How to carry your FISH

 hi-rez, Recon, US Recon & Research Projects  No Responses »
Jun 092019
 

FISH (“First Invisible Super Hustler”) was a ca. 1958 Convair design for a Mach 4 ramjet powered recon aircraft. As ramjets are terrible at accelerating from the runway to cruise speed, the FISH was to be carried underneath a B-58 bomber. The FISH was a relatively small craft, but not *that* small; it actually didn’t quite fit underneath the B-58. Consequently it’s nose was designed to fold down and back while the B-58 was on the ground, providing clearance for the B-58’s nosegear. After liftoff and gear retraction the nose would fold up into its proper position. This would clearly have required fairly powerful actuators as the nose would basically be a substantial drag brake as it folded forward into position.

The FISH was described in the first issue of US Recon & Research Projects, available HERE.

The FISH was derived from the prior “Super Hustler” design study for a ramjet powered Mach 4 parasite bomber to be carried under the B-58. In the case of the Super-Hustler, a special booster stage was used, basically creating a three-stage vehicle. The FISH, if it worked, would have been a masterpiece of engineering, but the requirement for a carrier aircraft  was cumbersome to say the least. It was followed by the single-stage “Kingfish,” but in the end the Lockheed SR-71 was chosen. Not quite as fast as FISH, but much more practical.

 

 Posted by at 10:55 am

Space Station concept art

 hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, research, space station, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 062019
 

Two pieces of Boeing concept art for mid-1960’s zero-gravity, single-Saturn V launched spacecraft. The first one looks like an interplanetary spacecraft, complete with drop-probes in the aft skirt.

I have uploaded the full resolution scan of the illustrations to the 2019-06 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to $4 and up subscribers to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

 

 

 Posted by at 3:57 pm

May 2019 Monthly Historical Documents

 fighter, hi-rez, hypersonic, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, research, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane  No Responses »
Jun 022019
 

On May 31st, APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents program subscribers were sent emails containing links to the May, 2019, rewards. This months set of documents and diagrams included high-rez copies of:

Document: “Manned Lunar Vehicle Design,” a General Electric paper from 1962 describing a direct-landing Apollo concept

Document: “AP-76 Project 1226,” a highly illustrated Republic Aviation report from May 1955 describing their design for the X-15

Diagram: “DNI-27C, VFX Design Study Fixed Wing/Buried Engine,” September 1968 North American Aviation fighter design

CAD Diagram: three-view of the Dandridge Cole/Martin Aircraft “Aldebaran” giant nuclear powered launch vehicle notional concept

 

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.

 

 



All prior “back issues” are available  for purchase by subscribers. Recent months rewards have included:

 Posted by at 11:46 pm

Budd Skylounge

 transports, VTOL  No Responses »
May 312019
 

At the same time that Sikorsky was working on the S-65 passenger helicopter (1967), The Budd Company (a manufacturer of rail cars) had their own idea… the Skylounge. It was a “people pod” to be carried by the S-64 Skycrane, but while the Skycrane did carry passenger pods from time to time for the military, the Skylounge was to be more “refined.” Along with being more civilian-friendly in terms of style and comfort, it was also intended to be carried on the ground by some form of truck, turning it into an actual bus. The bus would pick you up in the middle of your busy city, drive you to a convenient heliport and drop off the pod, which in turn would be picked up by a helicopter which would then fly you to the major airport on the outskirts of the city where you’d board your intercontinental jet and spend the next eight hours getting trashed on skybooze and harassing the stews.

Presumably, at some point someone likely asked the question “wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier and cheaper to just use regular buses and have passengers take a few seconds to step off the bus and onto the chopper?” and the idea evaporated.

 

 

 Posted by at 11:19 pm

Sikorsky S-65

 transports, VTOL  No Responses »
May 292019
 

Throughout the 1960’s Sikorsky tried to sell a civilian passenger transport helicopter to airlines. The helicopter in question was the “S-65,” not to be confused with the CH-53 Sea Stallion which also bore the S-65 designation. The civilian S-65 design effort dragged on into the early 1970s and involved a very wide range of designs. One of the earliest configurations (1962) was a more or less civilianized version of the military S-65/CH-53.

The design quickly changed, diverging far from the CH-53 basis and beginning to incorporate unconventional elements. By the end of 1962 the CH-53 elements were almost gone (the cockpit and engine/rotor system are visually somewhat similar, but clearly different), and the tail incorporated an unusual dual-torque rotor configuration, one rotor on the end of two butterfly tails.

By 1965 the tail had reverted to a more normal layout; the fuselage was now circular in cross section and visually rotund.

