Search Results : shuttle

The Golden Dyna Soar

Sep 122012

For several years I’ve been looking for a cost effective way to “gold plate” display models without actually plating them in gold. I know it’s possible…. cheap plastic toys are often “gold plated” by way of vapor-depositing aluminum on them, then putting a yellow-tinted clearcoat over that. The results can be quite successful. For example:

Aluminum plating these things is cost effective because it’s done on an industrial scale. Getting it done on an individual part scale? Meh.

I’ve tried every “gold paint” that I can find, and not a one of ’em actually looks like gold. The best of them looks like… gold paint. So, yellow-clear-coating “chrome” seems about the only way to go.

The closest you can come to “chrome” without actual metal plating is one of a few specialty paints. I’ve heard good things about “Spaz Stix Ultimate Mirror Chrome,” but have not tried it.

One thing I have used with some notable success is Alclad II Chrome in an airbrush. Applied properly, it’s not quite an actual mirror surface, but it looks pretty damned good. So, I decided to try yellow-clear-coating Alclad Chrome to see what I get.

First up… I took a 1/24 Dyna Soar display model and chromed it. This was a model built from all the parts that stink… the original body mold was seriously flawed (and has been replaced with a mold that’s great, producing awesome castings), and the smaller parts were early castings that were munged up in various and sundry way. It was assembled as a fit check, and to be used in sizing things like the display stand and the packaging. Since it is and always will be a serious mess, I didn’t go overboard in surface prep. When using Alclad Chrome, proper surface prep is vital, but this was just a test… and on the whole the results looked pretty good anyway:

I then oversprayed part of that with Alclad clear yellow. The results:

Well, it’s better than gold paint, but it’s still far from being mistaken for actual gold. The yellow seemed to dull the chrome… I wonder if the yellow ate into the chrome and fuzzed it out some. perhaps yellow dye (food coloring?) in something like nitrocellulose lacquer might do the trick…

In any event, I liked the chrome enough that I think I might make me a chrome Dyna Soar one of these days. I’ll be the only kid on my block with one.
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How do you kill ’em?

blather, science, youtube 2 Responses »

Sep 102012

Specifically, the incredibly tough little “water bears.”

[youtube 7W194GQ6fHI]

From Wikipedia:

Tardigrades have been known to withstand the following extremes while in this state:

Temperature – tardigrades can survive being heated for a few minutes to 151 °C (424 K),^[20] or being chilled for days at -200 °C (73 K),^[20] or for a few minutes at -272 °C (~1 degree above absolute zero).^[21]
Pressure – they can withstand the extremely low pressure of a vacuum and also very high pressures, more than 1,200 times atmospheric pressure. Tardigrades can survive the vacuum of open space and solar radiation combined for at least 10 days.^[21] Some species can also withstand pressure of 6,000 atmospheres, which is nearly six times the pressure of water in the deepest ocean trench, the Mariana trench.^[12]
Dehydration – tardigrades have been shown to survive nearly 10 years in a dry state.^[22] When exposed to extremely low temperatures, their body composition goes from 85% water to only 3%. As water expands upon freezing, dehydration ensures the tardigrades do not get ripped apart by the freezing ice (as waterless tissues cannot freeze).^[23]
Radiation – tardigrades can withstand median lethal doses of 5,000 Gy (of gamma-rays) and 6,200 Gy (of heavy ions) in hydrated animals (5 to 10 Gy could be fatal to a human).^[24] The only explanation thus far for this ability is that their lowered water state provides fewer reactants for the ionizing radiation.^[25]
Environmental toxins – tardigrades can undergo chemobiosis—a cryptobiotic response to high levels of environmental toxins. However, these laboratory results have yet to be verified.^[26]^[27]
Outer space – In September 2007, tardigrades were taken into low Earth orbit on the FOTON-M3 mission and for 10 days were exposed to the vacuum of space. After being rehydrated back on Earth, over 68% of the subjects protected from high-energy UV radiation survived and many of these produced viable embryos, and a handful had survived full exposure to solar radiation.^[21]^[28] In May 2011, tardigrades were sent into space along with other extremophiles on STS-134, the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour.^[29]^[30]^[31] In November 2011, they were among the organisms sent by the US-based Planetary Society on the Russian Fobos-Grunt mission to Phobos.[citation needed]

The guy in the video speculates that the Tardigrade may have an extraterrestrail origin, for two reasons:

1) Because it seems the little monsters can survive in the vacuum of space

2) Because it seems the little monsters are evolutionarily unrelated to other lifeforms on Earth.

However, Tardigrade RNA has been sequenced, and they seem to be related to arthropods. with more detailed DNA analysis to come.

Movement in Microgravity

awesomeness, history, spacecraft, youtube 5 Responses »

Aug 172012

A 1988 NASA film (supposedly silent, but you can hear something like a film projector) showing footage of astronauts moving around on Skylab and the Shuttle. It shows just how relatively *vast* Skylab was compared to Shuttle and Spacelab (and by extension ISS). Space hotels would, I think, be wise to include at least one large volume like this. Transhab/Bigelow style inflatable modules would be just the thing.

[youtube sxKR0Ozeq08]

Convair Triamese

drawings, projects, rockets, spacecraft 1 Response »

Aug 112012

A 1969 Convair concept for a space shuttle. The Triamese used three vehicles that shared outer mold lines and many components… two as boosters, a third as the orbiter. The orbiter would have more complex rocket engines, featuring extendable nozzles for improved high altitude performance. All three included cockpits, relatively small high aspect ratio wings that would be stowed internally and flip out for landing, and flip-out turbofans for re-entry cruise and go-around capability. Numerous variants were studied including biamese versions using dissimilar boosters and orbiters.

