NASP PR Card #5

 aircraft, art, projects, spacecraft  1 Response »
Apr 102012
 

This card shows an early McDonnell-Douglas design for NASP. A relatively fat lifting body design, this has many similarities to hypothetical “Aurora” hypersonic spyplane designs bandied about at the same time. This is not surprising… this NASP design is similar to any of a number of hypersonic configurations tested in NASA wind tunnels and shown publicly.

Note that the text on the back of the card describes a vehicle somewhat different than what NASP was supposed to be. The claim is made that the scramjets could power the vehicle Mach 25, orbital velocity… of they could allow the vehicle to cruise at Mach 6 for long range hypersonic transport. Early on in the program, the “Orient Express” was touted as a logical result of NASP work, but that quickly faded.

High resolution versions of these can be downloaded HERE.

 Posted by at 12:22 am

Who wants a big X-15?

 aircraft, awesomeness, blather, history, models, new products, rockets, spacecraft  1 Response »
Apr 062012
 

A professional colleague of mine has produced a 1/15 scale model of the X-15A-2, and can make a few more. The first part of the photos below show it sans stand; the second part shows it with a temporary stand. I understand that this particular model is spoken for, and will have a stainless steel stand. I imagine the production run will be rather small, considering the size and level of detail involved. The price he’s asking is $4,750 plus shipping. If you are interested, let me know: scottlowther@up-ship.com/blog

Some detials: the drop tanks are held on by rare earth magnets, the front tank tube opening on the body has a little hinge that you can close after droping the tanks.  The ventral fin is removable, held on with magnets, the horizontals are positionable.

And, yes, I’m quite jealous.

 Posted by at 4:24 pm

METEOR: 1956

 aircraft, art, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  4 Responses »
Apr 062012
 

One of the pleasant surprises from my recent trip to D.C. was obtaining a scan of a color version of an illustration I’ve only ever seen in B&W… the Goodyear “METEOR” spaceplane design from about 1956. This was part of a truly audacious plan put forward by Goodyear’s Darrel Romick and others to develop a “city in space,” a giant space station with artificial gravity and giant hangars for spacecraft.

The color seems to be off, due, likely, to the fading effects of half a century. But even after some “fade correction” processing, it’s clear that the spaceplane was painted red… an interesting choice.

Much more on the METEOR plan is available HERE.

A bit more on this piece of art is HERE.

 Posted by at 12:38 am

NAA SST concepts

 aircraft, projects  5 Responses »
Apr 052012
 

A photo of unfortunate quality showing a collection of supersonic transport designs from North American Aviation, circa late 1963. Note that this is about 50 years ago, and each of these designs still look futuristic.

 Posted by at 12:39 pm

Bell Hypersonic Rocket Transport

 aircraft, art, projects, rockets  3 Responses »
Apr 032012
 

In 1960, Bell Aircraft released several paintings depicting a two-stage hypersonic passenger transport. The first stage was a multi-engined supersonic jet of fairly conventional configuration (though with very large 50,000 lb-thrust turboramjet engines), carrying on its back a rocket-powered second stage. The second stage was clearly influenced by Bell work on the Dyna Soar program.

The carrier would transport the second stage to an altitude of 20 miles and 5,300 mph. After release, the second stage would boost to 40 miles and speeds up to 15,000 miles per hour, permitting travel times from Los Angeles to Paris of one hour and four minutes for the thirty passengers on board. The vehicle was intended to enter service in the 1980-1990 timeframe.

Weight for the combined vehicle at takeoff would be 750,000 pounds. Span of the booster was 150 feet, length 200 feet. It’s unclear if this was a serious engineering design or purely speculative. Paintings and a display model show some notable differences.

A high-rez of this can be downloaded HERE.

 Posted by at 9:33 am

What’s wrong with this picture?

 AARRRGH, aircraft, art  15 Responses »
Mar 272012
 

A Lockheed artists impression of the L-1011 jetliner. Notice something a little amiss?

UPDATE:

Interesting set of errors that commenters compiled. But what originally jumped out at me was the incredibly small cockpit canopy. I don’t know if this was an error on the artists part (if so, rather a big and blatant one), or if this was some sort of editorial choice. By making the cockpit look small, the aircraft looks large. To me, the aircraft shown in the painting looks to be the size of the A380, if not larger.

 Posted by at 6:32 pm

Monuments, jets and fog

 aircraft, blather, photography  1 Response »
Mar 272012
 

While roaming the Mall on Sunday, I saw a number of planes fly behind the Washington Monument. They were banking hard… I guess the flightpath out of Reagan National would naturally cause jetliners to fly too close to downtown D.C., and they have to bank in a hurry so’s Homeland Security doesn’t shoot ’em down. Or something like that…

Anyway, all the way from the NASM to the Monument, the sky was overcast. That made some of the jetliners pretty spectral, and put a gray cast over everything. It’s interesting to see how the colors in the stone pop out when a little bit of Fade Correction is added to the photos.

Perhaps interestingly, the skies opened up and the sun came out right as I was passing the monument.

 Posted by at 6:22 pm
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