Patreon – Page 14 – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

Sea Dragon Operations

launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Mar 122020

Sea Dragon was, as is doubtless news to few around here, an early 1960’s idea at Aerojet for an extremely large, very simply two-stage pressure-fed space booster. It was meant to be as cheap to build and operate as possible with 1960’s tech, relying on scale to make it all work. Would it have worked? Maybe. Physics supports it. Would it have been cheap to operate? Hard to tell. “Simple as possible” does not equate to “simple,” and anything the size of Sea Dragon, especially screaming out of the sky to smack into the ocean while blisteringly hot… well, there are always risks.

In 1963 the idea of a pinpoint vertical landing a la the Falcon 9 would have been ridiculous, so splashdown was really the only way to go for a booster designed for simplicity. But as NASA and Thiokol found with dropping Shuttle boosters into the drink, recovery and refurbishment after salt water immersion can be a bit of a headache. The way to make a Sea Dragon truly economically competitive would be, as with Falcon 9, flight after flight after flight, often enough that it ceases to be an Amazing News Story and becomes, like the Falcon 9, seemingly dull and monotonous. But given the million-pound payload of the Sea Dragon it’s difficult to envision a space program following on the footsteps of Apollo that would have required a Sea Dragon every few weeks. It would certainly have been *nice* to have had such a program (and if the current pandemic takes down western civ it will turn out that the lack of such a program was criminally negligent) but the existence of a timeline with such a program seems a little difficult to envision.

The article, written by sea Dragon advocate Robert Truax, that the above illustration came from has been scanned and made available to above-$10 APR subscribers and Patrons.

Early North American Rockwell Shuttle

launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane 1 Response »

Feb 232020

The North American Rockwell proposal for the Space Shuttle Orbiter. It is clearly *close* to what actually got built, but there are important differences. The airlock is in the nose and the OMS pods are lower on the sides of the rear fuselage and the rear portion of the cargo bay could be fitted with a pod that includes flip-out turbofan engines for range extension and landing assistance.

The full-rez scan of this diagram has been made available to all $4 and up APR Patreons and Monthly Historical Document Program subscribers. It has been uploaded to the 2020-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for Patreons and subscribers. If interested in this piece or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

Lockheed Stowed Rotor

Patreon, transports, VTOL No Responses »

Jan 222020

A piece of Lockheed concept art circa 1966 depicting a concept for a stowed-rotor helicopter, capable of efficient hovering performance as well as efficient high speed forward flight. This design is related to though distinct from the design depicted in artwork HERE. Note that the backgrounds of the two paintings share a lot of similarities… same ground structures, same leaves in the lower right. I don’t know if this means that one painting was copied from the other, or if one painting was painted *over* the other. In which case… as noted on the other post, I actually own that other piece of artwork. Buried under that upper layer of paint might be *this* image. Ain’t no way I’m going to scrape the paint off just to check, but the technology exists to X-Ray it to look for what’s buried underneath. Not that I’m going to do *that* either…

This aircraft is shown operating in Viet Nam, in US Army colors. This would have irritated the hell out of the US Air Force; by 1966, the USAF was to have control of all fixed wing combat aircraft. The role for this aircraft in Viet Nam would have been search and rescue rather than the transport of troops or ground attack, but still the USAF would have objected.

This piece of art came from a magazine article published in 1966. The full article has been scanned and saved as a PDF, made available to all $4 and up APR Patreons and Monthly Historical Document Program subscribers. it has been uploaded to the 2020-01 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for Patreons and subscribers. If interested in this piece or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

B-1 Artwork: not the view you really want of a supersonic aircraft

bomber, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon No Responses »

Jan 042020

Certainly a dramatic shot, and also a very final shot for a bug, bird or unfortunate parachutist.

This Rockwell illustration dates from the early 70’s and represents the almost-final B-1 configuration, from back when being very supersonic was the goal rather than being stealthy at low altitude.

The full image has been made available as a thank-you to APR Patreon and Historical Documents Program patrons at the $4 and above level, placed in the 2020-01 APR Extras . If interested in this piece or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

Lockheed Composite Aircraft Art

hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, transports, VTOL 2 Responses »

Dec 072019

Some years ago I scored some aerospace concept art off ebay. This is not an unusual occurrence; I’ve procured a great many lithographs there. But this one was different… it was the *actual* original painting created in the mid-60’s. At the time I couldn’t really get a good scan of it, but a change in scanners a while back, coupled with the recent move and revival of the “scan everything” project allowed me to finally digitize the thing.

The image depicted a composite aircraft that used stowable rotors for VTOL and hover like a helicopter, and turbofan engines for efficient fast forward speed. As shown here it is operating in Viet Nam in a combat search and rescue role, something the Lockheed CL-945 (a very similar design) was intended for.

