A new production run of Fantastic Plastic’s Orion 606 model kit has been made available. Buy soon and buy often!
Oct 122008
Oct 062008
A year ago I visited the Bell archives in Niagara, NY. Sadly, my scanner crapped out, so all I had available to me was my camera… better than nothing, but not optimal. Anyway, I found some PR art – paintings and a display model – of a two-stage passenger transport… a turboramjet powered first stage with a rocket powered second stage. Dating from 1960, this concept clearly had some relationship to the earlier BoMi studies (especially Dornbergers passenger transport version), while the second stage was presciently similar to the Dyna Soar and Space Shuttle.
And a few weeks ago I came across a Bell press release describing the concept:
And from Jay Miller’s archives comes a photo of the display model from a different angle.
Oct 012008
A pre-SR-71 study for a high speed recon plane.
See issue V1N4 of Aerospace Projects Review for more on the WS-118P program.
Sep 272008
Circa 1960. Taken from a mockup review film.
Also shown was a rotating model of the cockpit section, with skin panels removed to show inner structure.
Sep 212008
The *other* XP-59, the project for a pusher-prop fighter that was cancelled in 1941, not the jet fighter. Most of these photos show a full-scale wooden mockup of the XP-59 as pitched as a US Navy fighter, along witha display model showing the plane in Navy colors.
Photos from Bell archive via Jay Miller.
Sep 202008
I spent the day at the National Archive sin College Park, MD. The trip was largely a bust… only came away with a few minor trinkets. One nice little item was a Bell film promoting the BoMi (Bomber Missile) concept, circa 1957, starring Walter Dornberger his own self. I got a copy of it on VHS. This is non-optimal… would have greatly preferred DVD. But you take what you can get. Small problem in that I don’t have a VCR…
Took some photos of the monitor. Again, non-optimal, but until I can get the VHS converted to DVD, it’s what I’ve got.
The BoMi series of articles will begin soon in APR. This video will provide some further insight.
Sep 112008
From the Boeing archives. An early Dyna Soar on a Juno V… the predecessor of the Saturn I.
And a Dyna Soar atop an early Saturn I concept.
Sep 102008
A photo of a Martin corp. display model and a bit of USAF artwork showing early Dyna Soar/Titan III configurations. The Titan III would lose the fins after testing showed that the thrust vectoring capability of the Titan III’s UA-1205 booster rockets was up to the task of countering pitch moments produced by the Dyna Soar.
Aug 212008
I’ve gotten a photo of a print run of the Space Park model in 1/9700. One part was broken off the sprue, so they’re going to run it again. From what I can see, it’s certainly accurate to the CAD model (visible here), and quality looks pretty good… though the photo is blurry. I will report further when I get the final working version, which I will clean up and tinker with slightly.
Aug 012008
Another bit of early ’60’s art showing a United Tech concept (though most likely just pure promo art, with no actual design effort behind it) for a lunar lander using hybrid rocket engines. Note the rather nonchalant bystander.
I’ve also found a photo of a demonstration unit that used a hybrid rocket to lift a small model of the lander. In the early ’60’s United Tech built a number of small subscale demo motors; everything from a small “briefcase” test article to a few small “landers” to a fairly large “flying saucer” with multiple independtantly movable motors (photos of that item are coming). When I worked at UTC from 2000-2004, some of these items could still be found…. one of the original briefcase hybrids, using plexiglass as fuel, was still in use for in-room demonstrations. Louder’n hell, but pretty spiffy. But the sort of public demonstrations you see here would almost certainly not be allowed today. Risk, you see, is something that cannot be tolerated.
Not sure when and where this photo was taken… early 60’s, to be sure, and I think in France (due to the “fusees hybrides” label). Possibly the Paris air show?
In UTC’s last days, the contents of the “museum” (a rickety leaking trailer which people had simply dumped boxes of stuff in… really rather tragic) were poured out onto tables in the cafeteria for employees to pick through and take. I got a few good piles of photos. But one photo I know I’ve seen but now cannot find – I might not actually have a copy, perhaps just saw it at UTC somewhere – shows Strategic Air Command head General Curtis E. LeMay using one of the small hybrid rocket demo units to light a cigar.