Apr 212021
 

Another Boeing concept for the recovery of an S-IC stage. This used large fins with deployable drag brakes to stabilize the stage nose-down, parachutes to slow descent and sizable rocket motors for terminal braking just before splashdown. Additional rockets arrest the stages “collapse” to the side.

Would a Falcon 9-style landing have been better? Sure. But that wasn’t going to happen with 1960’s technology. A splashdown, recovery and refurbishment would have been expensive, but likely not as expensive as a brand new stage, and as has been the case with Falcon 9, as time goes by and experience grows, everything would get better and cheaper.

 

 Posted by at 9:53 pm
Apr 142021
 

I’m kinda swamped with actual aerospace history stuff to do. But at some point, that will probably come to an end (at least a temporary pause), at which point I will launch back into producing US Bomber Projects, US VTOL Projects, US Launch Vehicle Projects, etc. But another idea occurs: a somewhat similar sort of publication but on fictional aircraft. Why? Why not.

What I’m thinking right now is to limit it to:

1: Aircraft, not spacecraft
2: Movies and TV, not books, comic books, etc.
3: The aircraft must be at least mostly realistic
4: The time setting: from any time in the past to the relatively near future

What I’d kinda like to do is produce not just the sort of diagrams I usually produce (with an eye towards model makers), but technical specs and, if at all possible, “in universe” descriptions. Descriptions that could conceivably put all the designs into the same universe. probably formatted for printing in 8.5X14 or 11X17

.The list as it currently sits:

1: “Starflight One”
2: BV-38 Flying Wing, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”
3: Switchblade, “I Spy”
4: “Blue Thunder”
5: “Airwolf”
6: “Firefox”
7: Whispercraft, “The 6th Day”
8: Luckup Peacemaker “Deal of the Century”
9: F-19, “Deal of the Century”
10: Skyfleet S570, “Casino Royale”
11: Rutland Reindeer, “No Highway in the Sky”
12: Willis JA-3, “Chain Lightning”
13: B-3, “Broken Arrow”
14: F/A-37 Talon, “Stealth”
15: EDI UCAV, “Stealth”
16: Hyperion airship, “Island at the Top of the World”
17: VTOL corporate jet, “Contact”

So… thoughts? Something of interest, or a giant “meh?” And are there any designs I’ve forgotten?

There are other designs I’ve considered but seem to be beyond the scope… the aerial HK’s from Terminator 1 &2, the numerous MCU aircraft, the Orion III spaceplane from “2001,” *anything* from Gerry Anderson, etc.

 Posted by at 8:53 pm
Mar 312021
 

Just released, the March 2021 rewards for APR Patrons and Subscribers. Included this month:

Diagram/art: a large format scan of an artists concept of the XC-14. This was printed with a large number of signatures; they seem to be Boeing engineers.

Document 1: “Project Hummingbird.” An FAA document summarizing the characteristics of STOL and VTOL aircraft circa 1961, including bogh built and proposed types. This was scanned from a clean original!

Document 2: “The Thor Missile Story.” Old, old, incredibly old school media… a film strip propaganda piece about the statues of the Thor IRBM.

CAD diagram: the WWII era German DFS 228 rocket powered high altitude recon plane, proposed operational version.

 

 

 

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.




Because I forgot to mention the January and February rewards… subscribers/patrons got these (new subscribers can order them as back issues):

January 2021: Titan IIIC/IIIM booster rockets; CAD diagram of Post-Saturn concepts; a Convair Heavy Bombardment Airplane brochure; a fractional XF-103 mockup review and technical description; a fractional Westland paper on VTOL; a General Dynamics report on a proposed turboprop transport for Saturn stages.

February, 2021: An Aerion SST brochure; a Lockheed SST diagram; Dornbergers report on a commercial rocket powered airliner (scanned from a clean vintage copy); an early Convair jet flying boat bomber brochure; a CAD diagram comparing General Atomics’ ten-meter Orions for the USAF and NASA.

 Posted by at 5:13 pm
Mar 302021
 

So about 2 weeks ago I posted yet another YouTube video that appropriated one of my diagrams without attribution. I sent the video maker emails asking about it, but received no response. Now, I have *no* problem with people using my diagrams to illustrate articles, books, videos, etc. about those subjects; all I ask is attribution. Hell, I don’t even demand *money*, just… let readers & viewers know where ya got it… and asking in advance is just common courtesy.

These diagrams are copyrighted; they are a sizable fraction of my income. It was pointed out to me that if you don’t make an effort to protect your copyright, you can *lose* that copyright. So, I took the one option that was available to me: I filed a copyright complaint with YouTube. I didn’t expect much to come of it, but, lo and behold, this is what you get if you spool up the video today:

The copyright strike takedown system gave the video maker a full week to fix the issue. A fix that could have been made by simply adding a note in the description of the video. But… no such effort was made. I never heard a thing from the maker. So a video with a few hundred thousand views went *poof.* This baffles me: surely YouTube must have in some way informed the video maker about the complaint in progress, the looming takedown? If so and the creators blew it off… well, that’s on them. But if YouTube didn’t inform them, that would seem to be on YouTube. I’ve heard a lot of complaints from video creators about the copyright strike system, so maybe that’s it.

For future reference: if you want to use one of my diagrams in one of your products, do two things:

1: Ask in advance… I’ll almost certainly say “yes.”

2: Say where the diagram came from… “Scott Lowther” or “US Bomber Projects” or “aerospaceprojectsreview.com.” It’s not that hard.

If you take one of my diagrams and incorporate it in a way that makes it come off as *your* work, though, I will take offense.

 Posted by at 2:35 pm
Mar 172021
 

Somehow or other, yet another YouTube video has been produced on the giant nuclear powered Lockheed CL-1201. Seems strange that after all this time this rather obscure design is suddenly getting traction… it’s almost as if YouTubers watch and copy each other. Wheird.

Anyway, *imagine* my surprise to find that the video has one of my copyrighted diagrams in it, without attribution, lightly modified and dumbified. Huh.

Video diagram:

My diagram, taken from Aerospace Projects Review issue V1N3 and US Transport Projects #4:

Yay, I guess? Would be nice if people made some effort to acknowledge where their stuff comes from.

 

 Posted by at 9:10 am
Mar 012021
 

APR Patrons and Subscribers today helped crowdfund the purchase of a Boeing blueprint, an inboard profile diagram of the 2707-300 SST. An overly expensive item became reasonably affordable, and will be provided to each of the funders as high resolution scans in full color (and cleaned-up grayscale).

If you’d like to be involved in helping to preserve this sort of aerospace rarity, consider singing up for the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon or the Monthly Historical Documents Program.

 Posted by at 8:21 pm
Mar 012021
 

From Polaris through Poseidon to Trident D-5:

Every one of those was proposed for alternate roles, from truck-towed and truck-launched land based strike missiles to air-launched and ground-launched satellite boosting systems. And they very likely *could* have done that. But they are just not really well suited for any role but sea launched ballistic missile due to the somewhat tricky propellants they use… high energy propellants so they can function adequately while still being able to fit in a small submarine. But for above-ground systems, they’d be somewhat dubious. The environment within a submarine is pretty consistent. For a missile stored in a warehouse and then hauled aloft by an airplane? The thermal and vibration environments will be highly variable.

 Posted by at 4:31 pm
Feb 192021
 

Recently for sale on ebay was a display model of the Saro “Princess” turboprop flying boat, as Convair planned to modify it into a nuclear-powered research prototype. This late 50’s design was ballsy if nothing else: a nuclear reactor would be installed within the fuselage, providing superheated air from the reactor to the inboard above-wing modified turboprops. Unlike the NB-36H, this aircraft would have been actually powered by the reactor.

A description of the concept was written up HERE. A set of detailed diagrams are available as Air Drawing 8.

 Posted by at 8:52 pm