Apr 292014
 

The San Diego Air and Space Museum has posted a great many images to Flickr, including a fair amount of concept art. One piece (you can see the best-rez version HERE) depicts a Ryan Aeronautical concept for an air boat equipped with a Flex-Wing. Date would probably have been around 1962, plus or minus a few years. The exact role here is a bit obscure… why would the Army have boats like this? Perhaps a troops transport of some type, though a helicopter would probably be a better choice.

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 Posted by at 1:48 pm
Apr 172014
 

A potential followup to THIS POST seems to show a better view of what may be a new stealthy aircraft:

Wichita’s mystery in the sky

UFO1

A tiny amount of processing gives this:

UFO2

To me, this might be a B-2, The underside of the “nose” certainly looks like the complex contouring of the B-2. But the trailing edge *looks* unlike the B-2. Another sites’ attempt at processing gives an interesting trailing edge:

Clearer photo of mysterious unidentified flying object taken in Kansas

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If this is accurate, the aircraft looks like nothing so much as the Boeing Model 988-122, one of a series of stealthy and semi-stealthy highly maneuverable multi-role aircraft designed around 1996:

Boeing 988-122 iso Boeing 988-122

 Posted by at 11:07 pm
Apr 102014
 

Around the time NASA was studying the likes of space colonies and solar power satellites in the 1970’s, it was also commissioning studies of advanced launch vehicles which would be cheaper than the Shuttle (which as yet had not launched nor proven to be as massively expensive as it would turn out to be). One such design was a single stage to orbit vehicle designed by Martin Marietta. Similar to the Shuttle Orbiter in configuration, it was comparatively very fat due to being stuffed full of liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen. Diagrams have been floating around of this thing and are readily accessed; less rarely seen is color artwork of it.

Shazam:

martin ssto

 Posted by at 8:04 am
Apr 022014
 

Boeing artwork from December 1963 depicting the Model 733-197 swing-wing SST. Noteworthy is the resemblance to the later Rockwell B-1 bomber, except with less blending and separately podded engines.

Image29 (2)

 Posted by at 10:20 pm