This level of dumb irritates me

 AARRRGH, aircraft, art, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Meh., news, politics, science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 012022
 

So some guy makes an animation of a cartoonish aircraft. Fine, great, wonderful. But it’s getting an unreasonable amount of press from mainstream media who think that this is actually a serious “design” rather than what it is… just a cartoon.

Inside the nuclear-powered ‘flying hotel’ that can stay airborne for months

Inside giant flying luxury hotel that can stay in the air for years

Concept Video Imagines a Giant Nuclear-Powered Sky Hotel Airplane

Would You Take A Sky Cruise In A Nuclear Powered Flying Hotel?

It may or may not be good from a modeling and animation point of view, but it is clearly not something to be taken even remotely seriously from an engineering point of view. You might as well debate the merits of a spaceship that showed up in a “Far Side” comic.

This is modern “journalism.” The same trade that’s telling us that Trump “lunged” from the back of a limo and tried to yoink the steering wheel. Same people told us to believe without evidence “Russia collusion” and “Jan 6 was worse than 9-11.”

 

 Posted by at 9:49 pm

McDonnell Model 176 Lifting Body Crowdfund Success

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, news, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jul 012022
 

Recently APR Patrons/Subscribers and I were able to successfully crowdfund the purchase of a lot off ebay that included a few folders of vintage lifting body work. The chief prize from the lot was a *giant* blueprint of a “GTV Structure,” a manned Model 176/ FDL-7 lifting body test vehicle (“GTV” was not explained, but I suspect it means something like “Glide Test Vehicle,” designed to be dropped from an NB-52). Scanning of the lot is underway; the crowdfunders now have access to the blueprint in several forms (full size, halfsize; full color, grayscale).

 

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 Posted by at 6:46 pm

APR Rewards: June 2022

 aircraft, art, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, Patreon, projects, rockets  No Responses »
Jun 302022
 

I’ve just made the June 2022 rewards available for APR Patrons and Subscribers. This latest package includes:

Large format diagram: “X-15 Access Doors.” A North American Aviation diagram from 1956 showing all the openable panels on the port (left) side of the fuselage

Document: “Harpoon Coastal Defense System:” McDonnell Douglas brochure on a truck-launched anti-ship missile

Document: “Harpoon for Fast Patrol Boats:” McDonnell Douglas brochure on anti-ship missiles for small ships

Document: “Shorts Skyvan:” small brochure about the boxy cargo aircraft

Document: “VTOL Design – Turbojet Configurations” Northrop paper on VTOL fighters, mostly a historical review but with basic layouts for designs up to Mach 3

Document: Turbofan propaganda. A number of brochures and data sheets and such on turbofans and turbojets… PW4000, F100, JT9D-7R4, J57.

CAD diagram ($5 and up): IM-99B BOMARC surface to air missile general arrangement

 

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.



 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 11:35 pm

Boeing Model 733-606 art

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm..., Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects  No Responses »
Jun 232022
 

The Boeing 733 is *reasonably* well known as the designation for the Supersonic Transport before it got re-designated the 2707. However, Model 733 was sort of a catch-all designation for a long (numerically and temporally) series of designs covering the gamut from giant Mach 2+ SST’s down to bombers, strike aircraft and fighters. The link seems to be that the 733 started off specifically as an SST designation; but other aircraft types were designed using the same aerodynamics. A fighter that was basically a scaled-down SST might be a model 733 (such as the Model 733-605). Shown below is a reasonably commonly reproduced piece of art from the 80’s depicting what is sometimes called the Model 606; it’s actually the Model 733-606. I’ve seen diagrams for a number of aircraft based on this basic geometry; the 733-606-11 and 733-606-12 were strike aircraft. The aircraft below is generally described as an interceptor, sometimes as a supercruise research platform.

The full rez scan of this artwork has been uploaded to the 2022-06 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patrons and Subscribers.

 

 Posted by at 8:22 pm

Well, that was less than fun

 AARRRGH, aircraft, art, awesomeness, blather, drawings, eBay, history, Hmm..., Monthly Historical Documents Program, news, Patreon, projects, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jun 192022
 

There is a bit of a thrill in the last moments of any auction. I suppose it’s like gambling or sportsball-watching, neither of which I’m into, but I guess there is a similar result. Anyway, this afternoon saw the end of an Ebay listing for a lot of McDonnell manned lifting body + ASSET documentation & blueprints; this is exactly the sort of thing the APR Patreon/Subscription was created for. Having seen such auctions go for *stupid* sums in the past, I expected the same here, so I had a group of people together to crowdfund it. I was prepared, with crowdfund backing, to bid a *stupid* amount for it. And in fact I did bid a *stupid* amount (well above what I’d gathered via crowdfunding) in the last few seconds. Fortunately, the final cost was not so tragically high, so the funders only got charged a smidgeon and my tragically over-stretched credit card didn’t get demolished.

