Patreon – Page 22 – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

PDF Review: X-20 Dyna Soar Progress Report

hypersonic, Patreon, PDF Review, research, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Jul 112017

Seems I’ve been a wee bit lax on the PDF Reviews I will attempt to rectify that in the future.

Here is a Air Force conference paper from May, 1964, describing the X-20 Dyna Soar program and vehicle. At this point the program had been cancelled for some months; the configuration shown in the paper was essentially the final design. It’s a decent overall view of the Dyna Soar.

Here’s the link to the abstract:

The X-20 (Dyna-Soar) Progress Report

Here’s a link directly to the PDF.

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

Liberty Launcher

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Jul 062017

“Liberty” was a short-lived ATK launch vehicle concept. This design arose in 2011, following after the Ares 1. Where Ares 1 was a single 5-segment Shuttle booster derivative topped by an all-new hydrogen/oxygen second stage, Liberty used the same booster but topped by the core stage of an Ariane V. ATK believed that they could get one of these flying with astronauts as soon as 2015, but NASA decided to not fund the effort and ATK abandoned the project in 2012.

ATK handed out some promotional cards a few years back at one of the big Shuttle motor tests, scanned in below. I’ve posted the high-rez versions of the scans to the APR Patreon Dropbox (in the 2017-04 APR Extras folder, because I forgot to mention that here months ago).

If you are interested in accessing these and other aerospace historical goodies, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Plexiglas AeroSpacePlane

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Jul 042017

Around 1960, the USAF had high hopes for the development of ASP: “AeroSpace Plane.” ASP was a program to develop an airbreather one- or two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane. The first stage would use some form of Liquid Air Cycle Engine; the inlet would be actively cooled by the liquid hydrogen fuel so that the incoming air would be condensed to liquid, which would allow the liquified air to be stored and fed into high chamber pressure rocket engines. ASP was extremely ambitious, and obviously – since no airbreathing system has made it to orbit (not counting simple turbojet-powered aircraft carrying otherwise conventional rockets such as Pegasus) – it did not work. A fair chunk of change was spent on the concept, but it faded away after a few years. The basic idea of ASP would arise a quarter century later with NASP, to similar levels of success.

A good, well-illustrated article on ASP was published some time back in issue v2N5 of Aerospace Projects Review.

Most of the known ASP designs were produced by Convair. It seems that Convair jumped into the program with both feet, producing not only detailed diagrams of a whole range of vehicles but also artwork and display models. And the latter category included some beautiful see-through models made from Plexiglas. It shows some interior details such as the complex plumbing of the Liquid Air Cycle Engines, as well as the winged second stage tucked into the lower fuselage of the very large hypersonic first stage. In an era long before computer animation, models such a this would be very useful in illustrating complex concepts to customers and bosses.

I have uploaded the full-rez version of this photo to the 2017-07 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to all APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If you are interested in accessing these and other aerospace historical goodies, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Aerospace Art

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May 032017

A number of vintage 8X10 glossies of aerospace concept art (all apparently North American/Rockwell) were recently sold on eBay. These included Apollo/Skylab, early Space Shuttle concepts, advanced spacecraft (including a manned mission to Jupiter and NERVA tugs) and various space probes and space station designs. Fortunately, the seller provided fairly good scans. I have collected them and uploaded them to the APR Patreon Extras Dropbox folder for 2017-05. If you are interested in accessing these and other aerospace historical goodies, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Nazi “Sun Gun” references

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Mar 202017

One of the oldest and most tiresome of the “Nazi Wunderwaffen” myths is that of the “Sun Gun.” The idea is that the Nazis were found to have been working on the design of an orbital mirror, miles in diameter, that would have reflected sunlight to the surface of Earth in such a way to cause enemy cities to burst into flames. This idea first hit the US press quite soon after the defeat of Nazi Germany, and *before* the nuking of Japan. Several articles appeared in the New York Times on the topic beginning in late June, 1945, and the idea reached its peak with an illustrated article in Life Magazine in July, 1945.

The “Sun Gun” was claimed to be a circular mirror one mile in diameter, orbiting at 5,100 miles. The mirror, it was claimed, would be made from large cubical and pressure-tight blocks, providing *vast* internal volume for the crew and their crop of oxygen-producing pumpkins.

Small problem: it’s BS.

