Patreon – Page 29 – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

Unsolved Mystery: 1946 USAAF Supersonic Escape Capsules

Oct 142014

Not long ago, I was alerted to a pair of eBay auctions for vintage blueprints of “Supersonic Escape Capsules.” The blueprints, produced by the US Army Air Forces, depict models of the capsules made from plexiglas and plywood. This would be generally interesting to me, but one of the diagrams seemed to indicate that the diagrams might not be what they said they were. Instead, it looked a *lot* like an aerodynamically improved “Fat Man” atom bomb. I suspected that what was for sale were actually test or display models of early atom bomb casings, intentionally mis-described for security reasons. I managed to score both blueprints with surprisingly minimal fuss.

Upon receipt of the blueprints, my suspicion that at least one of them depicts an evolved Fat Man seems to have been misplaced. Fat Man was about 60 inches in diameter; the model is 38.5 inches in diameter, which would make for an odd scale. But the idea of a supersonic escape capsule being studied in 1946 is also odd, since the USAAF was years from having supersonic aircraft. And the configurations don’t really seem to work as escape capsules; typically such things are the entire cockpit which can break away from the aircraft, but these would make for very unfortunate cockpits for supersonic aircraft. So at the current time I can’t quite figure this one out. I’ll continue to see if I can run down info on this, but leads are few.

I have not scanned in these blueprints yet. They’ve been folded up longer than most of the people reading this have been alive, so it’ll take a good long time to flatten them out and make them safe for scanning. But I’ve taken some photos, which I’ve made available in full rez in a ZIP archive for all of my APR Patreon patrons. The APR Patreon page is HERE. If you want to help preserve and make available obscure aerospace history items such as these, please consider contributing to the APR Patreon. For as little as $0.75/month, you can help out, plus gain access to a bunch of aerospace “rewards” like these. You can also help out by helping to spread the word.

The first “escape capsule” on a quite good vintage blueprint. The resemblance to “Fat Man” is obvious… but likely dubious. It’s a close match to the Davy Crockett warhead from a decade later.

The second “escape capsule,” on a larger and more badly faded blueprint.

One of the problems with photographing large format blueprints is the almost inevitable groupies. Cats like paper. Cats *love* crinkly paper. And 70-year-old vellum blueprints are the crinkliest of crinkly paper. Fortunately, no damage done.

Patreon: October 2014 rewards released

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Oct 102014

The October rewards for the APR patrons have been released. They include:

PDF document: “A Recoverable Air Breathing Booster,” A Chrysler study from 1964 for a strap-on booster system for the Saturn Ib incorporating additional H-1 rocket engines and jet engines for recovery.

PDF Document: “XF-103 Descriptive Data,”a Lockheed collection of information on the then-current XF-103. This is from a Lockheed collection of information on competitors designs.

Large format diagram scan: the Boeing Advanced Theater Transport. A later version of the tilt-wing “Super Frog.”

And for the higher-end patrons, a CAD diagram of an early NACA-Langley design for what would become the X-15.

If you would like to access these items and support the cause of acquiring and sharing these pieces of aerospace history, please visit my Patreon page and consider contributing.

PDF Review: “Advanced Supersonic Technology Concept”

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Oct 012014

NOTE: this is the latest official “PDF Review.” (Two were supposed to be released in September, but events prevented that. So this is the first of four to be released on October.) The idea is to present interesting online resources for those interested in the sort of aerospace oddities that you can find in the pages of Aerospace Projects Review. This little project is supported through my Patreon campaign; at current levels, I’ll post two such reviews per month. If you’d like to see more, or just want to contribute to help me along, please consider becoming a patron.

The Boeing 2707 supersonic transport was cancelled in 1971. The cost of developing the aircraft, coupled with the increased fuel costs due to the oil embargoes of the early 70’s, doomed the effort. However, NASA continued to spend money on studies of supersonic transports throughout the 1970s and into the 1980’s, focusing their interest on SSTs with advanced aerodynamics and propulsion systems in order to reduce fuel burn and thus operating costs.

One such study was performed by Ling Temco Vought for NASA-Langley in 1973. The study described a four-engine SST design to serve as a baseline for further study and refinement. Basic characteristics of the design:

Mission range of 4000 nautical miles with 292 passengers
Take Off gross weight of 762,000 pounds.
The engines were non-afterburning, yet provided a cruise speed of Mach 2.7 at 60,000 feet.
For a standard-day sea-level takeoff, a maximum 10,500 foot runway was needed.

The initial design was based on a previous Boeing design from 1968, the Model 733-336C. While broadly similar to the earlier design, the LTV design deleted the Boeing’s deployable canard, used larger non-afterburning engines, moved the main wing forward, increased the size of the tail and cranked the wing sweep slightly. Additionally, the four-abreast seating of the Boeing was changed to five-abreast in the LTV design, with an increase from 234 to 292 passengers. This was made possible by a slight enlarging of the fuselage.

The very latest in computer graphics, 1973 style.

Pages from Advanced supersonic technology concept study reference characteristics_Page_10

Note: the following two illustrations were stitched together from separate pages in the PDF. The full resolution versions are available to all APR Patreon patrons HERE.

