Manned Mars Spacecraft

nukes, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft, US Spacecraft Projects No Responses »

Nov 022018

This is what a manned mission to Mars dating from the late Apollo era would have looked like: a cluster of hydrogen tanks with a small number of NERVA nuclear rockets. The spacecraft would have been relatively gigantic as it leaves Earth orbit; large enough that it would have been assembled in space from at least six Saturn V launches. When it returns to Earth it would have been little more than the mission module; this would blast past Earth and continue in solar orbit while the astronauts and a few trifling hundreds of pounds of Martian souvenirs would have plowed into Earths atmosphere in a compact entry capsule. The mission module itself is described fully and heavily illustrated in US Spacecraft Projects #3.

I’ve uploaded the full rez versions of these renderings to the 2018-11 APR Extras folder on Dropbox, available to all APR Patrons at the $4 level and above. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

APR Patreon October 2018 rewards

hi-rez, hypersonic, launch vehicles, nukes, Patreon, research, rockets, space station, spacecraft, spaceplane, transports No Responses »

Oct 282018

I’ve just sent out the rewards for October, 2018, to APR Patrons. This months rewards include:

CAD diagram: 20-meter Orion spacecraft

Diagram: Genealogy of Piper aircraft

Document: “Story of the Uprated Saturn I” NASA-MSFC brochure circa 1966 describing the Saturn Ib, including future possibilities

Document: “Preliminary Design Study of a Three Stage Satellite Ferry Rocket Vehicle,” 1954 Goodyear paper describing the METEOR launch vehicle. First of a number of METEOR documents I have.

Document: “The Rocket Research Aircraft Program 1946-1962,” Edwards AFB booklet describing the various rocket aircraft tested up to the x-15

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

Maintenance Station in Space

nukes, rockets, space station, spacecraft No Responses »

Oct 142018

A piece of art from 1962 depicting a Westinghouse Electric Corp. concept for a space station meant to provide servicing for nuclear powered spacecraft. it appears to be more of a space craft than a space station, since it is equipped with a substantial nuclear propulsion system of its own. It’s unclear what the set of rings at the “front” of the space station are meant to do.

Nuclear powered probe, 1963

nukes, rockets, spacecraft 1 Response »

Oct 032018

An advertisement from 1963 illustrating a quite-possibly artistic license nuclear powered space probe heading towards Jupiter. The probe was to use the SNAP-50/SPUR powerplant (300 to 1200 kilowatts of electricity) to power a circular bank of ion engines. The realistic nature of the design should be questioned due to the lack of any apparent communication system… no great big radio dish, in other words.

September APR Patreon rewards

hi-rez, nukes, Patreon, research, rockets, ships, spacecraft, spaceplane, transports, VTOL No Responses »

Oct 022018

Patrons of the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon received last month:

Diagram: A foldout diagram of an Apollo-derived logistics spacecraft

Document: “The Piasecki Story,” an illustrated history of the company and its products

Document: “The N.S. Savannah,” a brochure about the sole nuclear powered merchant vessel

Document: “Lunar Spacecraft Design” A paper describing the evolution of the General Electric Apollo design, quite similar to the later Soyuz spacecraft

CAD diagram: 1985 design of the British HOTOL spaceplane

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

Marquardt “Pluto” Art

bomber, nukes 2 Responses »

Sep 272018

An advertisement from 1960, illustrating Marquardts work on the Project Pluto nuclear ramjet:

If you want more on Project Pluto – and who wouldn’t, as the idea of a locomotive-sized cruise missile flying at virtually unlimited range at tree to level and at a blistering Mach 3+ is fascinating – check out Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N1.

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.

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.

Rocketdyne nuclear-electric spacecraft art

nukes, rockets, spacecraft 1 Response »

Aug 242018

A piece of 1960’s (published in a book in 1967, but it looks older than that) artwork depicting a five-man nuclear-electric spacecraft. heading to Mars. The spacecraft is long for radiation shielding purposes; at the far distant forward end is the reactor, with the crew and ion engines in the conical section in the tail. Between the ends is a long boom attached to which are the propellant tanks and two large radiators. This is more or less the propulsion system and layout originally planned for the spaceship “Discovery” from the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” with the difference that the ion engines were on the other side of the crew module, and the spacecraft “towed” the reactor and radiators, rather than pushing them.

Raise the Burevestnik

nukes 1 Response »

Aug 222018

As described hereabouts back in March, Vladimir Putin claims to have himself a nuclear powered cruise missile. I remain dubious, but the fact is that the Russians launched *something* and it crashed into the Barents sea. The Russians seem to be looking for it… and chances are fair that the United states Navy is as well.

Back in July the Russians released a video that purported to show bits and pieces of the supposedly nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile:

The video does not show the configuration with any clarity. What can be made out is that it seemed to have a fairly conventional forward fuselage designed for low radar reflectivity, with relatively simple flip-out wings of the type common to cannisterized cruise missiles. Two further points can be gleaned from the video:

1) The missile isn’t that big… seems right in line with something like a Tomahawk.

2) The facility almost seems like a high school gym.

Both of these argue against taking the claim of nuclear propulsion too seriously. Of course, it’s a video produced and released by the Russians, so it’s impossible to say whether it is remotely accurate; it could be pure deception. But assuming it truly depicts the weapon system, it seems *real* *small* for nuclear propulsion, and the facility and the workers in it seems to be pretty lackadaisical about working around nuclear systems.

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