Search Results : shuttle

HL-10 Diagrams: Extra Large Edition

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Feb 012011
 

The HL-10 may have been a single-seat reasearch vehicle of quite small dimensions, but that doesn’t mean that nobody had bigger ideas for it. Take, for instance, McDonnell Douglas’ ILRV (Integral Launch and Re-entry Vehicle) design from 1969, an immediate predecessor to the Space Shuttle porogram. This particular design used a two stage fully reusable vehicle, with the upper “shuttle” stage being an overgrown HL-10. The shuttle would have had substantial interior propellant storage space; the final Shuttle did not, as all the propellant was stored in an expendable external tank.

 Posted by at 9:42 pm

A Quarter Century Ago…

 AARRRGH, blather, history, rockets, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Jan 282011
 

… the space shuttle Challenger exploded. I was sitting in history class, when all of a sudden the PA system came alive as someone in the main office put the microphone up to the TV speaker, and we heard that the Challenger has apparently exploded. About four of us looked up at the teacher, who gave us the tiniest nod, and we dashed out of the room to the library, the nearest place with a  TV.

That day *sucked.*

In many ways, that marked The End Of The Dream. Prior to Challenger, the Shuttle system was not living up to its promise of cheap and fast space transport. But we could at least entertain the hope that it *could.* After Challenger, it was clear that NASA would never even try to make spaceflight anything other than a boutique industry for the extremely few, and would probably never try anything more daring than low Earth orbit milk runs.

 Posted by at 9:28 am

Villains Who Were Right All Along

 awesomeness, blather, humor, science fiction  4 Responses »
Jan 182011
 

Cracked.com has a good writeup on nine movie villains who weren’t exactly the simple badguys they’re generally understood to be. I think they nailed it with Ed Rooney, Senator Robert Kelly, Carl Anheuser, and  General Hummel, and at least make interesting cases for the Wicked Witch of the West, the Matrix-bots and Sauron.

As is often noted, almost nobody ever actually sees themselves as the bad guy. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Jim Jones, Woodrow Wilson, Osama and many others are clearly seen as villains… but they nevertheless attracted large numbers of followers who were fully aware of the ideology and actions that we seen as villainous… and were perfectly happy with it.

But there is a different form of villain I’d love to see more of. Let’s take the James Bond flick “Moonraker.” (I know the movie sucks on pretty much every level, but it was a favorite of mine from childhood and I still find it entertaining as hell, so bite me.) In it, Hugo Drax plays an industrialist (Boo! Hiss! Dirty capitalist!!!) who builds his own space program including a fleet of space shuttles and magically builds a city in space without anybody catching on, and plans to wipe out all humans on Earth and start again. OK, that’s pretty villainous. But imagine a somewhat different take on the story. Eliminate the Surprisingly Toxic Gas aspect, but keep the missing Space Shuttles. Hell, ramp it up. Space technologists from around the planet have disappeared in large numbers; astronomers and such have been having a really bad run of luck with heart attacks, bad brakes and occasional lead poisoning. Vast sums of money seem to have been pilferred by shell corporations and mysterious individuals that may be related to Drax Industries. Hell, even SPECTRE has come out of the woodwork, doing all manner of nasty thievings and kidnappings and such, and again it vaguely points to Drax Industries. James Bond does his investigation thing and does his “get caught by the bad guy and get him to monologue his evil scheme thing,” but instead of a monologue, the bad guy goes straight to tossing him into the Unnecessarily Complex Execution Machine. Bond, being Bond, escapes, hitches a ride on a Shuttle, and rides up to the space city, where he sees a rather larger space city, with a *lot* of secret space shuttles. Gets himself caught again. This time, the Bad Guy decides to do the monologue. And just why has Hugo Drax murdered, extorted, stolen in order to build his space city? Look at the monitor: that’s a ten-mile-wide nickel-iron asteroid on a collision course with Earth, with a velocity of 70 kilometers per second. The governments of Earth wouldn’t look at the evidence of onrushing DOOM, so the astronomers who discovered it went to private industry in the form of Hugo Drax… who used his company, along with whatever other resources he could scrape up, to build a giant Space Ark (which will either stay in Earth orbit for eventual re-colonization of Earth, or is due to boost to Mars for terraforming… whatever).

Here James Bond, Hero, would be presented with a bad guy who has done bad things… because that was the only way to save mankind. If Bond does anything to interfere, he knows that he will reduce the shipments of supplies, seeds, critters, people, etc. that the space colonists will need to survive. The only way to save the world is to let the villain win and get his way.

Now, wouldn’t *that* be a much more compelling villain?