The NTRS abstract page:

Advanced supersonic technology concept study reference characteristics

The direct link to the PDF file on the NTRS:

Advanced supersonic technology concept study reference characteristics

Patreon: September 2014 rewards

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Sep 202014

After a bit of a delay, the September rewards have been released. These include a large-format inboard profile of the North American Aviation F-108 Rapier Mach 3+ interceptor:

And “Notes on Space Technology,” a compilation of notes by the Flight Research Division of the NACA Langley Research Center based on a space technology course given in the early part of 1958. A hefty 670+pages in length, this covered just about every aspect of space travel as understood in 1958. While I haven’t read the whole thing, it appears to be not only of historical interest, but also useful to get a pretty good general grasp of space travel science, principles and technologies.

Also included for the higher level patrons are three CAD diagrams:

Boeing Bird of Prey stealth, manufacturing and materials testing prototype aircraft from the 1990’s

Zenith Star experimental space based laser anti-missile system, 1988

Hypersonic Test Vehicle 2, a maneuverable hypersonic glider for missile-launched warheads

The September rewards are about a week and a half late in being released. Since I hope to get the October rewards out a little earlier than normal, that means that the September releases will probably be available for a short time.

If you would like to access these items and support the cause of acquiring and sharing these pieces of aerospace history, please visit my Patreon page and consider contributing.

PDF Review: “Advanced Atlas Launch Vehicle Digest”

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Aug 282014

NOTE: this is the third official “PDF Review.” The idea is to present interesting online resources for those interested in the sort of aerospace oddities that you can find in the pages of Aerospace Projects Review. This little project is supported through my Patreon campaign; at current levels, I’ll post two such reviews per month. If you’d like to see more, or just want to contribute to help me along, please consider becoming a patron. This PDF was originally on the NASA Technical Report Server. But it seems to no longer be there… probably a victim of the needless security panic, NTRS shutdown and subsequent database lobotomy. So, I’m hosting the 17 megabyte PDF file HERE: Advanced Atlas Launch Vehicle Digest

In the mid-1960’s, Convair produced an unknown number of issues of a a magazine-like publication about the Atlas, this being issue #2 from April, 1967. This described the state of the Atlas space launch vehicle at the time… recent successes and configurations available or soon to be available.

Described and illustrated are the various strap-on solid rocket boosters, upper stages and payload fairings available. This is done with quite a number of reasonably high quality engineering diagrams and paintings, trajectory diagrams, data tables and graphs showing payload and velocity ranges. This “digest” would be useful for preliminary payload planning, for missions from 100 n.mi. circular orbits, to geosynchronous transfers, lunar impact missions and planetary flyby missions as far as Pluto.

The illustrations are, as might be expected from a 1967-vintage publication, all non-computer generated.

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PDF Review: Swept-Wing X-1 “The Effect of Negative Dihedral”

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Aug 162014

NOTE: this is the second official “PDF Review.” The idea is to present interesting online resources for those interested in the sort of aerospace oddities that you can find in the pages of Aerospace Projects Review. This little project is supported through my Patreon campaign; at current levels, I’ll post two such reviews per month. If you’d like to see more, or just want to contribute to help me along, please consider becoming a patron.

——————-

In 1948, the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Langley Field, VA, put oput a technical paper with the snappy title “The Effect of Negative Dihedral, Tip Droop, and Wing-tip Shape on the Low-speed Aerodynamic Characteristics of a Complete Model Having a 45 Degrees Sweptback Wing.” This described the results of wind tunnel testing of a model of the Bel X-1 supersonic research aircraft with swept wings. At the time, supersonic aerodynamics was in its infancy, and while it was known by this point that swept wings had superior supersonic drag than unswept wings, the details were murky.

Numerous studies were made of re-winged X-1’s, including forward-swept wings. As it happened, no version of the X-1 was ever equipped with anything but unswept wings (though the later versions had substantially thinner wings). Such studies were performed by not only Bell Aircraft but also the NACA; the latter studies may have used the Bell X-1 wind tunnel models, but may not have indicated an intention or desire to actually re-wing an X-1. Instead, the X-1 was a known commodity, and by modifying an existing wind tunnel model, changes in performance could be quickly and inexpensively determined without having to design and build entirely new models.

In this study, several different wingtips were evaluated, including squared-off tips, rounded tips and droops tips.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
The results of low- speed tests made to determine the effects of negative geometric dihedral, tip droop, and tip shape on the aerodynamic characteristics of a complete model having a 45 degree sweptback wing are summarized as follows :

1. The use of -10 degree geometric dihedral resulted in a reduction in the average value of the effective-dihedral parameter C2V through the low and moderate lift- coefficient range that was about 65 percent as great as that usually obtained for unswept wings.

2 . Drooping the wing tips 45 degrees (maintaining the same ground clearance as that with -100 geometric dihedral) resulted in a decrease in the average value of C2V through the low and moderate lift-coefficient range equivalent to about -14 degrees geometric dihedral and also caused an increase in the maximum lift coefficient of 0.15.

