April 2020 – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

APR April 2020 Rewards

bomber, Dyna Soar, fighter, hi-rez, hypersonic, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane 2 Responses »

Apr 302020

I’m terrible at posting updates on the latest rewards, but I do get every rewards package out on time. That said, APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers have just been sent the rewards for April, 202. This package includes:

1) “Flying Carpet Feasibility Study Submarine Carrier,” a full scan of the 1958 Boeing report on a series of submarines design to carrying Mach3+ VTOL strike fighters

2) “F10F Descriptive Data,” a full scan of a 1953 Lockheed document describing this competitors design

3) Diagram 35-17610, B-52 airdrop carrier aircraft for the Model 844-2050 X-20 Dyna Soar

4) A CAD diagram of a two-stage Rockwell Trans Atmospheric Vehicle using a ground effect machine first stage

If this sort of thing is of interest and you’d like to get in on it and make sure you don’t miss any of the forthcoming releases, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

All prior “back issues” are available for purchase by subscribers.

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Apr 272020

North American Rocket Transport

hypersonic, jetliner, launch vehicles, rockets, space shuttle, space station, spacecraft, spaceplane, transports No Responses »

Apr 242020

In 1965 North American Aviation produced a study for NASA about reusable space launch vehicles to support forthcoming expected space stations. Included within that study was an alternate use of rocket vehicles… point-to-point hypersonic commercial passenger transportation. This concept goes back to the late 1940’s and has continued to the present day, with the Elon Musk suggesting that the SpaceX Starship could be used for that purpose. The idea is interesting and it certainly *could* work. But could it be commercially cost effective? History with craft such as the Concorde and the Shuttle argue strongly against an early vehicle like this doing anything but losing truckloads of cash every time it launches.

Lockheed BALLOS

rockets, space station, spacecraft, transports No Responses »

Apr 232020

Artwork circa 1964 depicting the Lockheed BALlistic LOgistics Spacecraft (BALLOS), a sort of super-sized Apollo capsule meant for the transportation of a dozen astronauts (10 passengers, 2 crew) at once to and from any one of the doubtless dozens of space stations that the United States would surely have in orbit by the mid 1970’s. Launch vehicle would be a Saturn Ib.

Mach Buster

transports 6 Responses »

Apr 192020

The “Mach Buster” was an unfinished amateur-built prop plane that was optimistically planned (in the late 1980’s) to exceed the speed of sound. Sadly, I’ve long since lost the reference for where the below image came from, existing in my collection solely as a single photocopy.

A brief article on the Mach Buster was in the August, 1989, issue of Popular Mechanics.

Hughes Orion

nukes, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Apr 172020

A piece of art from Hughes Research Labs from the late 70’s depicting an Orion nuclear pulse vehicle in flight. Sadly low rez, but whatareyagonnado.

It’s an interesting piece, but it seems likely to be quite inaccurate. in deep space when the system operates in a pretty hard vacuum, the fireballs resulting from each blast would expand outwards at a speed of many hundreds or thousands of kilometers per second.

Lockheed Atomic Airliner

jetliner, nukes, transports No Responses »

Apr 152020

The heyday of the “atomic powered airplane” was the late 50’s-early 60’s. By the mid ’60’s it was done. But there was a brief, kinda sad and halfhearted revival in the seventies when the price of fuel spiked. An atomic airplane would be able to fly without all that pesky and overpriced petroleum; it could fly without producing pollution; and it could fly really, really far. Whether it could fly without irradiating the passengers, and whether it could fly at all, are questions largely left unanswered. The art below depicts a Lockheed concept for an atomic jetliner. It has the wasp-waisted configuration favored in the ’70’s for transonic jetliner designs, but where the reactor was supposed to go is not clear. *Presumably* it was to be fitted in the fuselage under the wings, as that’s the only place where no passenger windows are visible.

Bell hovercraft art

ships, VTOL No Responses »

Apr 132020

From the mid 1960’s, a Bell illustration of a 12-ton (presumably referring to payload weight) cargo or military transport hovercraft derived from the “SK-9” design.

Martin Dyna Soar Evolution

bomber, Dyna Soar, hypersonic, nukes, research, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Apr 102020

From April 1959. Boeing won the competition to build the Dyna Soar with a desing that looked a lot *unlike* the Dyna Soar they actually started building; ironically, Martins design from December 1958 (working with Bell Aircraft) was far closer to the final Dyna Soar in configuration.

Sikorsky VTOL jet transport

transports, VTOL No Responses »

Apr 082020

A design from 1963 that used four Bristol-Siddeley vectored-thrust Pegasus engines (same as used by the Harrier) and ten lift jets to give an otherwise fairly conventional cargo transport jet aircraft VTOL capability.

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