Aerospace Projects Review Blog – Page 51 – Unbuilt aircraft and Spacecraft Projects

Early Saturn V art

launch vehicles, nukes, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Aug 212018

Found on ebay: a piece of B&W art depicting the Saturn V. The provenance is uncertain… unknown where this art originated. There are some unusual details; the tailfins are clocked 45 degrees off, moved from the outer diameter of the engine firings to between them, an odd choice to say the least. The third stage is larger in diameter than the S-IVb with a very long interstage between the S-II and the S-IVb; this *may* indicate that the third stage was meant to be a nuclear stage, with a single NERVA engine attached to the rear of the S-N third stage. The payload is also different: it appears to be a direct lander… no LEM, the Apollo vehicle landed directly on the lunar surface.

HLH art: 3

transports, VTOL No Responses »

Aug 182018

Another ebay find depicting the Boeing Heavy Lift Helicopter, this time carrying a heavy truck of some kind. Perhaps as a bit of a dig at Sikorsky, in the background another HLH is shown carrying a CH-54 Skycrane.

NERVA to Mars art

launch vehicles, nukes, research, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Aug 182018

A piece of Aerojet artwork depicting the NERVA nuclear rocket engine heading to Mars. This is almost certainly artistic license as the vehicle depicted here is a single stumpy upper stage with an aerodynamic fairing. This is mot likely a RIFT (Reactor In Flight Test) configuration, a simple expendable upper stage test configuration meant to be launched atop a Saturn V to prove out the engine.

Boeing HLH art: 2

transports, VTOL No Responses »

Aug 162018

Another ebay find, this one depicts the HLH transporting cargo from a ship to shore. It appears to be constructing storage tanks, presumably for oil or water, from prefabricated sections.

XP-55 Ascender Cutaway

fighter, hi-rez, Patreon No Responses »

Aug 142018

The Curtiss-Wright XP-55 Ascender was a tailless fighter design from WWII. It was intended to be an improvement on then-current designs in terms of performance, but proved to be disappointing. After years of development and flight testing, it was overtaken by jet propulsion and failed to make it into production.

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.

Mercury on a Jupiter

hypersonic, launch vehicles, research, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Aug 132018

Found on ebay a while back, a pre-NASA Army Ballistic Missile Agency illustration dated 25 May 1959 depicting the Mercury space capsule, including smaller views of it atop both a Redstone and a Jupiter. In both cases this would be a purely sub-orbital lob. It’s unclear just what’s going on with the nose of the Jupiter version; it does not have the abort tower the Redstone version has. This may be a purely aerodynamic fairing, with abort motors located underneath the capsule in the sizable adapter section.

Bell fold-back tiltrotor

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

Aug 122018

A photo of a 1960’s Bell Helicopter concept for a high-speed tiltrotor. In this design the aircraft would operate in hover and low speed much like the V-22, but at higher speeds the prop-rotors would stop rotating and fold back to reduce drag. Forward thrust would be provided by pure jet exhaust from the convertible turboshaft engines within the fuselage.

I have uploaded high-rez scans of the color glossy photo to the 2018-08 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patrons at the $4 level and up.

If you are interested in this image and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. What else are you going to spend $4 a month on? Taxes? Bah. Invest in the APR Patreon instead.

Boeing HLH art: 1

transports, VTOL No Responses »

Aug 102018

A piece of Boeing Heavy Lift Helicopter artwork that was on ebay a while back. The XCH-62 HLH was an early 1970’s concept cancelled in ’74. The first prototype was under construction when cancelled; NASA tried to revive and finish the prototype in the 80’s, but got nowhere. The prototype was controversially turned into garbage at the US Army Aviation Museum in 2005. This was *not* a popular decision. nor was cancelling the thing in the first place; had it been built it would have had the ability to lift 22.5 tons.

This illustration shows it carrying a standard shipping container from a cargo vessel to shore. The container seems to contain fuel; it’s being used to refuel a Boeing Vertol UH-61, a design which competed against- and lost to – the Sikorsky S-60 Black Hawk.

“Space vehicle for Mars probe”

Uncategorized No Responses »

Aug 082018

A 1959 NASA depiction of the Ernst Stuhlinger “Umbrella” ship. This design was nuclear-electric, the electricity powering a bank of ion engines providing a trickle of high ISP thrust. The large circular “umbrella” was the radiator for the nuclear reactor, located at the far end of the “handle.” This design is a little different from the usual depiction with the crew compartment divided into two semi-toroidal segments. Normally this design is shown with a single torus with a maximum diameter much smaller than that of the radiator; here the crew compartments are shown to be relatively gigantic. I assume that this is artistic license as it also depicted the crew compartments as having *vast* circular windows in the floor. The crew compartments would spin (apparently independent of the rest of the ship) to generate some amount of artificial gravity to keep the crew healthy.

McDonnell-Douglas early Shuttle concept

launch vehicles, rockets, space shuttle, spaceplane No Responses »

Aug 062018

Scanned from a 35mm slide at the NASA HQ some years ago. The basic shape here (FDL-7/McDonnell Model 176) appeared on a great many McD designs for the latter half of the sixties from small one-man experimental designs on up to full Shuttle-sized craft like this one. It had both sharply swept fixed wings on the bottom and stowable high aspect ratio wings for landing up top.

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