I’ve written a short and illustrated piece on how the Dyna Soar can illustrate the possible capabilities of the X-37B over at War Is Boring:
I am contemplating expanding this considerably for a separate release. It’d be a little different from the usual sort of thing I do, since the X-37B is a real flying vehicle, not just an unbuilt project.
This is the fourth of four “PDF Reviews” I plan to have in October, to make up for the lack of any in September. 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.
A work of no small importance in the history of spaceflight is “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes” by Robert Goddard. Published in 1919 while his early rocketry work was being funded by the Smithsonian, “Method” is one of the major works of rocket engineering of the 20th century. At this time of writing, Goddard had experimented only with solid rockets; liquid rockets still being in the future. But in “Method” Goddard began to show what rockets could be capable of. In his last section he discussed what would be needed to launch a rocket not just to high altitude, but to escape velocity and beyond, with some discussion of how much flash powder would be needed to be detected impacting (and flashing) on the darkened surface of the moon.
It was that last bit that caused all the trouble.
Goddard was not by nature a publicity hound. And the press of the time, once they got hold of the report, savaged him for what they – incorrectly – saw as a sensational proposal to actually build a moon rocket, coupled with a flawed understanding of physics on the part of some reporters and editorial writers. The resulting firestorm in the press served to popularize Goddards work and inspire rocketeers around the world… but it also inspired Goddard to be even more of a recluse. Had this not been published, or had it escaped the notice of the press, it’s interesting to speculate how history might have been different. Many German rocket scientists might not have been as inspired, while Goddard might have been less reclusive and thus more open to accepting assistance. The result *might* have been that WWII would have ended not with German rocketeers being sought all over the world, but American rockeeters in the same position… but victorious. The result of *that* would have been to potentially move the march to space forward by five to ten years, while denying to the Soviets much of the expertise of the Germans.
The Internet Archive has a scan of a Smithsonian copy of the report. Their copy has a number of hand-written corrections and notations, and appears to be a proof copy rather than one of the final published versions.
Link to the abstract page:
https://archive.org/details/methodreachinge00Godd
And directly to the PDF:
https://archive.org/download/methodreachinge00Godd/methodreachinge00Godd.pdf
All I have on this: a 1970 design by the German aircraft firm HFB (Hamburger Flugzeugbau) for a “flying panzer.” Clearly it’s an armored car with jet propulsion and vertical lift capability; I would assume that this is only capable of extremely limited flight for such things as hopping rivers, trenches, minefields, battlefield debris and other such tasks. Basically, the vehicular equivalent of the Bell “flying belts” or “jetpacks” which were popularized in the 1960;s, but which were too cumbersome, expensive and far too short-duration to be of any real practical value.
Still: “Flying Panzer.”
The vehicle is depicted in the foreground hopping over anti-tank obstacles and in the background crossing a river. Note that it appears to have a rudimentary skirt system; if those wheels could be drawn up above the skirt, this would make it capable of operating as a hovercraft. This would allow it to “fly” over the surface of a river much more economically than on pure jet lift. I have no idea if this was a serious design effort or just artistic doodling.
The first five issues of US Bomber Projects are now available as ebooks at Amazon. The links below not only take you to the Amazon listings, if you then buy something (*anything*, so fee free to splurge on laptops and cars and jewelry and such), I get a small commission.
I would appreciate feedback… everything from constructive criticism to reviews posted over at Amazon.
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If you dowloaded an early version of USBO01, it seems that you *can* download the latest version without re-buying it.
This is the third of four “PDF Reviews” I plan to have in October, to make up for the lack of any in September. 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.
One of the odder American aircraft in the immediate post-war period was the McDonnell XP-85 “Goblin.” This was essentially the smallest jet fighter possible to build with the technology of the time… small so that it could be carried within the bomb bay of the Convair B-36. The B-36 could reach far, far beyond the range of any conceivable escort fighter, leaving it at the mercy of defending Soviet fighters; if it could carry a fighter jet with it, it might stand a chance. of course the idea was fairly ridiculous; the Goblin was the biggest plane that could be carried internally, yet would almost certainly stand little chance against a conventional fighter.
