Another bit of Martin Corp. aerospace artwork from the late 1950’s/very early 1960’s. This time showing aircraft (and perhaps spacecraft) with “saucer wings.” These have been described in secondary sources as being atomic or “photon” powered. Shrug. The canard equipped one, second from bottom, looks like it has a copy of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise dead center, with a glass ceiling… though it’s probably supposed to represent the powerplant (“atomic pile?” “Fusion reactor?” “Warp core?”). No further data on my end. If anyone has anything definitive, I’d like to see it.
I did have some discussions with Fantastic Plastic about kitting one of these designs. The desire was to kit it at 1/288 scale; but there are no good scale references here. The best that was come up with was to scale the cockpit canopy, and through similarity with a contemporary known design, come up with a vehicle size. What was produced was this:
Needless to say, it was determined that there were other designs for Fantastic Plastic to tackle.
8 Responses to “Martin space art: 3”
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That is really cool stuff. Too bad its so huge!
Perhaps 1/700 scale? Nicely-detailed 1/700 minis of various large aircraft (as well as the shuttle stack) are oft-seen on Ebay.
These look a lot like a Soviet illustration from around the same time period:
http://www.mactonnies.com/sovdiscplane.jpg
The disc part doesn’t appear to spin so something that does spin must be inside of it, like on the Silverbug.
Either that, or it’s a giant electrical coil or nuclear accelerator of some kind.
Super magnet to repel Earth’s magnetic field?
These look a lot like a Soviet illustration from around the same time period:
http://www.mactonnies.com/sovdiscplane.jpg
The disc part doesn’t appear to spin so something that does spin must be inside of it, like on the Silverbug.
Either that, or it’s a giant electrical coil or nuclear accelerator of some kind.
Super magnet to repel Earth’s magnetic field?
BTW, look at the two at the top… they are leaving pulsed exhust trails.
These look a lot like a Soviet illustration from around the same time period:
A lot like, in fact. But note that the Martin artwork dates from the late 1950’s, while the Soviet artwork is gracign the cover of a book, magazine, whatever, dated 1964. The Martin art was in Begaust’s “Rockets to the Planets” from 1961. A reasonable explanation is that the Russian artist simple cribbed the design from the Martin art.
I was trying to figure out who was the artist that did the artwork based on style… was it Frank Tinsley by any chance?
The painting seems to suggest that as you go higher up the designs they are getting more evolved, faster, and higher flying – till you end up with complete flying saucers at the top of the painting. The weird one is on the bottom with the twin disc wings.
Is this artwork supposed to represent some further evolution of the Avro Project Y/ Silverbug concept, where the radial lift engine in its disc housing has a fuselage attached to it, like in the WS 606A: http://www.laesieworks.com/ifo/lib/AVRO-WS606A.html ?
The odd thing at the middle of the disc sure looks like it supposed to represent some sort of nuclear reactor. It would be interesting to know what the “spots” atop the disk around halfway from its edge to its center are all about also. Some sort of covers over auxiliary air intakes for use at low speed or in hover?
The other goody is the pulsed exhaust trails on the two uppermost aircraft.
Are those on the original artwork, or some sort of artifact of sizing it?
BTW, I assumed the teardrop pods on the third one from the bottom were fuel tanks, but looking at them closer they seem to have windows on their outside edges… are those passenger pods?
If they are, that might help with scaling.
> who was the artist
See the original “Martin Space Art” posting for the answer to that.
> the middle of the disc sure looks like it supposed to represent some sort of nuclear reactor
Probably. But a reactor with, apparently, a glass ceiling. Shrug.
> Are those on the original artwork
Yup.