The rewards for APR Patrons have been issued. This month:
CAD Diagram: Marquardt hypersonic burning ramjet booster
Diagram: Convair Class VP Airplane High Performance Flying Boat
Document 1: Apollo Exploration Shelter System
Document 2: Chrysler Work Station Capsule (“work pod” for astronauts)
Document 3: Sikorsky S-97 “Raider” brochure
If you are interested in helping to preserve (and get copies of) this sort of thing, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
I’ve put five of my large format cyanotypes on ebay, with starting bids far lower than the usual selling price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Space-Launch-System-1-72-scale-Diagram-Cyanotype-Blueprint/253278318585
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Large-Cyanotype-Blueprint-of-the-Consolidated-B-36-Bomber/253278304259
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lockheed-Skunk-Works-hypersonic-X-24C-L301-cyanotype-blueprint/253278262083
No actual details.
An aircraft capable of Mach 4+? Sure, I suppose. Seems an odd thing to develop these days. Those sort of speed were an aviation fetish in the 50’s and 60’s, but there really isn’t a whole lot of need to go that fast and the penalties for doing so are *harsh.*
Operating in space? Meh. Might be a translation error or a simple misunderstanding. An aircraft capable of going that fast could potentially pop above the sensible atmosphere, perhaps like the X-15. So it would be in space, but nowhere near orbit (which would require Mach 25, not merely Mach 4). if it did so, it would need to have some ability to control its attitude, presumably with attitude control thrusters.
Or it could be BS. That would be entirely unsurprising.
A nifty piece of NASA art showing a cutaway of the Orion capsule atop the SLS.
The extremely large Stratolaunch was rolled out of the hangar for the first time today. It’s still a ways away from completion and flight.
Now available: two new US Aerospace Projects issues:
US Transport Projects #07 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #07 includes:
USTP #07 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:
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Also available, the first in a new series:
US Recon & Research Projects #01 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #01 includes:
USRP #01 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:
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I’m essentially done with the drafting portion of the exercise. Now to finish the writing. I had planned on releasing ll five at once, but due to external factors I’ll almost certainly have to split this up. So… which ones do people want more? The publications forthcoming are Fighters, Bombers, Transports, Launchers and Recon & Research. Comment below…
Coming soonish: the return of USXP publications. Five are under current development and are mostly done. There is a new title in the bunch… USRP. Strictly speaking it should probably be USR&RP… United States Research and Recon Projects. Perhaps Recon and Research aren’t necessarily the most obvious categories to link together into a single title, but apart from the vitally important alliteration, there is this important fact: compared to, say, Bombers, there aren’t that many Recon and Research projects out there.
If there are specific proposals, or general categories you’d like to see in future publications, feel free to comment below.
Bell has unveiled a very sci-fi mockup of a “concept helicopter.” It features some unusual things:
A hybrid propulsion system
Variable geometry rotor tips
Lots and lots of glass
Only a single pilots seat
No physical control.
It’s that last one that’ll probably cause the most consternation. The pilot is meant to wear augmented reality goggles/visor/glasses/whatever; this will place data screens in front of him in an arrangement the pilot prefers. Control will still be manual, but the choppers onboard AI will presumably be able to track the pilots hands as he manipulates phantom controls.
Sure, it sounds cool, but two issues immediately present themselves:
1: Computer goes goofy. Malware, hacking, power surge, EMP, whatever… this thing seems like a deathtrap if the computer goes down.
2: Phantom controls that exist solely in the computers imagination and the pilots visor… sure, that sounds cool, and is certainly a common enough trope in sci-fi. Witness anytime Tony Stark wants to design anything, for instance. But in reality, your hands and arms get tired. You actually rest on the steering wheel or the yoke or the collective. Additionally, pilots really like to get direct feedback, which seems as yet beyond the ability to reproduce virtually. More, with every bump or jolt, the pilots hands will flail around. In a conventional helicopter, the pilots hands will be constrained by the controls they are gripping. In this one… nothing.
I would suggest a compromise: a set of *basic* physical instruments. Just what the pilot needs to safely fly the chopper. And I’d damn sure stick with physical controls. But… keep the augmented reality for the *secondary* instruments. Navigation, radio, air conditioning, whisper mode, thermal vision, fire rearward missiles… that can be via virtual reality. Instrument panels that are called up with a voice command, and recede when not in use.
Not at all related:
NASA has just released a report on a Europa lander mission. I haven’t read all the way through it (in fact, I’ve just glanced through it), but it seems fairly extensive. The lander design itself seems pretty preliminary. It also looks like a walking “rover,” but the legs are just long in order to allow the lander to safely come to rest on whatever terrain it happens to land on.
The lander would have instruments meant to look for the signs of life. Pretty obviously, the chances of life appearing *anywhere* near the surface of Europa are as close to zero as you can get. However, assuming that many, many kilometers below there is a liquid water ocean, and assuming that there is recognizable life swimming or floating around in the water, chances are fairly good that bits of it, everything from biochemicals on up to actual critters, would get trapped in the ice. Over extremely long periods of time the cold, icy equivalent of geological processes might drag that stuff up to the surface, where it might be detectable.
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You can download the report here:
Some of the illustrations:
