February 2019 – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

X-60A

future projects, hypersonic, research, rockets No Responses »

Feb 282019

The Air Force Research Lab has released a half-heartedly CGI animated video showing the X-60A hypersonic research vehicle designed by Generation Orbit. This is a small unmanned missile to be carried to release altitude underneath a modified Gulfstream III corporate jet, where it would fire its own throttleable liquid rocket engine and climb to cruise altitude (~130,000 ft). The vehicle is fitted with an unconventional set of wings and control surfaces; it’s not immediately clear just what it’s supposed to do other than go fast. One would imagine that high-Mach airbreathing propulsion systems would be of interest to the USAF these days, and scramjet technology is mentioned as part of the proposed payload, but how such equipment would be integrated into the vehicle is unclear.

Orbital railgun

spacecraft 2 Responses »

Feb 232019

An illustration from 1984 showing the main features of an orbital railgun for the Strategic Defense Initiative program. While the design looks reasonable enough, almost certainly this is either missing a whole lot of important details or has changed them into unrecognizability. Scale is impossible to determine, but a practical space-based railgun capable of generating the projectile velocities needed (typically 10 km/sec) would have been an impressive structure indeed.

Hughes Hot Cycle Heavylifter

transports, VTOL No Responses »

Feb 152019

A magazine ad from 1967 showing a concept for a “Hot Cycle” helicopter. The “hot cycle” was a way to spin the rotors without imparting a massive torque to the fuselage as usually happens with helicopters, requiring a tail rotor to counter. here, instead of mechanically linking the engine to the rotor via drive shafts and gears, the engine exhaust was ducted up through the central rotor shaft, then out to the tips of the rotors, and then ejected through thrust-generating nozzles. This would impart only a trivial amount of torque to the fuselage, largely from friction with the shaft bearings. it was a great idea, but there were some issues with leakage around the bearings as well as being impressively loud and fuel-hungry.

Note that while the “hot cycle” eliminated the great majority of the need for an anti-torque tail rotor, this and similar designs still had one. This tail rotor would be used to swing the tail back and forth, yawing the aircraft at low speed.. This woudl require that the rotor be able to provide thrust in either direction on demand.

Firefox

fighter, hypersonic, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon No Responses »

Feb 122019

As a bonus for those who subscribe to the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program at above the $10 level, I have made available a diagram I photocopied several decades ago at the US Air Force Museum archive: a detailed and seemingly accurate three-view of the MiG-31 “Firefox” from the movie of the same name. I *think* it’s “fan art,” but am not sure… but the USAF thought that it was worth archiving. If this is of interest, consider subscribing at the $11 level of higher.

“Big Stick” art

bomber, nukes, rockets No Responses »

Feb 112019

The San Diego Air and Space Museums Flickr account recently added this illustration, showing a Convair “Big Stick” being launched off the back of mobile transporter. “Big Stick” was a Convair concept for a nuclear ramjet powered cruise missile of nearly unlimited range, a less-known competing design against Voughts Pluto vehicle.

A higher rez (though, sadly, not a whole lot higher) version is available HERE.

If you are interested in Big Stick and Project Pluto, I recommend Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N1, which covers both in detail.

Forthcoming

spacecraft, US Spacecraft Projects No Responses »

Feb 102019

A *very* early look at issue 6 of US Spacecraft Projects:

Forthcoming

bomber, hypersonic, nukes, US Bomber Projects No Responses »

Feb 072019

An early look at the next US Bomber Projects.

Lockheed L-2000 SST: exploded view

hi-rez, jetliner, Monthly Historical Documents Program, transports No Responses »

Feb 062019

Lockheed’s entry into the FAA’s 1960’s Supersonic Transport contest was the L-2000. It was an appealing design, sort of a super-sized and angular Concorde. it lost to the Boeing 2707 due in no small part to the 2707’s swing wings… wings which wound up being fixed, like those of the L-2000.

In 1965 Lockheed released an exploded view of the L-2000’s structure, reproduced in Aviation Week, split across two pages. I took the images and fixed them; the full-size end result is pretty spiffy. I have uploaded the illustration, and two additional L-2000 images to the 2019-02 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to $4 and up subscribers to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

Hypervelocity Missile

hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, rockets No Responses »

Feb 032019

The Vought Hypervelocity Missile program began in the 1980’s as an effort to create a relatively low-cost anti-armor missile. Instead of a massive warhead, the HVM would use kinetic energy to simply punch a hole through the armor of Soviet tanks. it would do this by accelerating to in excess of Mach 4. The HVM program continued on in several modified forms into the 21st century, but eventually did not result in production.

A recent pile of stuff purchased on eBay included two Vought prints of the HVM, one showing either a test round or a mockup, the other an artists concept showing an armored vehicle with a large turret for the storage and launch of HVMs, in the process of ruining the day of the crews of two Soviet T-72s. Sadly the prints have seen better days, having gotten a bit crumpled over the years, but they’re better than nothing. I have scanned them in full color/300 DPI and uploaded the scans to the 2019-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox, available to all APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents subscribers at the $4 level or higher.

January, 2019 Monthly Historical Documents

fighter, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane, VTOL No Responses »

Feb 022019

On the 29th, APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents program subscribers were sent emails containing links to the January, 2019 rewards. This months set of documents and diagrams included high-rez copies of:

Document: “ASTRO A Manned Reusable Spacecraft Concept,” a Douglas Missiles & Space brochure from August, 1962, describing a two-stage Shuttle-like vehicle

Document: “Status update Ramjet Propulsion 1978” a brochure from the Marquardt Company

Document: “Rocket Blitz Form the Moon” an article from the October 23, 1948 issue of “Colliers” magazine describing the use of the Moon as a missile base, with some helpful Bonestell illustrations of Manhattan getting nuked.

Diagram: A large format color scan of the 1970 North American Rockwell PD-157-17-2 HIPAAS V/STOL jet fighter

CAD Diagram: isometric view, Bernal Sphere space habitat

If this sort of thing is of interest and you’d like to get in on it and make sure you don’t miss any of the forthcoming releases, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.