Aerospace Projects Review Blog

Recently sold on EBay was a sizable  (something like 4′ long) wind tunnel model of the Curtiss Wright Model 90 AAFSS submission. This was a derivative of their X-19… more or less a quad-tilt-rotor. The Model 90 would have been fairly highly armed, designed to fulfill the same role that the winning AAFSS design – the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne – was designed for: transporting troops and tearing up ground targets. The US has not had an operational vehicle like this; the Soviet “Hind” helicopter is the closest, though substantially slower, analog.

The Model 90 wind tunnel model was formerly on display at an aviation museum in Teterboro, New Jersey. No idea where it ended up, but hopefully it found a good home. I made a half-assed effort to crowdfund this one, but I think the lack of a good way to split the spoils among the funders doomed the concept. How *do* you reward funders for a purchase like this? Best idea was to have the thing 3D scanned, and distribute the scan among the funders, but unlike a scan of a drawing or a document, that’s not going to be readily useful for most people.

What I’d hoped to do was to disassemble the model, male fiberglass molds of the components, reassemble and restore it to like-new-ish condition then send it on to an appropriate and willing museum, possibly Ft. Rucker (since they’re all about Army aviation and have themselves an AH-56). Then make a few fiberglass copies from the molds, converting the “wind tunnel models” into detailed display models. Alas.

In 1963 the Curtiss Wright Corporation ran an ad in Missiles & Rockets magazine illustrating their participation in the Titan III/Dyna Soar program. The main illustration in the ad depicts the launch vehicle in flight; it is not, sadly, a wholly accurate depiction. The N2O4 thrust vector fluid tanks  for the SRBs aren’t included, nor are the separation motors; the two engine bells on the Titan core are shown clocked out of alignment. Still, a reasonably nice illustration.

A 1977 illustration from Rockwell depicting a Shuttle orbiter docked to an experimental solar power station. Large as it is, this would be a very tiny demonstrator of the sort of technologies needed for large-scale solar power satellites. The configuration shown here uses “troughs” with photovoltaic cells in the bases, with angles walls formed from, essentially, aluminum foil. These would serve as cheap, lightweight reflectors. The end result would be that more or less all of the sunlight impinging upon the cross sectional area of the array would be intercepted by PV cells,even though PV cells only make up a fraction of the total area. Since aluminum foil would be a lot cheaper and lighter than PV cells – and PV cells tend to work slightly more efficiently at higher insolation levels – this sort of arrangement was considered an important contender.