Patreon – Page 18 – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

June 2018 APR Patreon Rewards

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Jun 302018

In just under the wire for June, 2018 are the rewards for APR Patreon patrons. Included this month:

A sizable January, 1945 technical description of the YP-80 “Shooting Star” by Lockheed. 300 or so pages, filled with illustrations of the aircraft and components.
“On The Utility of the Moon in Space Transportation: the Lunatron Concept.” A 1963 NASA concept for using an electromagnetic accelerator to hurl payloads from the lunar surface onto high energy trajectories, up to solar system escape.
A scan of a large-format Sikorsky lithograph of an ABC (advancing blade concept) VTOL airliner (basically a 727 fuselage turned into a high-speed helicopter).
An all-new CAD diagram of the Soviet Chelomei LKS spaceplane with an inboard profile showing the military (nuclear bombardment) payload. The first in a series on the LKS.

If you are interested in helping to preserve (and get copies of) this sort of thing, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

“Life With Lockheed”

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Jun 302018

In 1959 Lockheed printed up a self-promotion booklet to sell to new and prospective employees the advantages of their Georgia facility. It includes a lot of photos showing the joys of working in the deep south in the era before universal adoption of air conditioning while wearing three piece suits and ties, as well as photos and art of the various facilities, aircraft and projects then at work at Lockheed-Georgia.

I have posted the full-rez scan of the booklet, available to $10+ APR Patreon patrons. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Reusable Atlas model photos

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May 182018

In the 1960’s, prior to the Space Shuttle program, General Dynamics/Convair studied using the Atlas ICBM as a space launch system. no surprise there. But one concept called for a nearly fully reusable Atlas, equipped with wings, jet engines, landing gear and a cockpit to recover the booster in one reusable piece. It would be topped with either an expendable Centaur and satellite/space probe upper stage or a smallish manned lifting body spaceplane with its own built-in propulsive capability. At the time General Dynamics released sizable “educational” cards with information and photos of models of the reusable Atlas. Unlike the normal Atlas, this version did not drop the outboard “booster’ engines, but kept them throughout the mission. An inflatable, deployable afterbody was proposed to fair over the engines after burnout to reduce base drag.

I have uploaded righ-rez scans of both sides of this poster-sized card to the 2018-05 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patrons at the $4 level and up.

Additionally, a report on this concept is available as Space Doc 52.

If you are interested in these Reusable Atlas model images and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. What else are you going to spend $4 a month on?

APR Patreon April 2018 rewards issued

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Apr 292018

Rewards have been issued to APR Patreon patrons for April, 2018. This month, the “Diagram” is a Sikorsky lithograph of a Heavy Lift Helicopter concept. The Documents include a US Army catalog of airborne weaponry; a paper describing possible additional missions for the Saturn launch vehicles, and BOAC brochure extolling the virtues of the Comet 4 jetliner. The CAD diagram is of the British Interplanetary Society’s “Deadalus” starship design.

If you are interested in helping to preserve (and get copies of) this sort of thing, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Extras added for APR Patrons

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Apr 212018

APR Patrons contributing more than $10 per month were today sent a 1969 diagram of a preliminary design for what would become the AWACS plane… close, but with eight engines rather than four. This design was illustrated in color artwork from time to time.

And for APR Patrons at the $4 and above level, a diagram of the 777 and scans of a McDonnell-Douglas brochure on the “Med-Lite Family” of launch vehicle concepts have been uploaded to the 2018-04 APR Extras folder on Dropbox:

If you are interested in these and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. What else are you going to spend $4 a month on? Taxes?

Lunar Exploration Systems for Apollo

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Apr 192018

For the APR Patreon I try to acquire as much interesting aerospace documentation as I can, and these items fall into two categories:

Stuff that I can afford. This stuff winds up in the APR Patreon catalog of potential monthly rewards for patrons.
Stuff I can’t hope to afford.

There’s a lot of the latter category of stuff. Sometimes it’s because the item has a ridiculously high Buy It Now price or starting bid, or because the item will be popular among bidders, or because it’s *really* good/big and thus worth every penny. But unaffordable is unaffordable.

However, there is an option for “stuff I can’t afford:” crowdfunding. I’ve done this a number of times with considerable success, and I’ve just done so again, winning a trio of General Dynamics documents describing a 1965 program to develop a logistics system for extending the Apollo lunar exploration program:

This set of documents was just much too expensive for an individual (well, I’m sure Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk wouldn’t have flinched), but with a group of like-mined funders it came in at $30 per person. So what happens now:

1: I wait for it to show up in the mail.

2: I make a complete set of scans in 300 DPI grayscale (and color, where appropriate) and convert to PDFs

3: I make the scans and PDFs available to funders, generally via Dropbox

4: I find an appropriate archive for the documents, and then donate the originals to them.

5: And that’s it. The files are shared with the funders, but do not appear on future APR Patreon catalogs or as purchasable, downloadable “Diagrams and Documents.” What the funders choose to do with their scans & PDFs is up to them.

APR Patrons get alerted to each of these occasional “crowdfunding opportunities.” So if you’d like to participate, please considered signing up for the APR Patreon.

