Freight Rocket: Not Quite The BFS…

launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft, transports, VTOL 2 Responses »

Sep 252018

An ad for Thompson Products from 1958. The cargo rocket shown here is pure artistic license, with almost certainly no actual engineering behind it. It’s pure science fiction for the purpose of advertising razzmatazz. And yet… the similarity to the latest design of the SpaceX BFS is pretty remarkable.

“Thompson Products” may not be immediately familiar. But in October 1958 (about two months before this ad was published in Av Week, so… shrug) Thompson Products merged with the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, forming Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc. … TRW. So… huh, how about that.

Lockheed L-2000 Mockup

hi-rez, jetliner, Patreon, transports No Responses »

Sep 252018

The Lockheed L-2000 was a Mach 3 SST designed to compete against the Boeing 2707 in the mid 1960’s. It was an elegant and classy looking design, but was passed over by the US Government in favor of the Boeing design. Lockheed built a full scale and reasonably convincing mockup of the craft, using it for both study and PR purposes.

The L-2000 looked like nothing quite so much as a cross between the Concorde and the SR-71.

A full rez scan of the 8X10 glossy has been uploaded to the 2018-09 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

SpaceX: not PC

launch vehicles, nukes, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Sep 232018

Huh. I’m not sure which is more unusual-seeming: that the second-in-command at SpaceX said that they would indeed launch American space weapons… or that it seems odd that an American aerospace firm would even be questioned about such a thing.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell: ‘We would launch a weapon to defend the U.S.’

During an appearance on Monday at the Air Force Association’s annual symposium, Shotwell was thrown a question she said she had never heard before: “Would SpaceX launch military weapons?”

“I’ve never been asked that question,” Shotwell said somewhat surprised. Her response: “If it’s for the defense of this country, yes, I think we would.”

This should be such an uncontroversial point of view that you wouldn’t even expect it to be raised. But we do indeed live in a time different from when Republic advertised their fighters, Boeing advertised their bombers and Martin advertised their nuclear weapons-delivering rockets.

Reminds me of one of the more disturbing moments from my university education. I was in a class on orbital dynamics (of of my favorite subjects back in the day) when we got to ballistic suborbital trajectories: ICBMs, in other words. Who wouldn’t want to study that? Well… turned out half a dozen or so of my classmates decided that they didn’t, and refused to study that section. This baffled both the teacher and myself; but where I saw their position as foolishness worthy of nothing but mockery, the teacher buckled and allowed them to do something else (details escape me). Even if the idea of lobbing nukes to the far side of the world fills you with existential dread, studying the subject is just math. And getting better at the math of lobbing nukes makes you better at… oh, I dunno, getting better at the math of lobbing reusable first stages to land them on floating landing pads.

Vaguely related: promo art from 1961, published in Aviation Week, with a number of corporations proudly proclaiming their involvement in aerospace weaponry.

AR-2-3 Rocket Engine Mockup

rockets, spaceplane 1 Response »

Sep 182018

Just slightly out of my means just at the moment, but it does appear to be a remarkable piece of work. The condition is a bit regrettable, but I bet in earlier days it was probably pretty close to indistinguishable from the real thing. If you have an interest in the NF-104 aerospace trainer, I guess you aught to have one of these.

ALL ORIGINAL ROCKWELL AR2-3 ROCKETDYNE ROCKET ENGINE MOCK-UP 39″ 1950-1963

Price:

US $35,000.00

Buy It Now –

Now Available: Air Documents 27-31

fighter, hi-rez, nukes, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft 2 Responses »

Sep 172018

It has been *years* since I have released any “Air & Space Drawings & Documents,” high rez scans of vintage aerospace items. At last, I’m adding new items. The complete catalog can be seen HERE.

New items. Each are available for $4.

Air Document 27: “Design Study for an Air Force Model F-82E Airplane Modified to a Ground Attack Airplane” A 24-page study from 1949 for a twin-bodied F-82 modified with Allison turboprop engines. The engines would be mounted in the mid-fuselage, about where the cockpits originally were; the cockpits would be moved forward to compensate. The document, taken from a vintage copy printed from microfilm, includes numerous diagrams and B&W art.

Air Document 28: “This Is The Life With Lockheed” A 36-page booklet produced by Lockheed, Georgia Division, showing the wonders of working there in 1959. Includes not only descriptions and photos of the local environment and amenities but also photos of Lockheed facilities, products and projects. An interesting view of a very different era.

Air Document 29: “SAM-D Air Defense Weapon System” A 1973 Redstone Arsenal information booklet on the Surface-to-Air Missile, Development, which became the “Patriot” anti-aircraft/ anti-missile missile. The booklet describes the various elements of a SAM-D deployment.

Air Document 30: “V-397 (Regulus II) Summary Report” A 42-page 1955 Chance-Vought report on the Regulus II supersonic cruise missile. Includes data and glorious diagrams on the tactical missile as well as the flight test vehicle with landing gear. Scanned from a vintage printout from microfilm.

Air Document 31: “Republic XF-103 data” Dating from the mid-50’s, this collection of data and diagrams of the Mach 3+ XF-103 interceptor comes not from Republic, but from Lockheed. A rare look into corporate “competition data gathering,” this 21-page data file shows the sort of information that Lockheed put together on the designs put forward by their competitors.