 Posted by at 2:52 pm

It’s Just A Friggen’ Airliner

 AARRRGH, aircraft, blather, dumbassery  13 Responses »
Nov 102010
 

While driving through the plains over the past two days, I heard incessant yapperings about the “mystery missile” launched off the coast of California. I was curious as to what this was about; when I finally got where I could get online and look this up last night, I was disappointed to see the images. An incredibly brief search showed that someone had already done the legwork to show that the contrail was perfectly explainable via normal jetliners, just viewed at a rare angle.

http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/

Additionally, there’s one *blatant* bit of trivia about this story that stomps flat the suggestion that this was a rocket: the helicopter-based cameraman tracked it for *ten* *minutes.* There ain’t no such animal as a solid propellant rocket that burns for ten minutes. The Shuttle SRB burns for a whole two.

Fearmongering by the press, nothing more.

 Posted by at 10:52 pm

Giants In The Sky: Part 1

 awesomeness, blather, books, drawings, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  11 Responses »
Sep 272010
 

Something I’ve long noticed is that when someone in the aerospace world – as opposed to science fiction (author or fanboy) – envisions a truly large spacecraft, it’s almost always  powered by some form of nuclear pulse propulsion. Whether it’s driven by dirty A-bombs, cleaner H-bombs, really clean pure fusion devices or far-futuristic anti-matter initiated fusion detonations, the fact seems to be that discrete detonations of nuclear pulse units seems to be the way to go. In contrast, theoretically “better” propulsion systems like steady-state fusion or fusion-free antimatter reactions tend to have fewer designs for really large vehicles. A few designs like various laser/maser sails and the”Valkyrie”-type starship are non-nuke pulse designs, but they seem to be the exception.

In support of my “Nuclear Pulse Propulsion” book, I’m working on a whole bunch of layout drawings. They are all being sized to fit on standard C-size sheets; while the book almost certainly won’t be anywhere near that big (your average road atlas ain’t that big), I want them standardized anyway. Each design has its own sheet, at a scale that allows the design to be shown well. But I also have some scale comparison sheets with multiple designs shown side by side.

Tonight I decided to take some of the representative larger vehicles and put them all to scale on one sheet.  As will be seen, some people dream *big.*

First… the smallest practical orion, the 10-meter design, next to a Space Shuttle. Even being the smallest design, it’s still really big compared to the usual stuff we’ve bothered to send into space. The C-size drawing for this vehicle is 1/100 scale:

giants-100.gif

Next, the 4,000 ton “battleship” design. The C-size drawing for this is at 1/250 scale:

giants-250.gif

From here, the next step is pretty big. The 4,000 ton Orion is the largest design available to me where detailed engineering design work was known to be carried out. The designs that follow tend to be notional… some of them the vague handwavings of aerospace professionals, others carried out at least at the mathematical scale.

Next is the (Martin Co.) Dandrige Cole “Aldebaran” design for a single stage to orbit cargo lifter. Given a poorly described propulsion system that seems to have consisted of an airbreathing nuclear internal-pulse engine, it was vastly larger than the battleship. The C-size drawing is 1/1200 scale.

giants-12001.gif

The next is another Cole design, basically a small free-roaming space colony. The landing gear is to allow it to touch down on asteroids and small moons and such, presumably for exploration and mining operations. The drawing is 1/1500 scale.

giants-1500.gif

Coming soon: Part 2, where Our Hero (that’s me) describes the vehicles that are measured in kilometers. The scales for the C-size drawings for the vehicles to come start at 1/2400 scale and wander on up to 1/600,000 scale. With pulse unit yields measured in “did I read that right? Holy Crap!” units.

Yeah.

 Posted by at 1:30 am

2001 as seen from 1966

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, blather, Gah., history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  17 Responses »
Sep 082010
 

In 1966, Krafft Ehricke wrote and had illustrated a paper describing the next 35 years in space travel. In his view, the future would hold Orion nuclear pulse vehicles, fusion powered spacecraft, mining operations on Mercury and manned missions as far out as Titan.

Here’s a chart illustrating the increasing number of deep-space manned spacecraft processed in Earth orbit or on the moon. Note that things really kick off in 1988, when nuclear pulse vehicles get going:

chart.jpg

Also included were a number of poorly-reproduced paintings (is there any other kind) illustrating some of the missions, such as the establishment of a research station on a remarkably haze-free Titan in 1995:

image73.jpg

And the landing of an expedition on “Jupiter VII” in 1997:

image74.jpg

Ehricke got the environments wrong (he included things like manned landings on Venus), and he *really* got the timing wrong. In fact, on his chart showing missions over the next 35 years… not a single one of them, not even the smallest, has come about. But what’s interesting is not that he was wrong. What’s interesting is that a respected rocket engineer could make these predictions with a straight face and fully expect to be taken seriously. Quite possibly he did not expect that his schedule would be adhered to. But certainly he thought that some effort would be made to fulfill missions at least somewhat like these, at least somewhat on the schedule he foresaw. But within two years, the Saturn V production line would be ordered closed, and a few years after that NASA would be pulled back from the exploration mission entirely, restricted to low Earth orbit Shuttles and the odd minimal space robot.

But as seen from 1966… hell, we should be on our way to Alpha Centauri now.

Damn.

I just gave myself a sad.

 Posted by at 4:59 pm

CAD drawings

 aircraft, awesomeness, drawings, new products, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  31 Responses »
Sep 062010
 

I’ve been putting together some possible drawings for release on D-size sheets. These are as yet still far from finished, but they show what might be made available if there is interest.

———–

“A-4 Rockets.” Includes winged variants (1/48 scale) and A-10 variants (1/72 scale).

cada4.gif

——-

“A-11/A-12 Conceptual Reconstructions” in 1/100 scale (A-11) and 1/200 scale (A-12)

cada11-12.gif

————————

“A-12 Avenger II Configuration” these 1/48 scale drawings – something I started a few years back but sorta wandered off from – will include external configuration, wing sections, “fuselage sections,” weapons loads, etc.

cada12.gif

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ICARUS/ROMBUS drawings(1/250 scale): Upper right (1/144 scale) will be an inboard profile.

cadicarus.gif

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Project Pluto: includes different design studies (1/60 scale), booster options (1/48 scale), the baseline (or at least, best-defined, 1/32 scale) design, and related/competing designs(1/60 scale).

cadpluto.gif

—————-

Sea Mistress: 1/144 scale general arrangment with 1/250 scale comparing SeaMistress to C-5, P6M, Martin seaplane fighter, others.

cadseamistress.gif

—————

Space Sortie designs (1/72 scale) from Boeing, GD, Rockwell, with to-scale comparisons and carrier aircraft (1/144 scale).

cadspacesortie.gif

————–

Super Hustler & Related: scale comparison (1/144 scale) of related designs, with detailed drawings of Fish and Super Hustler (1/48 scale)

cadsuperhustler.gif

——————

These are the big D-sized sheets, as shown HERE. These will be substantially less expensive than the full-color blueprints. Some of them may be issued in two ways: as a single sheet (such as the to-scale comparisons of the Space Sortie vehicles), or as a “pack” (with all the other drawings). Packs will be less expensive on a per-page basis, but will be the only way to get the other pages.

Other possible drawings include:

1)the BWB collection (1/1000 scale)

2) Orion “Battleship”

3) SERJ-X-15

4) delta winged X-15A-3 (yes, I do have really good drawings of that)

5) Lockheed L-2000 SST

6) Boeing 2707 SST (-100, -200, -300)

7) Space Shuttle (I never have seen a really good set of clear diagrams of that along these lines)

8 ) X-20/Titan III

9) Convair NX-2 nuclear powered bomber

10) B-70 (including XB-70, B-70/X-15A-3, B-70/X-20, B-70 SST prototype, NAC-60 SST)

11) F-23 (including YF-23, F-23A, NATF-23, FB-23)

If you have an interest or a preference… let it be known.

 Posted by at 11:31 pm

“Dismal Sellers” sale: Space Documents

 AARRRGH, projects, sales & specials, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 262010
 

Sale Block 2: The Space Documents nobody wants, part 1!

Space Doc 1: Dyna Soar history documents; Space Doc 7: Saturn Ib Improvement study; Space Doc 12: Saturn Paraglider Recovery; Space Doc 13: Lunar Lnading Training Vehicle flight manual; Space Doc 19: Saturn S-IVB Sketches; Space Doc 20: 56, 260-inch sold + S-IVB stage; Space Doc 21: 260-inch + S-II stage; Space Doc 23: Juno V; Space Doc 24: Titan 2+2

Separately, these documents would run $52. But now you can buy them all for only $17.

———————- 

Sale Block 3: The Space Documents nobody wants, part 2!

Space Doc 26: index of Missile launches; Space Doc 28: Skylab guidebook; Space Doc 29: Integrated Manned Interplanetary Spacecraft Concept; Space Doc 33: Apollo “A”/Saturn C-1 Launch vehicle System; Space Doc 41: The Challenger Memo; Space Doc 42: A Single Stage to orbit Concept; Space Doc 50: Early Atlas SACs; Space Doc 56: Solid Propellant Motor Applications; Space Doc 58: Aft cargo Carrier; Space Doc 59: Extended Apollo Laboratory Module; Space Doc 62: NERVA Presentation; Space Doc 63: Saturn Mission Payload Versatility; Space Doc 64: Extended Mission Apollo Study

Separately, these documents would run $74.50. But now you can buy them all for only $25.

————————————- 

Sale Block 4 The Space Documents nobody wants, part 3!

Space Docs 34-40 and 44-48: ISS/Shuttle on-orbit configurations

Separately, these documents would run $66.00 But now you can buy them all for only $22.

Sale has ended.
 Posted by at 11:49 am
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