Dropping the fighter from the bomb bay would be fairly easy and straightforward. But getting it back was understood to be a challenge. The Goblin would rendezvous with a “trapeze” projected well below the bomb bay, outside of the turbulent airflow around the bombers fuselage. Once docked to the trapeze, it would be mechanically stabilized, the wings would fold up and the trapeze would retract, safely drawing the fighter into the bomb bay. That, at least, was the plan; actual testing with a B-29 showed that the docking rendezvous was far more difficult than envisioned.
This difficulty was not wholly unforeseen. In 1947, the Langley Aeronautical Lab ran a series of wind tunnel tests of a 1/10 scale model of the Goblin and the forward fuselage of a B-36. Tests were conducted with both “power off” and “power on” models; the power off models were well behaved when docked to the trapeze, but the power on models quickly underwent violent flailing. The tests were filmed, with small still images included in the test report; the power-on model response is dramatic, to say the least.
Stability and Control Characteristics of a 1/10-Scale Model of the McDonnell XP-85 Airplane While Attached to the Trapeze
Here’s the link to the NASA-NTRS abstract of the report.
And here’s the DIRECT LINK TO THE PDF.
The wooden model of the FP-85 used. Note the hinged wings and the rudimentary landing gear, used to protect the model if it falls free.
Diagram of the XP-85 model.
The US Bomber Projects series is starting to appear on Amazon formatted for the Kindle. These version are priced at only $2.99.
Many years back I was given a photocopy of a Soviet journal article describing a Soviet version of the WWII-era “Silverbird.” The Silverbird was the brainchild of Austrian rocket engineer Eugen Sanger and was a concept for a hypersonic rocket powered “spaceplane” capable of dropping bombs halfway around the world. In the years immediately after the war, the report Sanger wrote proved to be influential on policymakers and engineers, especially in the USSR.
This article describes a Silverbird modified with sizable ramjet engines mounted to the wingtips. Sadly, I can’t read a single word of Russian, so I can’t make heads or tails of it apart from the illustrations. One notation indicates that this may date from 1947. The vehicle described would seem to be the “Keldysh Bomber.”
I have scanned the article and posted it as a PDF on my Patreon for patrons at the $1.50 level (c’mon… that’s $1.50 a month! Mere pennies a day!).
As well as the 11X17-format PDF collection of diagrams for USBP07 through 09.
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Issue 11 of US Bomber Projects is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #11 includes:
USBP #11 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4.25:
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And also available, issue #01 of US Transport Projects. Done in the same format as US Bomber Projects, USTP will cover flying vehicles designed to transport cargo, passengers and troops. Issue 01 includes:
USTP #01 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4.25:
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The CAD drawings created for USBP reformatted and rescaled for 11X17 collected in a separate volume. Drawings have in some cases been corrected, improved and added to.
USBP 11X17 07-09 collects the diagrams created for issues 07, 08 and 09, including:
Boeing model 464-25; Boeing Model 828-2; Fairchild N-12; Rockwell D645-3; Boeing Model 701-273-7; Martin Model 223-7; Convair 464L Dyna Soar I; Convair 464L Dyna Soar III; Bell MX Hovercraft; Bell mobile defense platform; Boeing Model 464-27; Rockwell D645-6; Republic M-4.25; Martin MAMBA; Boeing Model 484-2-2 (twin-pod); Martin Model 223-8; Douglas 464L Dyna Soar I; Boeing Model 800-11A; Boeing Model 464-33-0; Consolidated Army Bombardment Type; GE Supersonic System 6X; Convair B/J-58 B-58C; Boeing Model 484-2-2; Martin Model 223-9; Northrop N-206 Dyna Soar I/II/III; Boeing Model 800-15A
USBP11x17-01-03 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $11:
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This is the second of four “PDF Reviews” I plan to have in October, to make up for the lack of any in September. 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 one is a bit different from usual. Instead of a report full of art and diagrams and charts and, well, sentences, this one has none of those. Instead, what it does have is 5,271 pages of data. Data, specifically, on the X-Y-Z positions of every single vertex of every single tile on the Shuttle. Of what value is that? Well, someone with a whole lot of patience could, I presume, feed this data into a 3D modeling program and produce a *really* accurate model of at least part of the Space Shuttle. So… knock yourself out.
The direct download link for the PDF file is HERE.
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.