A drawing from a Titan/Centaur report.
Nov 292015
Nov 272015
Just under the wire, rewards for November have been made available to APR patrons. Three documents and one large-format diagram, and one all-new CAD diagram, have been posted:
- NASA diagram (on two sheets) of a NERVA nuclear rocket engine display model, presenting the configuration with detail and clarity
- An article on a orbiting nuclear power station
- A full-color brochure (via photographs) on the Convair Model 36, their entry for what became the B-36
- A North American Aviation presentation on delta wings for the X-15, presenting a few different configurations
- An all-new layout CAD diagram of the Bernal Sphere space colony concept
If you’d like to help out and gain access to these and past and future rewards, please check out the APR Patreon.
Nov 132015
A few months ago, Airbus Defence and Space Sas received a US patent for a nearly hypersonic passenger transport. The vehicle has a number of different engines… rocket engines for vertical boost and acceleration, ramjets for hypersonic cruise, turbojets for subsonic flight including takeoff and landing. It would take off conventionally with turbojets, fire the rocket to shoot almost vertically to about 35 kilometers altitude (going supersonic in the process), then level off and cruise under ramjet power at Mach 4.5. The extreme altitude, about 3 times higher than normal jetliner traffic, would mean that the sonic boom should be greatly attenuated by the time it got to the surface.
The wingtip fins would rotate through 90 degrees to maintain center of pressure from subsonic through supersonic.
Unusually for a patent, this one provides dimensions. Fuselage length (dimension 11 in Figure 1) is 52.995 meters; overall length (dimension 110, Figure 3) is 57.63 meters; maximum span (dimension 126, Figure 5) is 27.188 meters.
Interestingly, the design looks like a mishmash of WWII-era designs… the “gothic wing” designed by Michael Gluhareff of Sikorsky merged with the wingtips of the Blohm & Voss P.208-2 or Skoda-Kauba SL-6.
This is US Patent 907661B2. At the moment the Google page for this patent seems a little non-functional; the PDF of the patent won’t download for me. Fortunately, the page for the patent application is functioning just fine. You can download the PDF file of the patent application directly from THIS LINK RIGHT HERE.
Some pages of diagrams:
Here is a video description of the design.
The interior views of the vehicle show one of the problems with rocket-boosted transport aircraft: The majority of the interior volume isn’t people and cargo, but propellant.
Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon. If this sort of thing interests you, please consider signing up… not only will you help fund the search for obscure aerospace history, you’ll gain access to a lot of interesting stuff, not available elsewhere.
Nov 032015
Now available… a new additions to the US Aerospace Projects series.
US Bomber Projects #17
USBP #17 includes:
M.C.D. 392: A wartime design for a global-range bomber
Martin Model 194: A strategic bomber somewhat larger than the B-29
Lockheed CL-285-815: A supersonic nuclear powered concept with five engines
Consolidated Model 36: An early design for the B-36 with twin tails
Boeing Model 701-290: A supersonic bomber on the road to the B-59
Thiokol 260-inch ICBM: An unreasonably large ICBM concept
AFRL ESAV: A recent concept for a stealthy supersonic bomber
Convair GEBO II: An ancestor of the B-58, carried aloft under a B-60
USBP#17 can be purchased for downloading for the low, low price of $4.
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Nov 032015
Recently the news media has been ulcerating over a “school resource officer” pitching some kid across the floor. Now why would people who work in schools possibly be so twitchy that they would resort to such violent means, as opposed to simply shrink-wrapping the student into her chair and dragging her out to the front to to await pickup by her parents? Hmmm. Let me think.
Note: Not Safe For Work language. Not Safe For Your Hope For The Future behavior.
School isn’t for everyone, such as many of the participants shown here. This was apparently shot in 2011, so I’d assume that the bureaucracy went ahead and rubber stamped some diplomas for these rambunctious lil’ tykes, but in a better world they would be expelled and barred from the public school system for at least a year. Anyone looking to hire them would automatically (somehow) be presented with this video and any other documentation so that they would essentially be barred from any but the lowliest forms of employment; they would also be barred from receiving any form of government assistance.
The preferred end result is deportation. A yearly shipment of the ill-behaved such as these to, say, Damascus would seem a good way to go.
Oct 302015
Two McDonnell Douglas illustrations showing versions of their “Big Gemini” logistics spacecraft, and a similar concept for an Apollo-derived 9-man logistics spacecraft (not, seemingly, named “Big Apollo,” though that would have been appropriate). Both featured enlarged capsules to transport crew up and down, with an attached propulsion/cargo module which would be jettisoned to burn up.
Oct 292015
This is pretty spiffy. See HERE for the full-rez version.
Oct 242015
A Rockwell diagram showing the configuration of the Shuttle for ferry flight, with the aerodynamic tailcone.
Oct 212015
Coming soon…
Oct 152015
A Convair illustration of the Model 54, a proposed operational version of the NX-2 nuclear powered aircraft. The Model 54 was a missile carrier, but with an internal bomb bay. It was also strictly subsonic, so its survivability over Soviet territory would undoubtedly have been seen as minimal in the supersonic-obsessed 1950’s. By carrying long-range cruise missiles (type unclear), the Model 54 could spend days orbiting outside Soviet controlled airspace and, when war breaks out, dash in at low altitude, unleash its missiles hundreds of miles from the target (and from the air defenses), and then run home. Of course, the Model 54 was never built.
A full-rez version of this has been made available to $4+ Patrons of the APR Patreon, in the 2015-10 Extras Dropbox folder. If you’re interested in obtaining this, and/or helping the cause of preserving aerospace history, please check out the APR Patreon.
