PDF Review: Airbus Almost-Hypersonic Transport Patent

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Nov 132015

A few months ago, Airbus Defence and Space Sas received a US patent for a nearly hypersonic passenger transport. The vehicle has a number of different engines… rocket engines for vertical boost and acceleration, ramjets for hypersonic cruise, turbojets for subsonic flight including takeoff and landing. It would take off conventionally with turbojets, fire the rocket to shoot almost vertically to about 35 kilometers altitude (going supersonic in the process), then level off and cruise under ramjet power at Mach 4.5. The extreme altitude, about 3 times higher than normal jetliner traffic, would mean that the sonic boom should be greatly attenuated by the time it got to the surface.

The wingtip fins would rotate through 90 degrees to maintain center of pressure from subsonic through supersonic.

Unusually for a patent, this one provides dimensions. Fuselage length (dimension 11 in Figure 1) is 52.995 meters; overall length (dimension 110, Figure 3) is 57.63 meters; maximum span (dimension 126, Figure 5) is 27.188 meters.

Interestingly, the design looks like a mishmash of WWII-era designs… the “gothic wing” designed by Michael Gluhareff of Sikorsky merged with the wingtips of the Blohm & Voss P.208-2 or Skoda-Kauba SL-6.

This is US Patent 907661B2. At the moment the Google page for this patent seems a little non-functional; the PDF of the patent won’t download for me. Fortunately, the page for the patent application is functioning just fine. You can download the PDF file of the patent application directly from THIS LINK RIGHT HERE.

Some pages of diagrams:

Here is a video description of the design.

The interior views of the vehicle show one of the problems with rocket-boosted transport aircraft: The majority of the interior volume isn’t people and cargo, but propellant.

Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon. If this sort of thing interests you, please consider signing up… not only will you help fund the search for obscure aerospace history, you’ll gain access to a lot of interesting stuff, not available elsewhere.

Logistics Capsules in Color

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Nov 072015

Color artwork from NASA circa 1964 depicting Apollo-derived logistics spacecraft. The BALLOS (BALlistic LOgistic Spacecraft) was studied by several corporations such as Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas as well as NASA; the artwork was done *for* NASA, but it’s unclear if it was done *by* NASA.

The full resolution versions of these artworks have been posted into the 2015-11 folder in the APR Extras Dropbox. Please check out the APR Patreon!

Big Gemini/Apollo

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Oct 302015

Two McDonnell Douglas illustrations showing versions of their “Big Gemini” logistics spacecraft, and a similar concept for an Apollo-derived 9-man logistics spacecraft (not, seemingly, named “Big Apollo,” though that would have been appropriate). Both featured enlarged capsules to transport crew up and down, with an attached propulsion/cargo module which would be jettisoned to burn up.

Logistics capsules in black and white

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Oct 262015

All through the 1960’s – or at least up until the last few years, when “Great Society” spending ate into NASA’s budget – the assumption was that NASA would soon have numerous space stations in orbit and some preliminary lunar bases, with Mars missions soon to follow. In order to support those, NASA would have to have a cost effective means to launch sizable crews into orbit. A number of approaches were proposed, including Big Gemini and, in the end, the Space Shuttle. One approach that probably would have been quite workable was to simply scale up the Apollo capsule into something capable of holding more than three; a slight scaleup seats six, a further scaleup seats twelve. These would have been launched atop the Saturn Ib and/or Saturn V boosters, and would come with their own basic orbital maneuvering systems, and could carry up some amount of cargo in the conical transition/propulsion sections. At the end of the mission, the capsule would return to Earth for recovery, refurbishment and reuse; the propulsion module would be allowed to burn up.

Of course, none of these were ever built.

The full resolution versions of these artworks have been posted into the 2015-10 folder in the APR Extras Dropbox. Please check out the APR Patreon!

Aircraft Design: Drunk Edition

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Sep 082015

Huh.

