Boeing artwork from December 1963 depicting the Model 733-197 swing-wing SST. Noteworthy is the resemblance to the later Rockwell B-1 bomber, except with less blending and separately podded engines.
Apr 022014
Feb 232014
Sikorsky spent several years in the 1960’s trying to sell the S-65 helicopter concept. The S-65 was different from conventional helicopters in that it was a “compound” helicopter… fitted with wings to offload the rotor at high speed and turboprops to boost the top speed. Several versions were proposed, including both civilian and military. At the time, civilian passenger transport by helicopter was thought to be a reasonable proposition, typically moving people from outlying districts to large metropolitan airports, or from one city to the next a hundred or so miles away. The S-65 would have been substantially faster than conventional transport helicopters, but Sikorsky was unable to generate enough interest to go ahead with development.
Feb 212014
Spike Aerospace, about which I know approximately nothing, wants to build a Mach 1.6 SSBJ known as the S-512. For a SSBJ, it’s a fairly conventional design. However, what’s getting it some press is the idea that it won’t have any passenger compartment windows; instead, it will have a long window-like high-def display strip which will show an external view.
While it looks spiffy in the PR art… unless this display is some sort of sci-fi holographic display, it will looks distinctly “off” compared to a real window. If you are up front, for example, and you look out the “window” well aft, rather than showing you a view looking aft, it will show you a view looking off to the side.
Someday I imagine materials tech will be such that an actual window strip can be made for pressurized aircraft. And that… will be odd.
If the computer generated artwork on their site is anything to go by (and it may not be), the design does not seem to be very far advanced. The landing gear, for example… yeesh. Span is 60 feet, length 131 feet; 12 to 18 passengers; cruises at Mach 1.6, dash at Mach 1.8; MTOW = 84,000 lbs; engines, 2 P&W JT8D; range 4000 nautical miles. There are a few sonic boom-fighting elements… long nose, engines hidden above the fuselage, reduced number of surfaces. But it remains to be seen if the FAA would allow supersonic overflight of land areas in the US.
Jan 312014
From the Jay Miller archive, a 1964 cutaway illustration of the Boeing 733-197 supersonic transport. This was relatively low capacity compared to the later 2707 designs, being somewhat more like Concorde. I’ve seen and scanned several different versions of this, but each has been substantially flawed (this one is gray and the wingtips are out of focus… another is color, but was chopped in half to fit in a proposal, etc.). If anyone might happen to have a high-rez, clear color version, I’d love to see it.
See HERE for more on the 733-197.
Jan 182014
A bit of Boeing art showing trip times around the US for their 2707 SST. This was obviously before the panic over sonic booms destroyed hopes for overland supersonic travel.
Jan 172014
On the back of one odd piece of Boeing propaganda for the 2707 SST were a few paintings depicting the wonders that the SST would bring. This one depicts the interior of the SST. It seems, by modern standards, quite empty and spartan… what happened to the overhead baggage stowage? There seems to be only a little of that here.
Also, notice that the stewardesses/flight attendants/whatever seem to be wearing bubble helmets. This is not doubt pure artistic license, meant to make it look more mid-1960s Future Cool. But having flown recently, and having spent those seven or eight hours cooped up right in front of someone who spent the whole trip coughing up their lungs (and, unsurprisingly, I came down with the plague within the next day or two), I know *I* would certainly want to wear an environment suit if I had to spend my days in a sealed aluminum tube with hundreds of random strangers. Hell, next time I fly I’m wearing a gas mask.
Dec 252013
From the glory days of aerospace illustration, the B2707-200 supersonic transport. The full-rez illustration is a thing to behold!
Dec 142013
For those of you following along with my email-listing updates regarding the Boeing 2707 eBay listing and how to get in on it… it has now closed. The package of proposal books, art & diagram showed up today, and now the process of scanning begins.
For those of y’all reading this going “WTF?” and wondering why you don’t know what I’m yapping about and why you’re not on the list to receive a gigabyte or so of SST stuff… probably has something to do with you not being on the emailing list.
Dec 062013
Until December 18, the AIAA is selling 25 books for $25, and ten books for $10. Some good stuff here at some pretty substantial discount. You don’t have to be an AIAA member to get the discount.
