Aerospace Projects Review Blog – Page 31 – Unbuilt aircraft and Spacecraft Projects

Twin-Engined Tristar

Jul 082020

It is common practice for an aerospace company to crank out many and sundry concepts for derivatives of the aircraft they produce (if they didn’t, Aerospace Projects Review never would’ve come to be). This is certainly true for jetliners. And of course, in many cases derivative are in fact produced… the DC-9, 707 and 737, for instance, saw many stretched, stretched further and stretched some more designs enter service, packing more passengers onto airframes that don’t cost much more to buy or operate.

One derivative that went no further than the concept stage was a 1970’s Lockheed idea for a twin-engine version of their three-engined L-1011. This would have been a *smaller* aircraft, but presumably cheaper, more economical to operate as an “airbus” on shorter routes. However, there were already a number of jetliners to fill that role, and with as expensive as the L-1011 turned out to be to maintain and keep flying, this idea basically never had a chance.

DC-3 orbiter

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Jul 012020

The orbiter for the “DC-3” referenced previously. This vehicle had relatively small wings, leading to quite low crossrange. The wings were also simple straight wings, not highly swept deltas; the vehicle could get away with this because it did not “glide” during re-entry, but “belly flopped.” To aid in crossrange and landing, each wing would have a single turbofan in a sealed pod. The payload bay is not shown here, but would be quite small and right behind the cockpit.

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Jun 282020

And here we go again

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Jun 262020

In January I signed my very first book contract, for a heavily illustrated aerospace history text Yet To Be Publicly Described. The manuscript and all the diagrams were due to be turned in to the publisher in July. And then… Commie Cough comes along, book stores close, supply chains collapse. Perhaps surprisingly, the book was not cancelled, but instead delayed by one year. Sigh, oh well, okay.

So today, I signed a *second* book contract with the same publisher. This is for a slightly smaller text on a different subject, but similar in idea: a boatload of aerospace diagrams. Book One looks to have around 180 diagrams; Book Two will top out somewhere in the area of 120. This one has a due date of January, 2021.

If you like the US Aerospace Projects publications I’ve put out, then you’ll go bonkers for these books.

An aside: for public discussion purposes, the first book is “Book X.” The second book would thus be either “Book Y” or perhaps “Book XX.” In which latter case if and when I sign a third book contract, that would should prove quite interesting.

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Jun 262020

MX-2276 BoMi

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Jun 262020

Before the Convair Atlas ICBM proved that it was possible for a rocket to reach out across the world and deposit some canned sunlight reliably close to commie targets, it was understood that the only way to accomplish the task was with pilots and bombardiers. But by the mid 1950’s the idea of subsonic manned bombers sneaking into the heart of the Soviet Union without getting swatted was starting to seem nonsensical. So Bell Aircraft, under the direction of former V-2 program director Walter Dornberger, dreamed up the MX-2276: a three-stage manned rocket bomber. Looking akin to an evolved Sanger Antipodal Bomber, the MX-2276 used two manned and winged stages, with an unmanned expendable stage in between. The final stage would carry a single gliding nuclear warhead deep into the USSR, using the human crew to attain some measure of accuracy.

But then the Atlas came along and ruined all that.

The idea persisted, however, turning first into the Bomber Missile (BoMi) then the Rocket Bomber (RoBo) then Dyna Soar. With each step it became less fantastical, and also less of a dedicated weapon system; by the end of the Dyna Soar, it was a one-man experimental re-entry vehicle launched by a fully expendable Titan IIIC. Since then the idea of a “rocket bomber” has popped up from time to time, but never with the level of seriousness displayed in the mid/late 1950’s. For more on the whole BoMi program, see Aerospace projects Review issues V2N2, V2N3 and V2N4. APR issue V3N4 gives a pretty complete rundown of the final Model 2050E Dyna Soar.

Early Boeing jetliner designs

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Jun 142020

A piece of Boeing artwork depicting several early jetliner concepts. The B-47 design heritage is obvious. This piece was on ebay a while back, and while it wasn’t one that I won, I snagged a decently-high rez scan from the listing and have made it available to all $4 and up APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Document Subscribers. it has been uplosded into the June 2020 folder at Dropbox for those subscribers.

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

Apollo Command & Service Module cutaway artwork

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Jun 122020

Just in from ebay, a vintage black & white cutaway illustration of the Apollo CSM. The original has been scanned at 600 dpi (it’s clear enough for that high of a resolution) and made available to subscribers of the APR Patreon and the Monthly Historical Documents Program at above $10/month as an “extra.”

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

DC-3 launch stack

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Jun 102020

In 1969, Maxime Faget of NASA-Manned Spacecraft Center (later renamed Johnson Space Center) produced a concept for a simplified version of the Space Shuttles then being designed. The idea at the time was that the Shuttle would be a two-stage vehicle, both being fully reusable manned flyback vehicles. The Orbiter would be much larger than the Orbiter that actually got built because it included substantial hydrogen/oxygen tankage. The boosters were generally *vast* vehicles larger than the C-5 Galaxy meant to fly higher and faster than the X-15. Optimistic to be sure. Faget’s “DC-3” design had the same basic architecture but attempted to produce a smaller, cheaper, less complex and more realistic design. The design, produced in-house at NASA, was picked up by both North American and McDonnell Douglas, who designed their own variations on the theme.

Here is the basic configuration of the NASA-MSC “DC-3:”

Dyna Soar launcher options

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Jun 082020

A photo montage of Boeing display models showing a range of launch vehicles intended to put the early (1959) Dyna Soar into orbit. The three at left are clusters of Minuteman ICBM boosters; the next two are larger solid rocket motor clusters. The next is a Saturn I booster, followed by an all-new recoverable liquid rocket booster, the Titan II and the Atlas/Centaur. The Titan II design was chosen, though it could not actually get the Dyna Soar into a true orbit. To do that, solid rocket boosters needed to be strapped to the sides of the Titan II… leading to the creation of the Titan III.

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