3. Changes in the wing- tip plan form indicated that C2V was lowest for the parallel and circular tips and highest for the tips skewed either in or out .

4. By changing a square- cut tip to a faired tip of revolution, the maximum value of C2V for the model with parallel tips was reduced by an amount equivalent to about -4 degrees geometric dihedral.

5. Deflecting the wing tip (from zero) resulted in rolling and yawing moments about the same as that produced by a conventional aileron on a similar sweptback- wing model.

This file was originally added to the NASA Technical Report Server in the mid/late 1990s, and featured rather sad 2-bit (black and white) scanning… fine for text, adequate for line drawings, terrible for art & photos. When I re-accessed it for this review to make sure that it was still available, it had been re-scanned and re-uploaded in full color, provided vastly better image quality.

The abstract can be seen HERE. The PDF file can be downloaded directly HERE.

Three-view of the swept-wing X-1 showing levels of dihedral.

Photo of the wing tunnel model. Note the markings applied to the model. As wing tunnel models are very rarely painted except as needed by the science of the tests, this indicates that this may have been a conventional X-1 wing tunnel model that, after testing, had been painted to turn it into a display model… and then brought back into the shop and re-purposed as a wind tunnel model again.

Drooped wingtips studied.

Different wing planforms & tips examined.

Patreon: August rewards released

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Aug 102014

The rewards for my Patreon patrons have now been released. This months selections include:

Diagram: a very large, very nice layout of the Avro Arrow. This was voted on by the top-level patrons.

Document: a report on the Vought Regulus II cruise missile which includes some very nice layout and inboard diagrams of both the operational and test missiles. This was voted for by the top-level patrons.

Document: “Introduction to Kistler Aerospace Corporation,” a full-color brochure from 1995 describing the K-0 sorta-SSTO launch vehicle (which would use an “launch platform”).

Additionally, for the higher-level patrons ($5 and up) there are three all-new CAD diagrams:

1) The Boeing “Big Onion” SSTO from the 1970s, meant to launch Solar Power Satellite components

2) The Space Shuttle Main Engine

3) The Northrop Tacit Blue stealth testbed. This is, so far as I’m aware, the first time that a clear and accurate three-view of this aircraft has been released publicly.

I’ve changed things a little bit from last month. At each patronage level, there are different levels of rewards. Each level has its own message under the “Creations” tab just above the APR logo at my Patreon page. And in the upper righthand corner of each message is a little gray rectangle with “Zip” in it. This is the link to the ZIP archive containing the files for that specific patronage level. If you are a higher-level patron, this may not include all the files you are entitled to. You should be able to download everything from the lower-level patron messages.

Last chance for July Rewards

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Aug 072014

I’ve got the August rewards just about ready to go. When I make them available for the current Patreon supporters, the July rewards will be replaced. So if you are interested in the July items, time runs real, real short.

1) A large format diagram of the B/J-58, a Convair concept for a two-engine tactical B-58

2) A PDF document, “Manned Space Stations and Alternatives” which covers Gemini and Dyna Soar-based small MOL-like station concepts, and includes info on the Gemini satellite inspector/interceptor

3) Two CAD diagrams, one of the McDonnell-Douglas Model 192 ISINGLASS hypersonic rocket-powered recon platform, the other comparing the Titan IIIC with the Titan IIIC/Dyna Soar and the Titan IIIM/MOL.

If you’d be interested in helping me dig up and release this sort of obscure aerospace historical material, or if you want to get in on the rewards, please consider joining my Patreon.

New aerospace acquisitions

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Aug 022014

Thanks to the funding made available via my Patreon campaign, these recently arrived:

Document: “A Recoverable Air-Breathing Booster,” 1964, Chrysler Space Division. This report describes a ring to be fitted to the base of a Saturn I booster; the ring is equipped with either 4 or 8 additional H-1 rocket engines for additional liftoff thrust, as well as a similar number of turbojets to be used to return the ring-booster to Cape Canaveral for a vertical landing.

Diagrams: “Plans for Scale Model Construction of the LONG TANK DELTA” and “Plans for Scale Model Construction of the LONG-TANK THOR AGENA,” from McDonnell-Douglas, 1971. These came in an envelope, and illustration on which depicts the Delta rocket, the Honest John (the diagram of which I have previously obtained), the Saturn I, the Genie AAM, the Nike Ajax and the Nike Hercules. If anyone knows of the latter 4, please enlighten me.

These will be added to the list of drawings/documents available to my Patreon patrons to vote on.

AeroBits: Shuttle Landing Passes

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Jul 302014

Two passes – Public and Press – for parking to witness the landing of the first Space Shuttle orbital flight, STS-1. The government threat/verbiage on the back is a little creepifyin’ but I’m pretty sure it’s expired by now (probably expired the moment it landed). These passes were scanned at 300 DPI and are presented half-rez.

These passes were obtained via an eBay purchase, and were “extras” to the items I was actually after (detailed large format diagrams of the Shuttle flight instrumentation). This purchase was made possible by my Patreon contributors. So if you like this sort of thing, please consider contributing to my Patreon campaign. Every little bit helps! The full-rez scans are available to all Patreon contributors.

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