The return of cyanotypes

CAD Diagrams, Dyna Soar, hi-rez, launch vehicles, rockets 3 Responses »

Dec 062022

Some years ago I produced a range of cyanotype blueprints of a number of aerospace subjects. The hardware needed for this was disposed of when I left Utah at the end of 2019, so starting again seemed unlikely. However, someone has expressed interest in a special commission. Rebuilding the hardware needed will be an expensive chore, and sadly getting the large format transparencies printed looks like it will be much more difficult here than it was in Utah. Nevertheless, at this point it looks probable that I will restore that capability sometime in the next few months, assuming one further detail can be ironed out.

You can see my now-defunct catalog here:

https://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/catalog/cyan.htm

When I get back to it I will probably focus on the larger format stuff rather than the smaller prints. I have plans on how to improve upon the prior hardware to make things work better and more efficiently. If there are any of the former large format prints you’d like to see returned to production, or you have any prints you’d like to see, let me know. And once this is up and running I plan on trying to take commissions, working with a local print shop to find customers interested in this somewhat unusual and certainly obsolete form of art.

If you have a diagram you’d like me to turn into a cyanotype, contact me. Commissions aren’t going to be restricted to aerospace subjects; naval, architectural, movie props, whatever you’ve got, so long as it *can* be blueprinted, once things are in place I should be able to do it.

Anti-tank Vertol 107

rockets, VTOL No Responses »

Nov 242022

The Vertol Model 107 became the Boeing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knight. It has been a fabulously successful helicopter; development began almost *70* years ago, and some are still in service.

One suggested modification from 1961 would have seen the helicopter (designated HC-1A at the time) modified into an anti-tank variant using wire-guided anti-tank missiles. The artwork depicts the Model 107 modified with a “trapeze” that would lower from the belly holding one such missile (appears similar to the SS.11 / AGM-22) ; after launching the missile the launcher would retract back into the cargo bay where it would be reloaded and redeployed. At the rear of the bay is a manually loaded rocket launcher (though it looks more like a recoilless rifle to me) that would, after loading, swing down into a forward-firing position. Further rocket launching tubes were built into the extended rear landing gear sponsons; machine guns were fitted ahead of the cockpit.

The story of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory

Recon, rockets, space station, spacecraft No Responses »

Nov 202022

The National Reconnaissance Office is starting a series on the history of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, a small space lab that was designed in the early/mid 1960s for the Air Force. Officially just a basic space lab, in reality it was an advanced (for the time) spy satellite. So far there is only Part One on the NRO website, and there’s not much to it… but we’ll see how it goes.

The story of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory – part one

As a reminder, there is a whole freakin’ mountain of MOL documents on the NRO website:

Index, Declassified Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) Records

EGRESS art: Take two

hi-rez, hypersonic, launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Nov 182022

A mere sixteen years ago I posted artwork of the Martin “EGRESS” ejection capsule meant to fling crew from a stricken spacecraft anywhere up to and including orbit. Those scans came from photocopies of a conference paper. I have at last now scanned the same work, producing slightly better results. The artwork is remarkable for one detail in particular: of the two crewmen, one is clearly Lance Squarejaw, wholly unfazed at his situation. The other is… not unfazed. I’d pay real money to get at the original color painting.

The whole thing – diagrams and art scanned at 600 DPI – will be offered up to APR Patrons & Subscribers soon.

LOFTID succeeded

future projects, launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Nov 112022

The LOFTID inflatable aeroshell was apparently a complete success, inflating in space, entering, popping a chute, splashing down and being recovered at sea.

I wonder if this could be conveniently applied to the Falcon 9 second stage.

Inflatable heat shield to be launched

future projects, hypersonic, launch vehicles, research, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Nov 102022

Atlas launch to test inflatable heat shield

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 4:25 a.m. Eastern Nov. 10. The primary payload of the rocket is the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) 2 weather satellite …

A secondary payload on the launch of JPSS-2 is Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID), a NASA technology demonstration. While JPSS-2 will be deployed nearly a half-hour after liftoff, LOFTID will remain attached to the Centaur until 75 minutes after liftoff, following a deorbit burn of the Centaur.

Shortly before deployment, LOFTID will inflate a reentry shield six meters in diameter. That heat shield will slow down the vehicle from orbital velocity to Mach 0.7 as instruments on board collect data on the performance of the shield. LOFTID will then deploy parachutes to slow it down for the rest of its descent, splashing down in the Pacific east of Hawaii to be recovered by a ship.

