Aerospace Projects Review Blog – Page 114 – Unbuilt aircraft and Spacecraft Projects

Space… craft? Station?

research, space station, spacecraft 1 Response »

Nov 172012

A Boeing (or possibly North American Aviation) artists concept of what appears to be a space station, but may be an interplanetary spacecraft. While overall it appears to be a Saturn V derived space station (using, apparently, the S-IVb tanks as a basis), on the right there appears to be a bay holding several Viking-style entry capsules. Numerous interplanetary spacecraft designs of the 1960’s had these. The capsules would hold not people, but unmanned landers and rovers. The relatively small size of the solar panels might indicate that this craft was designed for a mission to Venus; the apparent lack of much of a propulsion system might indicate that this was a flyby mission rather than a capture-and-orbit mission.

Note also the centrifuge that takes up the second deck from the “bottom.”

Nova Model

launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Nov 162012

A photo of a NASA Nova design, in rather crude display model form.

Nova “Typical Configuration”

launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Nov 152012

A relatively well-known and very early design for a Nova vehicle. It is interesting in that it has only a slightly more powerful first stage and seemingly smaller and heavier upper stages than the Saturn V, yet was designed to put a very heavy lander directly onto the lunar surface.

Bell D190B rescue VTOL

transports, VTOL No Responses »

Nov 142012

The D190 designation was the catch-all for a wide range of tilt-duct vehicles Bell designed in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The D190B was a rescue version, intended to go after downed pilots and the like. Other versions were similar, but designed to mate up with a C-130 in flight; the C-130 would transport the D190 to the vicinity of a rescue and would transport it home again, greatly increasing range and lift capability of the D-190. Another version was designed to similarly mate up with flying command posts and Air Force One, to transfer supplies and personnel.

Boeing Space Station

research, space station, spacecraft 1 Response »

Nov 132012

No further data than the painting. Found some years back in the Boeing archive, so possibly North American Aviation. Appears to depict a dry-lab station built from Saturn V components, in this case apparently a shortened S-II stage.The Apollo capsule docked to the side seems a somewhat dubious proposition; there doesn’t appear to be an airlock there.

The use of such a space station as a mounting point for large astronomical telescopes such as shown here is also dubious. Vibrations, everything from solar panels being turned to air circulation systems to fluids being pumped to crewmen bumping around, would contribute to a pretty noisy image.

Boeing Model 473-12 layout diagram

jetliner, transports 5 Responses »

Nov 112012

The Boeing 473-12, from July 1948. An early concept for a passenger jetliner, this would have been powered by two Rolls Royce “Nene” engines and could carry a crew of three and 27 passengers a range of 550 miles. This was an early step on the path to the 707, the worlds first successful jetliner.

A three-view of the early jetliner design, showing the clean lines and basic geometry that would become virtually standard for the next seventy years or more.

Saturn/Nova Comparison

launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft 2 Responses »

Nov 082012

A 1962 NASA graphic showing the Saturn I, Saturn V and one or the more stereotypical of the Nova configurations to scale. Note that they all show direct-landing Apollo spacecraft… an extra stage, and no LEM. The Nova is similar to the “Saturn C-8” configuration. Note that the second stage of the Nova is larger in diameter and almost as long as the first stage of the Saturn C-5, and would have made the basis of a fairly substantial launch vehicle on it’s own.

“Saturn C-8”

launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft 3 Responses »

Nov 072012

A NASA-Marshall concept for a Nova launch vehicle. Nova began life as a vehicle somewhat smaller and lower-capability than the Saturn V, and quickly grew substantially larger than the Saturn V, ending its run as the “Post Saturn” launch vehicle (with designs such as ROMBUS and Nexus). This design features eight F-1 engines on the first stage, and has been, probably apocryphally, referred to as the “Saturn C-8.”

Convair HST, 1966

hypersonic, jetliner, transports 1 Response »

Nov 062012

In the mid 1960s, supersonic transports were just around the corner. And the trends in aviation development showed the aircraft designers and air travel planners that hypersonic transports were less than two decades away. Consequently, all the major aircraft designers in the US devoted effort to designing passenger transports that could carry paying customers at Mach 5 or greater. But a combination of politics (the OPEC oil embargo as well as a wider economic downturn, as well as largely trumped-up ecological concerns) and technological issues managed to assure that SSTs were never developed beyond the Concord stunt. And if a jetliner couldn’t get to Mach 1, it surely couldn’t get to Mach 5.

But in 1966, these issues were not yet seen, so Convair was busy designing a whole range of hypersonic transports. They might have missed out on the first generation of SSTs, but they were not going to miss out on the HSTs.

“Nuclear Nova”

launch vehicles, nukes, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Nov 052012

A 1961 NASA presentation illustration of a Nova launch vehicle for Apollo using a solid core nuclear engine on the third stage. The much greater performance potential meant that the rest of the vehicles could be substantially smaller.

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