Hovertank and spaceplane

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Mar 292018

Here are two presumably wholly unrelated pieces of aerospace artwork. At least I *hope* they’re unrelated…

The first is an anonymous painting of a spaceplane. Doesn’t seem terribly realistic; most likely done for advertising purposes (I wonder if the “7-11” might indicate a relationship to the chain of the same name). The print arrived damaged, as you an see; the paper was thick and *really* brittle and really didn’t appreciate being rolled up. If anyone knows anything about it, feel free to comment.

The second is concept art from Bell Aerospace illustrating an amphibious troop carrier for the Marine Corps. The design of the assault vehicle is fairly ordinary as such things go, except for one detail: it could turn into a hovercraft and float across the surface of the water, rather than plowing through it. No further details provided, so I don’t know if the hover-skirts were deployable and retractable, or if they were simply dropped when the vehicle got to shore. The latter would certainly seem more economical.

I’ve uploaded the full rez scans to the 2018-03 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to all current APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If you are interested in this and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. Chances are good that $4/month is far cheaper than your espresso/booze budget!

PDF Review: Wheelguns in Spaaaace

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Mar 092018

Advanced “space guns,” typically lasers, railguns, coilguns, neutral particle beams and the like, have a problem: power. Nuclear reactors and solar panels can provide power for years at a time, but generally their steady-state power output is only a tiny fraction of the instantaneous power needed when the gun goes off. So to run a weapon that needs many gigawatts for a fraction of a second with a powerplant that produces kilowatts, you need an energy storage system that can convert that energy into power on a moments notice. Things like batteries are great in principle, but their weight is vast and their ability to release power at the high levels needed is generally poor.

Often this has resulted in space weapons that use chemical reactions to provide the power needed. This has meant that the total number of shots that can be fired is strictly limited.

In the 1980’s during the SDI heyday, Westinghouse looked at an alternate approach: rotating hoops. Giant wheels made of advanced composite materials would be spun up over time by a low-power system such as a nuclear reactor, and when needed these flywheels would be electromagnetically braked to generate vast amounts of power as the wheels ground to a halt. The system could be “reloaded” by slowly spinning the wheels up again… assuming the system hadn’t torn itself part.

The weapon shown below is probably largely notional, no masses or dimensions were given. But based on a smaller terrestrial unit (with ten hoops, each 14.5 meters diameter, massing 140,000 kg each, spinning at 1800 RPM to deliver a total of 1 gigawatt for 10 minutes to power anti-missile lasers and such), this can be assumed to be a fairly *vast* construction, far heavier than anything mankind has so far launched into orbit. Obviously such a thing would be impossible to launch as a unit; it would be assembled in space using spools of fibers wound in place. Presumably the weapon itself would be at least somewhat aimable independent of the flywheels… slewing *them* about to aim at a moving target would seem to be an exercise in futility.

This came from the paper “Rotating Hoop, Pulsed-Energy Converter” contained in “Transactions of the Fifth Symposium on Space Nuclear Power Systems.” A PDF of that can be downloaded if you go HERE and click the “PDF” button.

Support the APR Patreon to help bring more of this sort of thing to light!

Lockheed L-2000 SST art: 2

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Feb 282018

The L-2000 was Lockheed’s entrance into the mid-1960’s FAA contest to design and develop an American supersonic transport. The FAA wanted the US to have an SST substantially better than the Anglo-French Concorde, with up to 250 passengers and a cruise speed of up to Mach 3 (as fast as an SR-71). Interestingly, the Concorde was not expected to be a long0lived design, but rather was simply going to be the *first* SST, a technology demonstrator, a diplomatic endeavor between historic enemies Britain and France, a flying sales brochure for Angle-French industry. And the Tupolev Tu 144 was an attempt to put something, *anything*, into the air first.

In the end, the FAA selected the Boeing 2707 design, ending the L-2000. And after great promise was shown, politics killed the Boeing 2707, ending substantial forward progress in civil aviation. Since then, air flight has gotten cheaper and more efficient, but it has not gotten any faster… and it certainly hasn’t become more comfortable.

This artwork depicts an earlier configuration with a simpler, less elegant shape.

I’ve uploaded the full rez scans to the 2018-02 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to all current APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If you are interested in this and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. Chances are good that $4/month is far cheaper than your espresso/booze budget!

APR Patreon rewards, February, 2018

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Feb 272018

Rewards have been issued to APR Patreon patrons for February, 2018. This month, the diagram is a 1/40 scale B-52B diagram. Normally the diagrams are sent out at full 300 dpi (with 125 dpi for the $1.25 patrons), but at 300 dpi the diagram is simply Way Too Big at over 40,000 pixels wide. Most image viewing programs will simply go “nope”and refuse to even try to display such images. so this month the image is sent out at 200 dpi (still slightly over 30,000 pixels wide), and 83 dpi for the $1.25 patrons. The 83 dpi version is also included for the higher level patrons for easier viewing.

Also: the documents this month include a United Aircraft paper on advanced future space propulsion systems as seen from 1969, and a January 1953 Douglas Aircraft design study for the DC-8. The CAD diagram this month is the Ganswindt Weltenfahrzeug… a truly terrible design for a spaceship from 1899. Terrible though it may be, it one of the first designs that is clearly in the Project Orion family tree…

If you are interested in helping to preserve (and get copies of) this sort of thing, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

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