An idea whose time has passed?

 aircraft, blather, projects, spacecraft  5 Responses »
Nov 222011
 

Today , before things went to hell when I got home, I was looking around an office supply store for… ummm… office supplies. Specifically, inkjet business cards. I’m making a few desultory attempts to sell a few of my photo prints, and I’ve printed out a number of business cards using some of my photos as backgrounds. Yay.

I noticed that along with 2X3.5 business cards, also available are postcards, 4.25X5.5, and plain cardstock. And for no readily apparent reason I flashed back to when I was a kid, lo these many long years ago. In those days long before the interweb tubes, I had a few collections of  “trading card” type informational… things. Not really sure what to call ’em. One was a box of cards each showing a photo and providing info on one of a vast number of animals (dinosaurs included), and another that had cards on various airplanes, tanks, etc.

It dawned on me that the same desktop publishing that lets me crank out my own business cards would allow me to produce “trading cards” of, say, aerospace projects. Art/photo on one side, a small 3-view & data on the other side.

I have little doubt that such a thing – especially with the data available to me today – would have sold well back when I was a kid. But sadly, I suspect that the market for them *today* would be minimal at best.

Irony. Now that I have the technical capability of doing something, the reason for doing so has evaporated.

 Posted by at 11:48 pm

A-12 Avenger II: bits of it are for sale

 aircraft, news, projects  2 Responses »
Nov 212011
 

It looks like Purdue University in Indiana has the canopy from a McDonnell-Douglas A-12 Avenger II, and they’ve put it up for auction. Only a few hours left, so if this is what you’ve been needing to finish that A-12 in the garage… here ya go.

Jet Fighter Canopy

Thought to be from the canceled McDonnell Douglas A-12 Avenger II project, this canopy was obtained through the acquisition of a trailer to which the canopy was mounted. This is a wiki link to the failed A-12 II project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger_II.

Included is the canopy as pictured and a small box of miscellaneous parts. The large plastic wrapped item visible in some of the pictures is not part of the canopy and is not included with this auction.

Bidders may inspect the property prior to bidding.


 Posted by at 12:02 pm

B24-B recoverable pump-fed booster

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Nov 212011
 

A North American Rockwell design from March of 1971 for a Phase B Shuttle design. The Orbiter and the External Tank are certainly recognizable, but the solid rocket boosters are here replaced with a single liquid propellant booster located underneath the external tank. Equipped with four uprated F-1 rockets engines, it had the same tank diameter as the S-IC stage from the Saturn V. The Orbiters engines would ignite after first stage separation.  With a gross liftoff weight of 5,274,000 pounds, payload was 40,000 pounds into polar orbit. Splashdown weight of the booster was 460,000 pounds.

…

 Posted by at 12:04 am

Early F-15 Art

 aircraft, history, projects  5 Responses »
Nov 202011
 

A piece of concept art from McDonnell-Douglas showing an early design for the F-15.

The most obvious difference from the final design is the wholly different main wing planform. Almost as obvious is the pointier nose. Less obvious, at this stage the design had two fairly substantial ventral fins directly under the dorsal vertical stabilizers… and the engine nozzles were 2-dimensional vectoring nozzles much like those in use on the F-22.

…

 Posted by at 11:00 am

GE YF120 part 1

 aircraft, history, photography  2 Responses »
Nov 172011
 

Sitting next to the YF-23 at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH (or at least it was a few years ago) is an example of the General Electric YF120. The YF120 was in competition with the Pratt & Whitney YF119; both the YF-23 and the YF120 lost their respective competitions. The YF120 was an advanced engine, capable of efficient operation at low speed as well as supersonic. As shown here, it was equipped with a vectoring nozzle providing pitch axis control. Thrust was around 35,000 pounds.

 Posted by at 8:15 pm

ADAM Airliner

 aircraft, models, projects  No Responses »
Nov 172011
 

A photo of a display model of a Vought transport aircraft using the ADAM (Air Deflection And Modulation) system for vertical thrust. Note six small turbojets – two in the forward fuselage, four in wingtip pods – drive four large fans embedded in the wings. Process essentially the same as the V-460 design.

Thanks to Mark Nankivil.

 Posted by at 11:58 am

What a way to run a railroad

 AARRRGH, aircraft, Crazy, dumbassery, news  2 Responses »
Nov 172011
 

Wow.

Passengers on plane from India to Birmingham forced into £20k whip-round for fuel after they’re told ‘pay up or you won’t get home’

Let me translate that from Brit-gibberish into good ol’ American:

Passengers, who had already paid their tickets for a flight from India to England, were forced to come up with £20,000 in cash in Vienna because their airline had not paid its bills. Without the cash, their 757 would not have been able to  get the fuel it needed. So the passengers were escorted off the plane into the airport to the nearby ATM’s to withdraw cash to pay up.

That’s a paddlin’.

 Posted by at 7:53 am

Win a flight to space

 aircraft, awesomeness, contest, news, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Nov 152011
 

XCOR Aerospace and the Southwest Research Institute will award a research flight on board the XCOR Lynx suborbital spaceplane to one paid registrant at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference. This conference will be held February 27-29, 2012, in Palo Alto, California.

The contest rules are HERE.

I bet these guys are going to be in the running:

Of course, they’d better keep an eye out for someone trying to game the system…

 Posted by at 5:03 pm
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