy flew from Bangkok to Hong Kong on an Emirates Airlines A380 and paid the rather measly sum of $550 to get a first class “suite.” And damn, they went all-out. It looks like the flight was fairly short, but for long trans-Pacific flights the ability to have a bed and a *shower* would be all kinds of awesome.
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I recently received some more cyanotyping fluid, and have been busy cranking out prints to fill a few straggling orders, and doing test runs of prints for my next set of releases. Several from the first run have sold zero; a few sold as many as four (Oh yeah, ladies, I’m all that). So for the next set, I’d like to get an idea in advance what will be more popular, so I can make more of those. If you see something here that really appeals to you, comment and let me know.
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A set of three NASA diagrams of the Space Shuttle showing heat shielding. This will be sold *only* as a full set of three, for $25. If this isn’t popular, then I’ll be really confused.
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Here are:
Nuclear Turbojet, XMA-1A, exploded view. Kind of a pain to produce, so this will be $12.50.
Dyna Soar Characteristics Summary. I did this one just as a test to see if it looked at all good, and I think it does. I have a whole bunch of Standard Aircraft Characteristics sheets that I think would look good… if the idea appeals, set three may have a bunch. $10.
F-82 cutaway artwork. I think it looks *fantastic.* $10.
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Ganswindt’s Weltenfahrzeug from the turn of the last century. Sort of a dynamite-powered Orion. $10.
NEXUS with gas-core nuclear upper stage engines. $10
Super-NEXUS with gas-core nuclear engines and a million pounds of *lunar* payload. $10. I have several more NEXUS-derived designs if these are popular.
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Early Dyna Soar atop clustered Minuteman booster artwork. $10.
XMA-1A nuclear turbojet illustration. $10.
Model 54 CAMAL nuclear-powered missile carrier three-view. $10.
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Bell SR-126 “bomber missile” illustrations. $10 each or $17.50 for the set.
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ICARUS illustrations. $10 each or $17.50 for the pair.
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If any of these are of interest, let me know.
While the December 1961 configuration of General Dynamics’ TFX proposal was quite different from what was actually built as the F-111, the April 1962 configuration was quite close, though still not final. This diagram shows both designs. The most obvious changes are for positioning of the wings further forward, and the substantial increase in size of the horizontal stabilizers.
At Mach 3+, the SR-71 would get blisteringly hot. This was not due to “friction” with the air as is often claimed, but due to compression of the air. In effect, the SR-71 was a bloody great hammer smashing air molecules; since it was moving three times the speed of sound, the molecules simply could not flow out of the way and instead were compressed to many times normal density and shoved out of the way. The compression occurred quickly enough that the heat built up in the process could not radiate away, and instead was conducted to the skin of the plane.
Interestingly, the hottest part of the plane – apart from the engines – was the one part that the engineers and pilots most wanted to keep cool: the cockpit.
A basic schematic showing the operation and parts of the General Electric TF-39 high bypass turbofan engine, from the C-5A Galaxy flight manual.
The F-111 was one of those aircraft for which a *vast* number of designs were put forth. While General Dynamics won the contract, they went through a long design development for their final design. As of December 1961, the design was clearly *almost* the F-111 as it would eventually be built, but not quite:
The planned X-15A-3 was to be a stretched X-15 with delta wings and increased performance (up to Mach 8). As a result of the higher speeds, it would get pretty warm over most of the skin, requiring advanced high-temperature materials.
What do we have here?
Why, it’s a C-17 accidentally landing at the wrong airport. More importantly, it’s a really *small* airport, with a runway too short for a C-17 to technically take off from:
[youtube IaqVan6vnIs]
So, what do you do if you’re the USAF and you have a cargo plane on a too-short runway? Well, you unload the cargo, replace the Dumbass Pilot with a Hotshot Pilot, and tell the rulebook about what runway length is needed to Get Bent.
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I have this artwork… and nothing else. It depicts a VTOL aircraft that apparently uses augmenter technology for vertical thrust, and has an air cushion landing system. These would seem to place the design in the late 1960′s, maybe early 1970′s. That was when Bell was pushing air cushion landing systems hard… and before the spectacular failure of the augmenter-wing XFV-12.
It seems to be armed to the teeth with guns, but doesn’t seem to have space for much of anything else.
A few years ago I found this in Jay Miller’s giant stack of stuff down in Arkansas. It was devoid of context, just a loose photocopy. Most likely it represents some Bell Helicopter illustrator having some fun spoofing the modifiability of the Bell 206 JetRanger helicopter. I’m guessing this dates to the 1980’s.
