In the early 1960’s the Martin Company cranked out a boatload of promo art showing aircraft and spacecraft of the future. One “design” that was featured was Dandridge Cole’s “Aldebaran,” an extremely unlikely nuclear pulse “seaplane” meant to haul millions of pounds of payload to the lunar surface. I briefly mentioned Aldebaran HERE and HERE. I just stumbled across a piece of Soviet artwork also depicting Aldebaran:
According to a commenter on the flickr site, the translation of the Russian text is:
“Pulsating giant of the future. Spaceship taking off from water.”
Interestingly, this piece of art shows the vehicle from behind, giving a good idea about the propulsion system layout. The only known Aldebaran paintings (the only ones *I* know, at any rate) show it from the front or front quarter, and leave the propulsion system something of a mystery.
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Concerning the translation. It is more like:
“Pulsating giant of the future. Spaceplane taking off from water.”
In this painting the rudder looks ridiculously tiny compared to the bulk of the ship.
Thanks for the translation. As to the rudder: on a vehicle of this kind, wings and aerodynamic control surfaces would be about as functional as fins on a 57 Cadillac.
Sure. My Russian is not perfect, but one is bound to pick something up living where I live.
Thanks for the reminder links to older posts, by the way. Nuclear propulsion designs are one of my favourite subjects on your site (I loved the nuclear light bulb posts!).
Say, so long as you’re in the mood to translate… what does it say in the lower right of the illustration here:
http://scienceillustration.mypage.ru/aldebarahn__atomic_blasting_powered_interplanetary_manned_s.html
The line that is partially cut of?
As much as I can make out, it says:
” Based on sketch by K. Antrushin ‘Space rockets of the future’ “.
I can be mistaken though, it is hard to make out the letters.
Thanks! Sounds like there might be a book out there that needs finding.
Most welcome. I very much enjoy the work you do and it is nice to help in some small way.
I made a little search based on the author and the title, but found only lots of ’40-’60 soviet propaganda magazines about how everything was invented in Russia (Including rockets, very first ones as well as every significant advance in the field. Apparently I was mistaken to think that the Chinese, Brits, Germans and Americans had something to do with it 😀 ).
Unfortunately all materials I found had only illustrations to help explain basic operating principles or illustrate historic examples and very little futuristic concepts and none of them serious.
Note that in the US paintings, it’s sitting near the liner USS United States; here it’s next to the British liner RMS Queen Elizabeth 2:
http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/lookandlearn-preview/A/A013/A013072.jpg
This suggests that the art is from 1969 or later, when the QE 2 entered service, and that the artwork may have been of British, not Soviet, origin originally.
you can find also here
http://scienceillustration.mypage.ru/aldebarahn__atomic_blasting_powered_interplanetary_manned_s.html
from
http://scienceillustration.mypage.ru/
a blog about russian analogue of Popular Mechanics magazine
wat show also technical news from West !
Oddly allot of Illustration are French origin
from French comic magazine Pif Gadget
wat was created as an outlet of the French Communist Party
those french Communist Copycats….
In the illustration on that page of the nuclear dirigible, it’s shown next to the ocean liner SS France as a scale comparison:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joost-ijmuiden/3733896339/
Given the long-standing Russian and Soviety love of Really Absurdly Big Stuff (see the Tsar tank, the Kalinin K-7, the Typhoon-class sub, etc.) I could totally see them trying to build an Aldebaran. They certainly wouldn’t have been stymied by irrational anti-nuclear prejudice, either.
Of course, given the track record of Soviet-era engineering, it would be a coin-toss: either a nearly indestructible workhorse or a horrifying disaster on its first flight.
Given what’s going to come flying out of that rear bell nozzle in flight, I don’t think you want to be anywhere near it between flights, much less standing inside it as shown in the painting.
This illustration must be before the first test flight, and before it became highly radioactive.
I had a dream a long time ago with a ship like that.
I think this from “Technology – Youth” magazine:
http://publ.lib.ru/ARCHIVES/T/”Tehnika_-_molodeji”/_”Tehnika_-_molodeji”_1961_.html
I spent days looking through all the archived issues. you need a djvu player in order to look at the issues. not all are available on the site, but a couple of trial-and-error google searches in Cyrillic should yield the rest..
Who knows how many texts are of worth that were never translated out of their Academy Town, molding on shelves with no one to appreciate them. I have often wondered about other countries space toys…