Several of these were released *four* *years* ago to patrons of the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon. Patrons receive items such as these at a low cost and years earlier than waiting for them to appear on the Drawing & documents catalog… and most of the Patreon items *won’t* appear here.

If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

LHX Advertisement

Recon, VTOL No Responses »

Sep 082018

In the mid-80’s, the Army wanted a light, fast, stealthy and armed helicopter for battlefield recon and the like. It was not meant to be an attack chopped like the AH-64, but rather something much more akin to the OH-58 Kiowa… it would spot the targets and target them, with the missiles like as not coming in from another source. In the end the LHX program resulted in the RAH-66 Comanche… which, as per usual, was cancelled after only a few were built.

While the Comanche was a more or less coventional sort of helicopter, early in the program the requirements were both aggressive enough and vague enough that very unconventional aircraft types were considered. Single-seat NOTAR and tiltrotor concepts were some of the least unconventional of the unconventionals, and those types got a fair amount of press at the time. It’s difficult to be certain just how serious some of them were, though companies like Bell put some considerable effort into tiltrotor ideas.

One image that I saw fairly commonly at the time was in an ad for turbine engine manufacturer Garrett. It’s a wonderful bit of art for engineering types like myself, and I always hoped that it was a serious design… but it was almost certainly not. Rather, it was either art-department guesswork or, at best, a notional design put forward by an engine company to show to aircraft manufacturers what their engines could do. It shows a single-seat design (the Comanche ended up being a two-seater, because flying a helicopter is difficult enough without the added burden of futzing around with sensors and weapons) with Kamov-style counter rotating rotors, stub wings and numerous air-to-air missiles. The Soviet Hind helicopter was giving NATO conniptions at the time, and an important role for the LHX was to sweep those flying battlewagons from the sky. The design is also shown as having a tilt-rotor option… something that would be truly unique in the history of aviation design. The tail of the craft (if any – it might have been meant to be a really, really stubby aircraft) is not shown, probably because it was never designed. I’d love to be wrong, though… teenage-me loved this thing back in the day.

Bell D-270-900-100 Tiltrotor

hi-rez, Patreon, US VTOL Projects, VTOL No Responses »

Sep 052018

A 1969 Bell Helicopter design for a high speed stowed-rotor tiltrotor. This was meant for USAF search and rescue and featured gun turrets fore and aft (each with a Minigun) and four turboshaft engines under the wings. Doubtless the gearing from the engines up through the pylons and along the wings to the nacelles would have been an engineering nightmare. But if it worked, it would have resulted in a tiltrotor with the hover performance of the V-22 and a cruise speed of 400 knots.

An article on the similar D270-900-112 (the main visual difference being that the engines were separately podded) was included in US VTOL Projects #1.

I have made the much-larger full-rez scan of the cutaway available to $10+ APR Patreon patrons. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Skycrane as passenger transport

transports, VTOL No Responses »

Sep 022018

From ebay a while back, a B&W PR image of a Sikorsky Skycrane operating as a commercial passenger transport. Sikorsky wanted this to happen in the 60’s, and several attempts to do just this were tried, but it just didn’t really come together. Inter- and Intra-urban commercial passenger helicopters operating as a flying “bus,” often to take people from city centers to nearby airports, were tried but due to cost, noise and safety issues, it never… ah, took off. In contrast, smaller helicopters have done a fair business flying rich folks (and injured folks) round cities, but larger helicopters like this are a thing of the distant past.

Rotating space station art

hi-rez, Patreon, space station, spacecraft No Responses »

Aug 282018

An artists concept of a rotating space station circa 1962. It has a NASA ID number but it *may* be North American Aviation, as they designed a space station essentially identical to this, as described and illustrated in an article written by Dennis R. Jenkins for Aerospace Projects Review issue V1N6. This space station was designed to be launched as a single payload atop a two-stage Saturn V; it would unfold once in orbit to form the pseudo-toroidal shape. This piece of art depicts a central docking hub that must have been intended to be rotationally decoupled from the station. The space station must have been non-rotating at the point in time illustrated, or those spacewalking astronauts are going to have an interesting time doing their job.

A high-rez scan of this piece of art has been uploaded to the 2018-08 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Solar Power Satellite Art

spacecraft No Responses »

Aug 262018

A scan of a black and white PR glossy sold on ebay depicting a Boeing concept for a solar power satellite from the 1970’s. Most SPS concept were for Manhattan-sized slabs of aluminum trusswork, holding vast fields of photovoltaic cells. This design, though, was different in that it was a Manhattan-sized collection of vast reflectors concentrating sunlight onto relatively small targets. There a working fluid would be super-heated and the resulting high pressure gas blown through turbogenerators. The gas would be cooled and condensed in the radiators. Note that the artist took some liberties with the orientation: a setup like this would only work if the reflectors were reasonably precisely aligned with the sun. That would only occur when the shadow of the solar collector at the focal point fell onto the center of the concentrating mirror assembly; the radiators would cast almost no shadow, just a razor-thin line bisecting the mirrors.

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