Lockheed L-2000 SST art: 1

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Jan 062018

The L-2000 was Lockheed’s entrance into the mid-1960’s FAA contest to design and develop an American supersonic transport. The FAA wanted the US to have an SST substantially better than the Anglo-French Concorde, with up to 250 passengers and a cruise speed of up to Mach 3 (as fast as an SR-71). Interestingly, the Concorde was not expected to be a long0lived design, but rather was simply going to be the *first* SST, a technology demonstrator, a diplomatic endeavor between historic enemies Britain and France, a flying sales brochure for Angle-French industry. And the Tupolev Tu 144 was an attempt to put something, *anything*, into the air first.

In the end, the FAA selected the Boeing 2707 design, ending the L-2000. And after great promise was shown, politics killed the Boeing 2707, ending substantial forward progress in civil aviation. Since then, air flight has gotten cheaper and more efficient, but it has not gotten any faster… and it certainly hasn’t become more comfortable.

This artwork depicts the final or near-final L-2000 concept, a double-delta configuration vaguely like a larger Concorde in shape. The Boeing design started off as a swing-wing configuration but became a fixed, tailed design prior to cancellation.

I’ve uploaded the full rez scans to the 2018-01 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to all current APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If you are interested in this and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. Chances are good that $4/month is far cheaper than your espresso/booze budget!

Spaceballs

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Jan 042018

A Rocketdyne concept for a space station from the late 1950’s. This was a sphere some 60 feet in diameter, with at least three counter-rotating internal centrifuges (think “2001’s” Discovery) to provide between 0.2 and 0.8 of an Earth-normal gravity. This station was to be parked in geosynchronous orbit, 22,400 miles up, and would weigh 250,000 pounds. The crew was to be a rather surprising 50 men. There are enough questions about the design that it can be safely assumed to either not be an entirely serious design, or to have been artistically greatly altered from the engineering concept. It *appears* to be equipped with:

Possibly a small nuclear power source with attached rectangular radiators, held at some distance.
Some sort of small rocket vehicle… possibly a proble launcher, or, since this was the 1950’s, possibly a nuclear weapon launcher
A parabolic reflector, probably a solar mirror for concentrating sunlight and generating power
An optical telescope
A radar or communications dish that is pointed nowhere near towards Earth

Drawbridge orbiter: orbital art

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Jan 012018

This piece of art depicts the McDonnell-Douglas “Drawbridge” orbiter in orbit delivering a satellite. Note that the wing are deployed, even though they would be folded up during entry. The geometry of the craft was such that in order to get the cargo bay door open and payloads safely in and out, the wing needed to fold down out of the way.

This points out one of the reasons why you don’t often see a whole lot of “cool” stuff in aerospace… everything has tradeoffs. And needing the wings to constantly go up and down is a bit of a headache. When it comes to spacecraft, mass is a primary priority; the mechanisms needed to deploy the wings weight a lot… never mind the mechanisms needed to retract the wing again. As an example, the real space shuttle orbiter had no landing gear retraction system. And why should it? The landing gear is hardly something the Orbiter would ever need to retract. That could be done by the ground crew without adding weight and complexity to the craft itself.

Note that the Orbiter and the payload here seem to have not NASA markings, but Red Cross markings. I suspect that a number of variants of this piece of art would have been produced with several different markings (NASA and Pan Am being the obvious ones), but why exactly Red Cross? Dunno.

Also note that this might not be an actual “Drawbridge” design, as no extension mechanism for the wing s in evidence. This might be an oversight on the part of the artist; it might be that this was a fixed-wing design. Given the RCS thrusters on the wingtips, this is most likely *not* a Drawbridge.

I’ve uploaded the high-rez version of this artwork (11.2 megabyte 6271×4763 pixel JPG) to the APR Extras Dropbox folder for 2018-01, available to all APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If you are interested in accessing this and other aerospace historical goodies, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

December 2017 APR Patreon rewards

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Dec 302017

The rewards for APR Patrons have been issued. This month:

CAD Diagram: Marquardt hypersonic burning ramjet booster

Diagram: Convair Class VP Airplane High Performance Flying Boat

Document 1: Apollo Exploration Shelter System

Document 2: Chrysler Work Station Capsule (“work pod” for astronauts)

Document 3: Sikorsky S-97 “Raider” brochure

If you are interested in helping to preserve (and get copies of) this sort of thing, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Drawbridge orbiter: staging art

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Dec 252017

This piece of art depicts the McDonnell-Douglas “Drawbridge” orbiter staging off the manned flyback booster, showing the wings still folded against the sides of the fuselage. The wings served no purpose during ascent; they would only be used after-re-entry. Of course, in the event of a mission abort shortly after launch, the wings would need to deploy fairly quickly. There are no doubt numerous abort scenarios where the orbiter would be left intact after separation from a presumably stricken booster (or after a main engine failure on the orbiter stage), but would nevertheless still be doomed due to inability to get the wings deployed in time.