Inflatable heat shields have been studied since before humans flew into space. Normal heat shields need to withstand insanely high temperatures, requiring materials that are either insanely expensive and complex, or that involve complex, fragile and heavy active cooling systems (such as water cooling through transpiration), or which are ablative. The latter variety is technologically fairly simple, but ablatives tend to be heavy and they are labor intensive to apply and make reusability difficult.

With temperatures reaching several thousand degrees, inflatable materials would seem inappropriate for heat shields. But those high temperatures are not a mandatory feature of re-entry. To a first hand-wave approximation, the maximum temperature is proportional to the mass-per-surface-area of the re-entry vehicle. A one-ton vehicle is going to have to shed all of its orbital velocity, converting all that kinetic energy into thermal, regardless of the size or shape or cross-sectional area. The way that is done is by compressing the air the vehicle slams into; the heating isn’t due to friction, but to the compression of the gas. If you can spread that heating energy out wider… the gas doesn’t heat up as much per unit surface area. Heating can be reduced from the sort of thing that will melt tungsten to the sort of thing that can be survived by advanced polymer fibers. As a bonus, the inflatable shield, being far larger than the solid shield on the vehicle, provides drag all the way down. In principle it would be possible to dispense with parachutes, wings, retro-rockets, and simply drift down using the shield as an inverted parachute. This was the case for the Douglas “PARACONE” concept from the mid-1960s, designed for, among other uses, as an emergency “life boat” for astronauts in space. It would provide for a safe entry, deceleration and touchdown on either land or water.

Small ICBM Art

nukes, rockets No Responses »

Nov 032022

An Aerojet rendering, unfortunately not in color, of the Small ICBM (MGM-134 “Midgetman”) from the 80’s. This was a single-warhead missile meant specifically to be carried by and launched from an off-road truck/trailer capable of withstanding a reasonably nearby nuclear blast. The image hear focuses on the second stage; like all post-Minuteman US ICBM’s, the SICBM was solid fueled. The USSR gave up the ghost and as a consequence the SICBM program was cancelled in 1992.

APR Rewards: October 2022

bomber, CAD Diagrams, fighter, hi-rez, hypersonic, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane, VTOL No Responses »

Nov 012022

The October 2022 rewards are available for APR Patrons and Subscribers. This latest package includes:

Large format art: A Bell Aerospace painting of the D188A VTOL fighter/bomber

Document: “Standard Aircraft Characteristics – Convair Class VF Seaplane Night Fighter (SKATE)” diagrams and data for seaplane jet fighter

Document: “21St Century Aerospace – The 20th Century Challenge,” General Dynamics presentation, late 80’s about hypersonics/NASP. From photographs.

Document: “Prototype X-14 VTOL Aircraft,” Bell Aerospace presentation, 1971, on the “SeaKat” operational naval VTOL. From photos, but art and diagrams were also scanned for clarity.

CAD Diagram ($5 and up): XB-70 Valkyrie forward fuselage configuration

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.

Orion Battleship

nukes, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Oct 302022

The YouTube channel “Found and Explained” just released a video on the 4,000 ton Orion Battleship, with the model used based on my reconstruction from issue V2N2 of “Aerospace Projects Review.” The video was sponsored by a “Star Trek” video game, so there are a *lot* of Star Trek references in the video.

For more information on the project, including blueprints, be sure to check out issue v2N2.

Orbital Transfer Vehicle

rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Oct 292022

A Boeing concept from 1983 for an Orbital Transfer Vehicle. This vehicle would change the orbit of the payload not only propulsively, but by using aerodynamic drag to slow the vehicle at perigee. When returning a payload from geosynchronous orbit, it would dive into the upper atmosphere and use aerodynamic lift and drag to slow into a much lower orbit, with propulsive adjustments to put it into a circular orbit for rendezvous with a space Shuttle for recovery or servicing. This particular design was inflatable (creating a lifting body akin to a stretched-out “ASSET” shape) and used an extendable/stowable nozzle. Note that it is entering “upside down” so that the lift forces generated are trying to force it *closer* to Earth, rather than trying to bounce off the atmosphere.

Orbital velocities at geosynchronous are slower than in low Earth orbit… about half the speed. So a relatively small change in velocity at geosynchronous will turn the circular orbit into a sharply elliptical one, with a perigee close to Earth. But that velocity at perigee is much faster than circular orbit velocity, so shedding speed using “free” aerodynamic forces makes sense… if you can pull it off.

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