Trimming the X-24A

aircraft, drawings, rockets No Responses »

Aug 092012

It’s a bit counter-intuitive, but if you have a supersonic aircraft it often performs better at high speeds if it’s tail end is “draggier” than it is at low speeds. This is due to the fact that as the vehicle pushes past the speed of sound, the airflow over the vehicle, or at least over its control surfaces, can get disrupted and basically turn to mush. Consequently, the tail surfaces need to be larger, or extend further out, in order to “grab” onto some proper airflow.

This seems to be especially pronounced with lifting body designs, where a fat fuselage forms a fat, widely-expanding flowfield of mush that the control surfaces need to project past. For the X-24A, this was accomplished by having large body flaps that would angle further and further out as speed increased, turning the vehicle into a “shuttlecock” configuration.

AWESOME

awesomeness, history, rockets, spacecraft 2 Responses »

Aug 042012

Google got into the VAB at Kennedy Space Center, and did it up proper with Street View. You can now kinda-sorta wander around inside (and outside) and take a look at Atlantis and Endeavour:

https://maps.google.com

It’s definitely worth wasting some time here. I got to tour the inside of the VAB back in 2005, when one of the Shuttles was all stacked up and ready to ship out… it was an amazing experience that I couldn’t photograph cuz they wouldn’t let me bring a camera in. Hrrrmmmph!

Cyanotype prints: next set

aircraft, art, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, history, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft 10 Responses »

Jul 282012

I recently received some more cyanotyping fluid, and have been busy cranking out prints to fill a few straggling orders, and doing test runs of prints for my next set of releases. Several from the first run have sold zero; a few sold as many as four (Oh yeah, ladies, I’m all that). So for the next set, I’d like to get an idea in advance what will be more popular, so I can make more of those. If you see something here that really appeals to you, comment and let me know.

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A set of three NASA diagrams of the Space Shuttle showing heat shielding. This will be sold *only* as a full set of three, for $25. If this isn’t popular, then I’ll be really confused.

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Here are:

Nuclear Turbojet, XMA-1A, exploded view. Kind of a pain to produce, so this will be $12.50.

Dyna Soar Characteristics Summary. I did this one just as a test to see if it looked at all good, and I think it does. I have a whole bunch of Standard Aircraft Characteristics sheets that I think would look good… if the idea appeals, set three may have a bunch. $10.

F-82 cutaway artwork. I think it looks *fantastic.* $10.

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Ganswindt’s Weltenfahrzeug from the turn of the last century. Sort of a dynamite-powered Orion. $10.

NEXUS with gas-core nuclear upper stage engines. $10

Super-NEXUS with gas-core nuclear engines and a million pounds of *lunar* payload. $10. I have several more NEXUS-derived designs if these are popular.

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Early Dyna Soar atop clustered Minuteman booster artwork. $10.

XMA-1A nuclear turbojet illustration. $10.

Model 54 CAMAL nuclear-powered missile carrier three-view. $10.

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Bell SR-126 “bomber missile” illustrations. $10 each or $17.50 for the set.

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ICARUS illustrations. $10 each or $17.50 for the pair.

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If any of these are of interest, let me know.

NASA tests inflatable space heat shield

awesomeness, blather, news, spacecraft 8 Responses »

Jul 262012

Interesting and useful, if rather limited in envelope-pushing:

NASA tests inflatable space heat shield

This test was via sounding rocket, at a seriously suborbital speed of only 7,600 mph. I seem to recall that the Russians tested one some years ago, but that they lost it.

An inflatable heat shield is just the thing needed for space-based industries. Thirty years ago, NASA was flackin’ the notion that orbital industries would crank out crystals and drugs and microchips in zero-g, and use the Space Shuttle to take them to Earth. As it happened, manufacturing processes for all of these got a whole lot better, and the need for zero-g manufacturing evaporated. Still, with the prospect of asteroid mining and the like, the possibility exists that there might someday actually be things in orbit other than humans that would be worth more on the ground; in that case, bringing them down cheaply and reliably would the the order of the day. And a simple inflatable re-entry system, if it can be proven out, would be perhaps more reliable, and certainly vastly cheaper, than using something like the Orion capsule or a Space Shuttle.

“People” come down in style. “Stuff” takes the freight elevator.

EDIT: The idea of an inflatable heat shield is not new. The Douglas Reusable One-Stage Orbital Space Truck (ROOST) was a giant space booster design from 1962 that used a similar idea.

Cyanotype Print 07: LS-200-10

art, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, new products, projects, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Jul 122012

Cyanotype Print 07: LS-200-10

A layout drawing of the Lockheed LS-200-10, a Stage-and-One-Half Space Shuttle design. A descendant of the Star Clipper concept.

A hand made cyanotype blueprint on sturdy 12X18 watercolor paper. Each is unique, and likely to feature small imperfections.The blue will fade if left in the sun. If this happens, it can be darkened by placing it somewhere dark with good air flow to re-oxidize the ink. Alternatively. hydrogen peroxide, available from grocery stores, will instantly oxidize the ink and restore it to its full hue.

Model 176 Art

aircraft, art, projects, spacecraft 1 Response »

Jun 192012

The McDonnell Douglas Model 176 was a generic spaceplane design derived from the FDL-7 (Flight Dynamics Lab – USAF Wright-Pat). It was incorporated into small spaceplanes adequate for taking a few crewmembers to a space station on up to Space Shuttle competitors. Below are two pieces of art (found in the NASA HQ historical archive) showing a late 1960′s concept for a Model 176 optimized for the ILRV (Integral Launch and Recovery Vehicle) role. ILRV was one of the immediate predecessors to the Space Shuttle program.

The Model 176 was a sleek dart-like design with stubby fins. While details varied from iteration to iteration, all (or nearly all) featured high aspect ratio variable geometry wings for landing.

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