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.

Boeing Hypersonic Airliner

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Jun 262018

Faster Than Concorde: Boeing Hypersonic Jet Concept Would Cross Atlantic In 2 Hours

Boeing revealed artwork of a hypersonic transport at an AIAA conference in Atlanta. Capable of Mach 5, Boeing suggests that they could build this aircraft soon… in as little as 20 or 30 years.

Not a whole lot of detail on this one as yet. And given that the claim is “thirty years in the future,” chances are that this design is little more than artwork. The fuselage is pretty generic (although those are some big windows for a Mach 5 aircraft), but the wings and stabilizers (and apparent engine nacelles) are taken from previous Boeing designs stretching back to the 70’s.

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?

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.

APR Patreon rewards for October

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Oct 082017

Got them done a little early this time, so here’s a review of what the APR Patrons will be receiving:

Patrons will receive:

A proposal brochure on the C-135A cargo transport

A brochure about the Shuttle-C

A well illustrated NASA-produced booklet from the mid 1980’s describing the space station as them conceived

A large format diagram showing a wind tunnel model of the Titan III/Dyna Soar

A CAD diagram of the ca. 2001 Russian TsAGI Integrated Wing Body large passenger transport jetliner

If these are of interest, please consider signing on to the APR Patreon.

Jul 162017

Every month, patrons of the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon campaign are rewarded with a bundle of documents and diagrams, items of interest and importance to aerospace history. If you sign up, you get the monthly rewards going forwards; the “back issues” catalog lets patrons aid the APR cause by picking up items from before they signed on. The catalog, available to all patrons at the APR Patreon, has been updated to include everything from the beginning of the project back in 2014 on up to February, 2017.

Below are the items from 2016 (and the first two months of 2017):

If you are interested in any of these and in helping to fund the mission of Aerospace Projects Review, drop by the APR Patreon page and sign up. For only a few bucks a month you can help fund the procurement, scanning and dissemination of interesting aerospace documentation that might otherwise vanish from the public.

US Transport Projects #07, US Recon & Research Projects #01

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Apr 152017

Now available: two new US Aerospace Projects issues:

US Transport Projects #07

US Transport Projects #07 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #07 includes:

Lockheed L-279-9: an early SST
Convair HST – Phase II Variable Sweep Configuration: A mid-1960’s hypersonic transport
Lockheed CL-1373: a short-haul turboprop liner
Boeing Model 702-134(4): a large nuclear-powered logistics hauler
McDonnell-Douglas Swept Wing Spanloader: a heavy cargo carrier
Lockheed Hybrid Wing Body: a current design for an efficient military transport
NASA Cut-Down 747 SCA: a 1973 idea for a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
Rockwell Boost Glide Transport: An early 1970’s rocket transport

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 and Research Projects #01

US Recon & Research Projects #01 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #01 includes:

General Dynamics “FISH”: 1958 concept for Mach 4 parasite
NACA-Langley X-Tail X-15: early hypersonic rocket plane concept
“Jake’s Jeep”: WWII-era motorjet design
Lockheed “Archangel”: The first step on the road to the SR-71
Boeing Model 853-21 “Quiet Bird”: A 1961 stealth platform
Northrop Tacit Blue: Operational version of the early stealth experiment
Convair Pilotless Airplane I-40 Inhabited: WWII-era design of a manned test for a flying bomb
Lockheed CL-278-1-1: a proto-U-2

USRP #01 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:

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Almost there…

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Apr 122017

So very, very close on the next two US Aerospace Projects issues. I’m only lacking cover “art”and have to deal with a bit of “dead air” in the middle of US Transport Projects #7. Usually I can shuffle things around well enough to not have this sort of thing, but this time it just hasn’t worked out. I suppose it doesn’t really matter all that much, but it does look kinda lazy like that.

It’s been about a year since I released the last USxP issue. That last issue was the first time where I used vector diagrams embedded within the issue, rather than raster images; getting the diagrams from AutoCAD into Word was a bit of a chore back then. And in the intervening months… I forgot how I did it. So I had to figure it out again, and the process is different. I have to walk the AutoCAD diagram through Rhino 3D and save as a WMF and blah, blah, blah; end result is it works just fine. I’ve done some further refinement… the main outlines are set at 0.25 mm width and the ends of the lines have been reset to rounded and mitered, so sharp corners now look more like sharp corners.

Hoping to have these two out in a day or two. The other three will be rather longer.