I’ve shut down production of cyanotype blueprints for the time being. What I’ve got is what there is; I’ll leave the catalog page up while I still have a supply, but I’ll shut it down when I run low and sell the rest on ebay. Get ’em while ya can.
https://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/catalog/cyan.htm
So after having the 3D printer for a while and running a *lot* of resin through it, I have achieved some good things. I’ve learned enough to know that there are some things that I plan on producing as full 3D-printed kits, some to be converted into metal castings. I have a few product lines that I want to do:
1: 1/285 (wargaming scale) “minis” of a range of appropriately sized unusual, rare, interesting and projected aircraft/spacecraft
2: “Mini”-sized, but of various scale, aircraft and spacecraft to go with each issue of US Aerospace Projects
3: 1/18 scale models of each American nuclear bomb/warhead/re-entry vehicle. This will range from the downright dinky to the “I’m not sure how to squeeze this out of the printer,” like the Mk 17 and the Flashback. I’ve successfully printed prototypes of the Fat Man and Little Boy A-bombs in 1/18, but they need to be revised.
4: Just whatever strikes my fancy by way of interesting aerospace/sci-fi concepts.
The eventual 3D printed kits will be pricier than if they were cast resin “garage” kits, but this will allow me to make them on demand. I hope there is interest in this sort of thing. To that end, and to help refill my depleted coffers, I’m making available a “crowdfunding” project with three levels. What you will receive are the actual 3D printed components. Each level builds on the prior… Level 2 gets you the Level 1 stuff, Level 3 gets you 1 and 2. No additional postage is required for continental US address… Hawaii, Alaska, Canada, the rest of the world, contact me and I’ll work out the additional postage cost.
Note: many of these are “prototype” kits, with revisions and improvements possible or even probable. And some of these are not planned to be released further. This will be your only chance to get them, at least in this format.
Level 1. You will receive:
1/285 X-20 Dyna Soar spaceplane
1/285 XF-103 Mach 3 interceptor
1/285 Project Pluto nuclear ramjet
1/285 X-15 set (X-15, X-15A2, X-15A3, X-15/SERJ)
1/18 Davy Crockett battlefield atomic warhead w/stand
Crowdfund level 1: $60 in the continental US:
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Level 2. You will receive:
1/18 US Atomic Artillery Shells w/stand
1/144 X-20 Dyna Soar
1/18 M61 Vulcan Gatling Gun w/stand
1/18 Mk 72 Nuclear Warhead/Re-Entry Vehicle
Crowdfund level 2: $100 in the continental US:
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Level 3. This part will not ship immediately, as some of it remains unfinished. You will receive:
1/285 XF-103 w/missiles
1/350 Orion Nuclear Pulse Vehicle (with stand… not yet finalized)
1/2000 Aldebaran Concept Vehicle
Cast Metal 1/285 X-20 + XF-103 + X-15 + Pluto: Depending on the success of the casting process. Not all are guaranteed.
Crowdfund level 3: $200 in the continental US:
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Grumman won the contract to build the forward-swept-wing X-29. But Grumman was not the only company to go for the contract; Rockwell devoted a fair amount of effort – both engineering and PR – to win the prize. Their concept was similar, though intended to be a wholly new aircraft, and with a notably different planform. Below is a magazine ad from 1980 showing a model of the Rockwell “Sabrebat” concept.
The full-rez scan has been uploaded to the 2023-10 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for $4 and up Patreons/Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
Thanks to ebay and my fabulously lean bank account, I have recently procured a number of items of potential interest:
“NASA Earth Orbital Space Station,” a poster-sized lithograph from McDonnell Douglas depicting a space station that tumbles for artificial-G.
“Re-Entry Payload Launch Vehicle,” A *brief* General Dynamics presentation on a vehicle to launch re-entry vehicles such as MIRV warhead shapes
“Proposed Development Program on Rocket-Type Missiles,” a 1948 Convair report on early ballistic/boost glide missile concepts, that would lead to Atlas. Includes some fantastic large format layout diagrams.
“Detail Specification for Consolidated Vultee Model 117 Airplane Class VR Transport Flying Boat,” August 1950, all the details on the then-brand new Tradewind.
“Detail Specification for Class VP Long Range Patrol Seaplane,” Consolidated Vultee 1946, all the details on a proposed flying boat patrol/bomber
32 issues of “Astronautics” magazine from 1957 to 1969, mostly 57-59 and 63 or so.
The lithograph and the reports will be scanned and put forward for consideration for monthly rewards; the magazines will have the interesting bits scanned and made available to the subscribers/patrons.
A NASA article on the status of the X-57 “Maxwell” says that they’re wrapping up work on it, with no mention of it actually flying:
The X-57 is a modification of an existing conventional aircraft to be all-electric. Lots of new technologies were integrated and apparently some useful advances were made, but the real issue remains batteries. Until the energy density of batteries gets a *lot* better, electric-powered aircraft are going to remain pretty niche. Flying the X-57 would be nice, but with the existing batteries it’s kind of dead in the water.
What would be great is if NASA kept working on the X-57 at a low level. The technologies onboard would be occasionally upgraded, and when meaningfully better batteries – or perhaps some sort of modular fuel cell system, perhaps, or indeed a small nuclear reactor (a man can dream) – become available, integrate them into the vehicle and at last fly it.
I put one copy of each of my current books on ebay. They’re all in brand-new condition, and will be signed/dated when sold. They also come with bonus 18X24-inch prints… the “SR-71” book has two prints of the SR-71, the “B-47/B-52” book has one B-47 diagram and two B-52 diagrams; “US Supersonic Bomber Projects Vol. 1” has two B-70 Valkyrie diagrams. Take a look…
The rewards for April, 2023, have been released. They include:
Document: *Partial* Martin report on the M329 Mach 2 jet seaplane bomber
Document: “Flexible Wing Manned Test Vehicle, Final Program Report,” Ryan, December 1961. report on the development of the “Rogallo Wing” test vehicle.
Document: “10 Jahre TKF/J-90 Vorentwicklung,” conference paper from 1983 from Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm Gmbh describing (in German) the development of advanced fighter jets
Large Format: “NASA’s Space Launch System,” poster with detailed diagrams of the Block 1 and Block 1B SLS
CAD Diagram: B-1B weapons loads. This diagram was created and intended for my “US Supersonic Bomber Projects Volume 1” but had to be cut for space reasons. This includes gravity bombers, cruise missile sand the Vought T-22 “Assault Breaker.”
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.
Circa 1980 Lockheed jumped on board the “X-Wing” bandwagon. For those unfortunate enough not to have been graced to grow up in the 80’s, the X-Wing was a concept for a four-bladed helicopter where the rotors were rigid and could be stopped in flight, turning into two forward swept and two aft-swept wings (see Aerospace Projects Review issue V5N6 for a whole fat article on the concept). one of the Lockheed concepts that was publicized at the time was a one-man research/proof of concept vehicle, smaller than a Bell Cobra. I’ve got fair to middling diagrams and data on it, but what I don’t have is a designation. Which is terribly frustrating because I’m convinced that, many years ago, I *read* a designation for it, CL-something, decided “that’s interesting information, I shall surely remember where I read that for future reference,” and have never been able to find it again.
ARRRRgh.
Anyway, here’s some art of the thing.
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.
Currently on ebay is an aluminum model of a lifting body. The rear of the vehicle is that of the M1 or M2, but the nose is distinctly conical. The lack of useful volume leads me to think that if this is a legit wind tunnel model (rather than something someone just knocked out at a machine shop for giggles), then it’s not a design for a manned vehicle, either test or operational space logistics. Rather it would be something like:
1) A basic subscale research vehicle like ASSET
2) A concept for a maneuverable entry vehicle for a military system. An ICBM warhead, perhaps designed to glide either for range extension, to avoid incoming ABMs, or to maneuver to avoid tracking systems and come in from unexpected directions.
3) Or it’s just a vague, generic “let’s look at everything” shape.
The nose of the model does not inspire a great deal of confidence… it looks a bit unfinished, with some sharp-ish corners that don’t seem like they should be there.
If anyone knows better, by all means speak up…