By 1968 the S-65 had transformed from a pure helicopter into a compound helicopter, adding two turboprops under two stub wings. These would greatly increase forward speed and cruise fuel efficiency, at of course added weight and cost. The tail reverted to the earlier butterfly configuration, but with a single torque rotor.

By 1969 the 1968 design was modestly refined and proposed to the USAF as a search and recovery aircraft, which a  compound helicopter should theoretically be good at. This was more or less the end of the line for design development. Throughout the project, a number of varitions on each configuration were proposed, including a version using more or less the last design but with telescoping main rotor blades that would shrink in diameter during high speed flight, reducing drag.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 7:02 pm

Nuclear powered space station

 nukes, research, space station, spacecraft  1 Response »
May 252019
 

A small magazine article from 1963 describing and depicting a MOL-like “space lab” equipped with a SNAP 2 nuclear reactor. This would have provided something along the lines of 3 kilowatts, plus an added bonus radiation environment. As show in the art, the reactor would be separated from the lab by a fairly long extendable rod, provided a reduction in radiation flux. The reactor would be the small object at far left; immediately next to it would be the “shadow shield,” typically made of tungsten (to stop gamma rays) and lithium hydride (to stop neutrons). This conical frustum is typically the most massive part of space reactors like this, and was used to shield a relatively small conical region, in this case centered on the space laboratory. If someone were to do a  space walk from the lab and drift too far away to the side, entertaining things could well be done to their DNA. Extending beyond the shadow shield is a black cone, the thermal radiator for the system. Contained within the radiator would be tanks of mercury, pumps and turbogenerators; liquid sodium metal would flow through the reactor then through a heat exchanger, boiling the mercury. The mercury vapor would then either directly flow through the radiator, being cooled back to liquid, or through a heat exchanger, some other fluid being passed through the radiator.

Numerous ideas were floated through the mid 1960’s for attaching reactors such as this to MOL-like space labs. The main problem with this was that these labs were typically planned for only a single use; in that case, hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells or solar panels would almost always make more economic and mass budget sense.

 Posted by at 9:35 pm

Guns, guns, guns: Rock Island Arsenal Museum

 hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon  No Responses »
May 212019
 

I’ve recently returned from several weeks of travels. In the process I stopped at the Rock Island Arsenal Museum and took a lot of photos (something like 200) of their large display of firearms. Because why not, I’ve uploaded all of them to Dropbox for APR monthly funders; guns aren’t aerospace, of course, but there tends to be some overlap in interest. One wrinkle: these were taken with my best camera, which means each photo is about 13 megabytes; 200 of which adds up to a lot. It took a ridiculous length of time to upload them all.

 

I have uploaded the full set of ~200 photos to Dropbox available to $4 and up subscribers to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

If you’ve been wondering why blogging has been a bit reduced and why emails might not have been answered… well, there ya go.

 

 Posted by at 3:02 am

Large Multipurpose Launch Vehicle

 launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft  1 Response »
May 012019
 

Almost certainly the most powerful launch vehicle ever given serious consideration and actual design work was Boeing’s Large Multipurpose Launch Vehicle from 1968. Designed under contract to NASA,the LMLV was designed to be very modular, using a core vehicle that was a perfectly serviceable single stage to orbit launcher, with the option of adding upper stages and various numbers of strap-on solid rocket boosters. it was a large vehicle, seemingly in line with the Nova/Post-Saturn vehicles designed only five years before. But the LMLV was quite different in some respects: it was entirely expendable. With no need to even try to recover the core, no mass was expended on recovery systems, or strengthening the structure to withstand splashdown, or making sure the engines could survive many firings with minimal damage. Instead, every ounce was to be shaved off. The result was a vehicle of astounding launch capability.

The basic core was capable of putting a payload of one million pounds into a 100 nautical mile circular orbit. This equaled or exceeded the capability of the majority of the Nova/Post-Saturn designs,and did so without any augmentation. But it was designed for augmentation. up to twelve 260″ diameter solid rocket boosters could be added; without an upper stage, this configuration could orbit 3.5 million pounds.This would result in a vehicle weight 66,257,000 pounds at liftoff, with a takeoff thrust of 108 million pounds. This would be LOUD. But if ten 372″ boosters were used, the payload would increase to 4.2 million pounds. This was many times the payload of the Saturn V; the payloads intended for this vehicle were generally manned interplanetary (typically Mars) spacecraft and the millions of pounds of liquid hydrogen propellant that they needed.

 

   

 Posted by at 6:13 pm
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