Now, there *were* ideas for vast orbital mirrors. Hermann Oberth had proposed such a thing as far back as the 1920’s, so an orbital mirror was not unknown as a concept in wartime Germany. And in reading the lean details in the articles, it’s clear that what is described is the Oberth mirror as described after a round of “telephone.” The basic idea is Oberths, and Oberth even gets a shout-out in the articles, but Oberths ideas got mutated and bent out of recognition. Not leastways because an orbital mirror a mile in diameter 5,100 miles overhead *cannot* set a city, or even a dry piece of of tissue paper on fire. The basic physics of optics prohibits that. Thought experiment: take a mirror one inch in diameter. Can you use it to start a fire? If it’s precise enough and close enough to the target… sure. Now, move that one-inch mirror 5,100 inches from the target. Gonna set anything on fire *now?*

I suspect what happened is that the the US Army officers who reported on the “sun gun” were simply told about the Oberth mirror – which, by the way, was a far less insane idea than the “sun gun” in that it was essentially foil rather than a large solid structure – by Germans who either wanted to screw with them or, like von Braun, wanted to pump up their apparent usefulness to the US military in the hopes of getting transferred to the US. Given the conditions in post-war Germany and the risks of getting sucked into the black hole of the Soviet Union, it would make sense for *anyone* to try to wrangle a ride to the US for an actual job.

I have gathered together scans of newspaper and magazine articles on the subject and mashed ’em into a PDF file which I have uploaded to the 2017-03 APR Extras Dropbox folder. This is available to all APR Patreon Patrons at the $4 level and above. If interested, check out the APR Patreon.

Some aerospace art & photos for Patrons

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Mar 042017

I have posted in the 2017-03 APR Extras Dropbox folder for APR Patrons a small pile of aerospace history images yoinked out of a few reports. Included is a 1944 NACA reconstruction of the German V-1 buzz bomb (generally correct, but off in detail), three photos of a wind tunnel model of the Bell X-1 modified to have variable sweep wings, three pieces of NASA art depicting some then-future applications of space propulsion systems including a one-man lunar flyer, an early concept for what became Skylab, and a more advanced modular space station. The full-rez verions are available to all APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above. If interested, please consider signing up. There are a whole bunch of other goodies available in past months folders, more stuff coming.

Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon. If this sort of thing interests you, please consider signing up… not only will you help fund the search for obscure aerospace history, you’ll gain access to a lot of interesting stuff, not available elsewhere.

Polaris

hi-rez, nukes, Patreon, rockets 1 Response »

Jan 222017

Here’s an interesting illustration of the Polaris sea launched ballistic missile, taken from a technical manual. I’ve uploaded the full-rez version to the APR Patreon Extras Dropbox folder for 2017-01, so if you are interested, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Early Orbital Space Station/2707-300 SST

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Jan 122017

The Aerospace Projects Review Patreon rewards for January will include a reasonably massive Douglas report on the Saturn V-launched pre-Skylab “Early Orbital Space Station” and a scan of a reasonably gigantic diagram of the Boeing 2707-300 SST. These will be released before the end of January and will be available to all then-current Patrons. So if these items interest you, and/or if you are interested in helping the effort to find and preserve this sort of aerospace history, be sure to check out the APR Patreon.

And…

XB-70 meets the YF-12A (and the C-141)

bomber, fighter, hi-rez, Patreon, transports 2 Responses »

Jan 022017

A meeting of giants at Edwards Air Force Base in the late 1960’s. It’s interesting to compare the size of the “fighter” with the “bomber…” the bomber, as anyone who has ever stood underneath the sole example in Dayton, is Really Big, but the YF-12 is just not that much smaller. Sustained Mach 3 flight is not for the faint hearted… or the small-engined or those with dainty fuel tanks.

I have made the full-rez version of this photo available for APR Patrons at the $4 level and up in the 2017-01 folder of the APR Extras Dropbox site. If interested in getting this and the previous years worth of Extras, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Early Saturn C-5 Color Art

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Dec 062016

From the NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center, December, 1961: An illustration of the forthcoming Saturn C-5 S-IC stage. This appears to be *mostly* as the S-IC would be built, but there are some detectable differences. Missing are the four small (and apparently superfluous) stabilizing fins that appeared on the outboard engine fairings. And located at the front are the eight retro rockets that would end up inside the aforementioned engine fairings.

This illustration came via EBay. The full-resolution scan (all 15+ megabytes of it) is available in the 2016-12 Dropbox folder for APR patrons. If you’d like to gain access to this and two years worth of high-rez aerospace goodies like this, as well as help out the effort to procure and preserve aerospace goodies like this, please consider joining the APR Patreon.

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