Meet ‘Mark’, the crazy genius who designed an aeroplane while drunk

Mark, a mechanical engineering student at Michigan Tech, got blitzed, designed an airplane, then woke up with no recollection of it.

Granted, it’s of course not a complete design, but instead sketches and a bunch of math. But damn, those sketches are a lot better than some I’ve seen come out of *sober* *professional* aircraft designers. The aircraft is a wing-in-ground effect plane, designed to skim just above the surface of the water; the air compressed between the wing and the waters surface creates more lift than if the aircraft was slightly higher, flying out of ground effect. WIG craft are dandy ways of gaining fuel efficiency for relatively slow transport planes, so long as you’re cool with a bumpy ride. Which, if you’re wasted, you probably are.

The story sounds like a fun adventure in Asperger’s Syndrome; “Mark” plunged into design work with a passion and yammered at his roommates, going through all the math in detail while they laughed. That sort of commitment to cause in the face of derision is a common feature of Aspergers. But the blackout drunk aspect of the story makes it a bit different from usual.

The real question now is: is Mark a better designer sober… or drunk? There is of course precedent.

Early Boeing SST Art

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Sep 072015

Black-and-white copy of a piece of artwork depicting two Boeing Model 733 SST concepts. Circa 1963 or so.

A high-rez version of this has been posted to the APR Patreon Dropbox “2015-09 APR Extras” folder, available to all $4 and up APR Patrons.

Mini-art: six-engine Lockheed transport

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Aug 312015

A late 1950’s Lockheed-Georgia concept for a large cargo transport. Clearly an outgrowth of the technologies and design elements of the C-141, this may have been an early stab at what would become the C-5 Galaxy. No further data.

Some large-format scans

bomber, hi-rez, launch vehicles, nukes, Patreon, rockets, transports 1 Response »

Aug 272015

Today I picked up four large format scans from a local print shop. All were scanned in full color at 300 DPI; the B-52 diagram was so large that I had to reduce it in size a bit – from 300 to 250 DPI – to make it work in most of my image processing programs. Still… with an original 110 inches long, scaling down a bit really isn’t much of a loss.

First: a Boeing model shop diagram of a B-52B display model at 1/40 scale. Model shop diagrams are often the best bets for clear, accurate aircraft diagrams.

Second, an old Boeing diagram of the Model 80 trimotor:

Then the USAF “supersonic escape capsule” which sure looks a lot like Fat Man:

And then a Rocketdyne diagram of the Atlas booster rocket engine:

These will likely be offered up to APR Patreon Patrons. If you want in on that, and to help out on the effort to procure these things (trust me, they’re *not* cheap!), please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Some Aerospace Art

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Jul 252015

I have added three hi-rez scans to the APR Patreon “Extras” Dropbox folder for the month of 2015-07. If you are interested in these, they are available to all $4 and up patrons at the APR Patreon.

Bell artwork from the late 70’s or ’80’s depicting the D316 tiltrotor, a proposed operational derivative of their XV-15 research tiltrotor.

Convair 58-9 SST, derived from the B-58 bomber (see HERE for a well illustrated article on this and other B-58 SSTs):

Early artwork for a VTOL fighter concept from Ryan; this would eventually become the X-13:

PDF Review: Boeing Nuclear-Pulse Powered Turbofan

future projects, nukes, PDF Review, rockets, transports 4 Responses »

Jul 082015

I haven’t had an opportunity to really dig into this, but Boeing just patented a jet engine powered not by hydrocarbon fuel combustion but by small nuclear explosions. Basically an Orion (via laser-driven inertial confinement compression of tiny fusion fuel pellets) in a jet, stuck on a passenger plane.

Neato.

The US Patent Office page on this.

THIS should link directly to the PDF of the patent.

Sigh. Every single time I think I’ve got a handle on “this is everything in the world of NPP, I can finally finish the book,” they suck me back in.

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