I’ve uploaded the high-rez version of this artwork (5 megabyte 3951×2121 pixel JPG) to the APR Extras Dropbox folder for 2017-12, available to all APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If you are interested in accessing this and other aerospace historical goodies, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Drawbridge orbiter: launch art

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Dec 212017

The early development of the Space Shuttle was filled with bizarre designs, attempts to jam capabilities into existing technologies. One such unconventional concept came from McDonnell-Douglas: a low-cross-range orbiter atop a flyback booster. The orbiter, unlike the Shuttle Orbiter actually built, contained considerable internal propellant; the booster would get it up to high altitude and velocity, but the bulk of the actual delta V would come from the Orbiters own propulsion. The vehicle had small, straight wings that would fold up against the side of the fuselage for launch and for re-entry… but they would have to deploy on-orbit to allow the payload bay doors to open, and they’d deploy again once the craft had entered the atmosphere.

I’ve uploaded the high-rez version of this artwork (8 megabyte 5598×4529 pixel JPG) to the APR Extras Dropbox folder for 2017-12, available to all APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If you are interested in accessing this and other aerospace historical goodies, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

PDF Review “Mobile Energy Depot”

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Dec 202017

Mobile energy depot feasibility study: summary report

Description:

Declassified 28 Aug 1973. Various methods of producing and using nuclear power for military land vehicles and other military equipment were investigated and evaluated. A nuclear-powered mobile energy depot (MED) would move with advancing armies and produce vehicle fuels from materials readily available in the field. This would make mechanized units independent of external fuel supplies for extended periods, and permit them to move quickly and easily to areas impossible for units that depend on the customary fuel supply lines. Many possible MED systems were evaluated on the basis of energy sources, fuel manufacturing (by both conventional and chemonuclear processes), fuel storage and transportation, and fuel utilization in both present-day internal-combustion engines and power units of the future (i.e., fuel cells). The applications of more than a dozen MED systems to vehicular propulsion were studied.

The report can be downloaded directly from HERE.

Support the APR Patreon to help bring more of this sort of thing to light!

Boats of the USAF

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Dec 172017

Recently uploaded into the APR Extras Dropbox folder for 2017-12 were a number of diagrams of United States Air Force rescue boats. Some of them were surprisingly large, given that the USAF is, you know, not about boats.

If you are interested in helping to preserve this sort of thing, as well as gaining access to the complete set of high-rez scans, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

X-24 on a Titan III

launch vehicles, Patreon, research, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Dec 162017

A few days ago I uploaded in the 2017-12 APR Patron Extras Dropbox folder a scan of an old magazine article on the X-24 lifting body which including this interesting piece of art depicting an X-24 atop a Titan IIIc launch vehicle. There were indeed proposals to launch X-24 derivatives into orbit with Titan IIIs, but they wouldn’t be *exactly* X-24’s. The X-24 was not built as a spacecraft or a re-entry vehicle; it would be uncontrollable outside the atmosphere and would be a molten collection of rubbish on re-entry. Still, the proposed vehicles did look a *lot* like the X-24.

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AH-56

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Dec 142017

The Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne was without a doubt the niftiest helicopter ever to *almost* make it into production. but, alas, it was ahead of its time… more precisely, ahead of the available technology.

The gunner sat in a seat that could spin 360 degrees (like the gunner in the Gunstar… and if you don’t get the reference, you’ve a geekiness deficiency). The Cheyenne had a pusher prop for very high speed for a helicopter, and small wings to generate lift and offload the rotor at speed. Lockheed had considerable faith in the future of that propulsion concept and incorporated it into designs for civilian passenger transport helicopters such as the CL-1026 9described in US VTOL Projects issue #01).

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