The full image is far bigger (a bit bigger than 10X the linear dimensions than the version above) and has been made available as a thank-you to APR Patreon and Historical Documents Program patrons at the above-$10-per-month level. If interested in this piece or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

Large format scanning in progress

Dyna Soar, hi-rez, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft 1 Response »

Dec 062019

As hinted at here and there, I’ve recently moved from rural Utah to non-rural elsewhere. One of the benefits of the move was that it put me a LOT closer to large format scanning services. Previously getting a large blueprint scanned meant several hours on the road and then a return several days later to pick it up; now the drive is a matter of a few minutes. Consequently, my rather extensive backlog of large format aerospace art and diagrams is finally getting scanned in bulk.

Behold some recent results, mostly involving early Titan III, Saturn and Dyna Soar studies:

Some of these will end up in the monthly “catalogs” for the APR patrons to vote on… and some will end up as “extras” for patrons, particularly for above $10-level patrons. If these sort of images are of interest, or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

Additionally: if you have large format diagrams that you feel are of aerospace historical interest, let me know. I’m always in the market to buy, rent, borrow such things.

Beam builder photos: 1983

hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, space shuttle, space station, spacecraft No Responses »

Oct 312019

In the mad dash to collect what I needed for shipment (and for a time storage… there was, until a late development, the full expectation that I and my cats would spend a good long while as officially homeless), I looked through a great many things I had not examined in a long time, and wound up throwing a *lot*of it into the garbage. My college aerospace engineering homework? Garbage. The vast majority of the photos I took in my pre-digital days? Garbage. This was aided in the fact that the vast majority of those photos had found themselves under a leak in the shop roof and had been welded together into an undifferentiated brick of paper. But a few random, scattered photos were found more or less intact… and even then, most wound up in the garbage because, come on, they were little better than garbage when they were fresh from the developer.

A few that were deemed worthy of scanning were three taken when I was in Space Camp in 1983. The three, which are technically *really* *bad,* show a Grumman “beam builder” that we space tykes got to see at NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center. A device intended to by launched by the Shuttle, it would be fed rolls of aluminum “tape” and would bend, cut and weld them together into structural beams, sure just the thing that would be needed by the early 90’s at the latest to help build the solar power satellites, space station and early space habitats that would certainly be under construction by then.

As my damn near 40-year-gone memory suggests, we were told that the device on display was a *real* beam builder as opposed to a mockup. But I can’t be sure about that.

I’ve uploaded the three photos scanned at 600 dpi, including some modest “enhancements,” to the 2019-10 APR Extras folder at Dropbox available to all $4 and up APR Monthly Historical Document Program subscribers & Patrons. Is it great stuff? Nope. But what do you really expect from one of these kids?

October 2019 Rewards

bomber, hypersonic, launch vehicles, Patreon, rockets, space shuttle, space station, spacecraft, spaceplane, transports No Responses »

Oct 312019

It was in some doubt on my end, but I managed to get the October rewards issued in the nick of time. I have been uprooted and moved well over a thousand miles into smaller digs; much of my stuff was abandoned or outright tossed but my files seem, so far, to have survived the journey intact and hopefully complete. I’m in the process of straightening that all out now, and with luck November will be more orderly.

The October rewards included:

Diagram: A very large format scan of the McDonnell Douglas Model D-3235 Supersonic Transport from 1988

Documents: The Boeing “Airborne Alert Aircraft”

A new scan of the Goodyear “METEOR Junior” report, this time scanned from a pristine original

A scan of a collection of JPL CAD diagrams of a Pluto flyby spacecraft circa 1994… sent to me during my college days with the hopes that I could make a display model of it (beyond my capabilities at the time)

In lieu of the CAD diagram usually created for $5 and up Patrons, which I had nowhere near the time to create, a scan of some North American Rockwell brochures on the HOBOS homing bomb system.

If this sort of thing is of interest – either in receiving these sort of rewards or in helping to preserve this sort of aerospace history – consider signing up for the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

Possibilities of New Business growth: Graphite structures

launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Aug 182019

Continuing. This time, discussion of possibilities of swapping out existing Orbiter structures with graphite composites. The advantage would be lowered dry mass of the Orbiter, leading to potentially higher payload performance. this would, presumably, be of interest for USAF launches from Vandenburg, a possibility that Challenger put to bed.

If this sort of stuff is of interest or use, why not help support the project? A monthly subscription to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program would not only help support the project, it would also provide you with a monthly package of rare aerospace documents and diagrams.

Chrysler saucer, again

hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Aug 162019

Around three years ago I posted some rather cruddy images of a saucer-shaped nuclear-powered spacecraft that the Chrysler corporation drew up in 1956. At this time a manned spacecraft was a perfectly normal sort of thing for Chrysler to design; their aerospace division was responsible for the Redstone missile and the Saturn I first stage. One of the images was a small scan of the cover of the August-September 1957 issue of “Saucer News.” I finally managed to score a copy of this “fanzine”on ebay a while back and have scanned the cover at high (600 dpi) resolution. The image quality is a bit regrettable, but what can you expect from a 1950’s UFO magazine.

As always, if anyone might happen to know anything more about this design, I’m all ears. Chrysler long ago got rid of their aerospace division and whatever archive it might have had.

I have uploaded the full resolution scan to the 2019-08 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to $4 and up subscribers to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

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