NOTE: I have no relationship with the AIAA, and don’t make a nickel off these sales. So.. if you want to buy stuff and still feel like you are Supporting The Cause, feel free to navigate to Amazon.com through the “Search’ box that’s to the upper right of this page. i get a tiny fraction of the sales prices for items purchased via search & referral. I suggest buying stuff like laptops and computers and cars and such. So long as I’m getting a small percentage, it might as well be a small percentage of a large dollar value…
The Aircraft Designers: A Grumman Historical Perspective
Michael V. Ciminera
$39.95
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Meeting the Challenge: The Hexagon KH-9 Reconnaissance Satellite
Phil Pressel
$39.95
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Space Shuttle Legacy: How We Did It and What We Learned
Roger D. Launius; John Krige; James I. Craig
$49.95
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Augustine’s Laws
Norman R. Augustine
$39.95
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100 years of Flight
Frank H. Winter and F. Robert van der Linden
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Have Blue and the F-117A: Evolution of the “Stealth Fighter”
David C. Aronstein and Albert C. Piccirillo
$59.95
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Advanced Tactical Fighter to F-22 Raptor: Origins of the 21st Century Air Dominance Fighter
David C. Aronstein, Michael J. Hirschberg, and Albert C. Piccirillo
$49.95
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Aerodynamic Principles of Flight Vehicles
Argyris Panaras
$49.95
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Voyager Tales: Personal Views of the Grand Tour
David W. Swift
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Hans Von Ohain
Margaret Conner
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Road to Mach 10: Lessons Learned from the X-43A Flight Research Program
Curtis Peebles
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Eleven Seconds into the Unknown
Curtis Peebles
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Blazing the Trail: The Early History of Spacecraft and Rocketry
Mike Gruntman
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The Rocket Company
Patrick Stiennon and David Hoerr
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Rocketdyne: Powering Humans into Space
Vince Wheelcock
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Space Exploration and Astronaut Safety
Joseph N. Pelton
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Shades of Gray
L. Parker Temple III
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Unmanned Aviation: A Brief History of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Laurence R. Newcome
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Starting Something Big: The Commercial Emergence of GE Aircraft Engines
Robert V. Garvin
$39.95
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The Power to Fly: An Engineer’s Life
Martin Ducheny and Brian Rowe
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Aerospace Engineering Education During the First Century of Flight
Barnes McCormick; Eric Jumper; Conrad Newberry
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The History of North American Small Gas Turbine Aircraft Engines
Richard Leyes II; William Fleming
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Methods to Extend Mechanical Component Life: Lessons Learned with Space Vehicle and Rocket Engine Components
Dieter Huzel
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The Engines of Pratt & Whitney: A Technical History
Jack Connors
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From Rainbow to Gusto
Paul A. Suhler
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Experiments in Aerodynamics
S. Langley
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Skycrane: Igor Sikorsky’s Last Vision
John A. McKenna
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Hired Minds
Bryan Gardner
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Terminal Chaos: Why U.S. Air Travel Is Broken and How to Fix It
George L. Donohue; Russell D. Shaver II
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Space: The Fragile Frontier
Mark Williamson
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Rocketeers and Gentlemen Engineers
Tom Crouch; Buzz Aldrin
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The Superpower Odyssey: A Russian Perspective on Space Cooperation
Yuri Karash
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Centennial of Powered Flight
Gerard Faeth
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When the Airlines Went to War
Robert Serling
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Advice to Rocket Scientists
Jim Longuski
$19.95
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Dec 022013
A photo of dubious quality showing Phil Bono of Douglas standing next to a surprisingly large display model of the ICARUS/Ithacus intercontinental transport rocket. The photo was taken at the “Travel ’67 Show” at the Cow Palace convention center in San Fransisco. According to poster art found on eBay, this was held Feb 24 – Mar 5 of 1967. I haven’t been able to find out more about it, though it would seem that it must have been a convention about the future of transport. One can speculate that the facility was filled with representations of supersonic transports, monorails, high-speed trains, sleek cars with ridiculous fins…
More on the ICARUS/Ithacus, along with the related ROMBUS space launch booster, can be found in Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N6.