Still, those last few moments were troublesome. Because as it turns out, my cardiopulmonary system ain’t over the Pinko Pox yet, and my system *really* didn’t like that at all. That aspect of the exercise  sucked.

But hey, manned lifting body. Woo.

 Posted by at 9:57 pm

I’ll take one PBY, please

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, Hmm..., news, projects, youtube  No Responses »
Jun 182022
 

Amphibian Aerospace Industries, an Australian company, says they are going to start manufacturing new Grumman “Albatross” flying boat amphibians. The Albatross was last manufactured in 1961, so it has been a little bit of a while, but the Albatross was a good, rugged design and sixty years have not seen many fundamental changes in amphibian design or technology. The G-111T will have turboprops rather than the original radial piston engines, and modernized avionics and such… but it’ll be made out of good ol’ aluminum rather than modern composites.

Resurrecting the Albatross: Why Australia is returning to a 70-year-old seaplane

I fully support this. Unless you’re flying extremely high, close to the speed of sound or trying for VTOL performance… civilian aircraft from the 1940’s and 1950’s remain perfectly valid design choices. Subsystems such as engines have certainly improved, but the overall designs have not improved by leaps and bounds. It’s not like the C-130 isn’t still in production…

Does AAI have the staff, funds, infrastructure to manufacture this sizable aircraft in a production line capacity? I have no idea. Won’t surprise me if they fall on their faces and nothing comes of it. But if they pull it off, I would kinda demand that the US Coast Guard, US Navy, USMC and SpaceX buy a bunch of ’em. Load them to the gills with anti-landing craft missiles and sell them in vast numbers to the Japanese, Taiwanese, Philippines, South Koreans. A new UK government could make considerable use of craft like this to take out the ongoing invasion flotilla. If need be, land next to the boats and rafts, scoop ’em up, fly ’em to Utah Beach.

 

 Posted by at 7:23 pm

HOTOL Art

 aircraft, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jun 162022
 

HOTOL (HOrizontal Take Off and Landing) was a British Aerospace concept for a single stage to orbit airbreathing launch vehicle, originating in the mid 1980’s. It was a stellar example of aerospace optimism; like its contemporary the X-30 National Aerospace Plane, it relied on a propulsion system of spectacular complexity and stunning lack-of-actual-existence to function. As originally conceived it was supposed to have an RB545 engine; unlike the X-30’s scramjet engine, the RB545 was an air breathing rocket engine. Liquid hydrogen would be used to liquify incoming air, a portion of which would be turbine-fed into rocket engines to burn with the hydrogen. Due to some amazing bureaucracy, the engine was slapped with the “Official Secrets Act” which meant that it was so amazing that it had to be classified… so classified that it basically couldn’t be worked on. Genius! Whether it would have actually worked any better than NASP’s scramjet is anyone’s guess. In the going on forty years since the RB545 was dreamed up, it obviously hasn’t driven an aircraft to orbit. Or, it seems, off a runway. Like the scramjet, it *might* work, if only the development effort was properly funded and allowed to work through issues, rather than starved and throttled.

The early HOTOL configuration shown here would have taken off using a ground trolley in order to save on landing gear mass. The vehicle was nominally unmanned, though crew and passengers could be installed in a module in the cargo bay, located well aft. One problem the configuration had was substantial center of gravity and center of pressure issues, driven by the long, slim fuselage filled with sloshing and emptying hydrogen tanks. As memory serves, this remained a problem throughout the design lifetime of HOTOL.

The full rez scan of this artwork has been uploaded to the 2022-06 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patrons and Subscribers.

 Posted by at 12:43 am

A Flock of Hercs

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, youtube  No Responses »
Jun 122022
 

The C-130 is kinda like the B-52; I can’t decide whether to be impressed that a design was *so* perfect that it is still in service going on three quarters of a century after introduction… or to be depressed that we’ve refused to do better in all that time. But while the B-52 production lines closed up shop sixty years ago (1962), the C-130 is *still* in production. Slightly updated, of course.

Here are some C-130’s putting on a show in Wales.

 Posted by at 3:10 pm
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