NAA TSTO

launch vehicles, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane 2 Responses »

Jan 252014

Couple being very ill with desperately trying to make a dime, I’ve not had much opportunity to scour my files recently for aerospace projects to blog about. So here’s one: a notion for a fully reusable two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle produced by North American around 1963. This was part of a study for reusable launchers with a payload of 50 to 100 tons, with the baseline design being a reusable version of the Saturn V.

This design was at the far end of the possible designs, with “nail wings onto S-IC and S-II stages” being on the near-term end. This design would be fully reusable with both stages manned and powered by LOX/LH2 burning expansion-deflection rocket engines. As with many such designs of the time, the wing area is relatively gigantic.

US Bomber Projects #06 and 07 Now Available

bomber, Dyna Soar, hypersonic, launch vehicles, nukes, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane, US Bomber Projects 1 Response »

Jan 192014

Now available:

Issue number 06 of US Bomber Projects is now available (for background, see HERE). This issue includes:

Boeing Model 464-18: a reduced-size version of the 464-17 turboprop strategic bomber
Convair WS-125A: A supersonic seaplane powered by nuclear reactors
Martin MX-2092: a subsonic jet bomber that towed a large missile
GD AMPSS: A 1963 variable geometry design leading towards the B-1
Republic System 464L: a lifting body spaceplane with a nuclear bomb on its back
Martin Model 223-6: a 1944 step on the road to the XB-48
Boeing Model 701-273-6: A supersonic bomber composed of two linked aircraft
Martin Water-Based Attack Aircraft: a single-seat strike plane capable of water takeoffs & landings

USBP#06 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4.25:

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US Bomber Projects #07 is also now available. This issue includes:

Boeing Model 464-25: a modification of the 464-17 turboprop bomber with slightly swept wings, among other changes
Boeing Model 828-2: a giant and incredibly slow long-endurance plane with a formidable payload
Fairchild N-12: an early nuclear powered turboprop design
Rockwell D645-3: a supersonic treetop-level bomber capable of completely stowing its wing
Boeing model 701-273-7: last in the study, a design with a large wing, a small fuselage and canards
Bell MX-Carrying Hovercraft: a large armored hovercraft complete with an MX missile and self-defense interceptor missiles
Convair System 464L: Dyna Soar I and Dyna Soar III spaceplanes
Martin Model 223-7: A 1944 ancestor to the XB-48 with vertically stacked engines

USBP#07 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4.25:

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Five New Air & Space Documents

bomber, launch vehicles, nukes, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Dec 272013

Be sure to check out the Complete Catalog for all the drawings and documents.

Saturn I Summary

A 44 page NASA brochure (from somewhen around 1965) describing all the Saturn I vehicles that were launched. Includes diagrams showing the different configurations and provides mission data and highlights.

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The Retro-Glide Booster Concept

A 20-page collection of information on the Martin-Marietta “Retro-Glide Booster,” an early Shuttle idea for using a winged and recoverable derivative of the Saturn V first stage. A 1971 NASA Space Shuttle History Project document.

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NB-36H Aircraft Descriptive Data

30 pages of Lockheed data on the Convair NB-36H (the B-36 equipped with a nuclear reactor for test purposes). This comes from the Lockheed “Competitive Data Group,” which was Lockheed’s collection of intelligence data on *other* companies designs and proposals. This report, largely hand-written, provides a program history as well as weight and dimensional data, with a number of sketches showing the general arrangement and internal layout.

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Handbook on Guided Missiles

212 pages of a 1946 War Department report on German and Japanese rocket powered missiles and aircraft. This rarely-seen classic (scanned from a photocopy) provides a vast pile of information, including a great many diagrams.

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Saturn Foldout

A NASA-Marshall publicity brochure on the Saturn V, dating to the mid-late 1960’s. Prints out full-size to 34 1/4 inches by 9 1/2 inches

AIAA is holding a book sale

bomber, fighter, future projects, hypersonic, jetliner, launch vehicles, Recon, research, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane, stealth, transports No Responses »

Dec 062013

Until December 18, the AIAA is selling 25 books for $25, and ten books for $10. Some good stuff here at some pretty substantial discount. You don’t have to be an AIAA member to get the discount.

NOTE: I have no relationship with the AIAA, and don’t make a nickel off these sales. So.. if you want to buy stuff and still feel like you are Supporting The Cause, feel free to navigate to Amazon.com through the “Search’ box that’s to the upper right of this page. i get a tiny fraction of the sales prices for items purchased via search & referral. I suggest buying stuff like laptops and computers and cars and such. So long as I’m getting a small percentage, it might as well be a small percentage of a large dollar value…
The Aircraft Designers: A Grumman Historical Perspective
Michael V. Ciminera
$39.95
NOW $25!

Meeting the Challenge: The Hexagon KH-9 Reconnaissance Satellite
Phil Pressel
$39.95
NOW $25!

Space Shuttle Legacy: How We Did It and What We Learned
Roger D. Launius; John Krige; James I. Craig
$49.95
NOW $25!

Augustine’s Laws
Norman R. Augustine
$39.95
NOW $25!

100 years of Flight
Frank H. Winter and F. Robert van der Linden
$69.95
NOW $25!

Have Blue and the F-117A: Evolution of the “Stealth Fighter”
David C. Aronstein and Albert C. Piccirillo
$59.95
NOW $25!

Advanced Tactical Fighter to F-22 Raptor: Origins of the 21st Century Air Dominance Fighter
David C. Aronstein, Michael J. Hirschberg, and Albert C. Piccirillo
$49.95
NOW $25!

Aerodynamic Principles of Flight Vehicles
Argyris Panaras
$49.95
NOW $25!

Voyager Tales: Personal Views of the Grand Tour
David W. Swift
$74.95
NOW $25!

Hans Von Ohain
Margaret Conner
$54.95
NOW $25!

Road to Mach 10: Lessons Learned from the X-43A Flight Research Program
Curtis Peebles
$39.95
NOW $25!

Eleven Seconds into the Unknown
Curtis Peebles
$39.95
NOW $25!

Blazing the Trail: The Early History of Spacecraft and Rocketry
Mike Gruntman
$39.95
NOW $25!

The Rocket Company
Patrick Stiennon and David Hoerr
$34.95
NOW $25!

Rocketdyne: Powering Humans into Space
Vince Wheelcock
$39.95
NOW $25!

Space Exploration and Astronaut Safety
Joseph N. Pelton
$49.95
NOW $25!

Shades of Gray
L. Parker Temple III
$49.95
NOW $25!

Unmanned Aviation: A Brief History of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Laurence R. Newcome
$44.95
NOW $25!

Starting Something Big: The Commercial Emergence of GE Aircraft Engines
Robert V. Garvin
$39.95
NOW $25!

The Power to Fly: An Engineer’s Life
Martin Ducheny and Brian Rowe
$39.95
NOW $25!

Aerospace Engineering Education During the First Century of Flight
Barnes McCormick; Eric Jumper; Conrad Newberry
$89.95
NOW $25!

The History of North American Small Gas Turbine Aircraft Engines
Richard Leyes II; William Fleming
$49.95
NOW $25!

Methods to Extend Mechanical Component Life: Lessons Learned with Space Vehicle and Rocket Engine Components
Dieter Huzel
$44.95
NOW $25!

The Engines of Pratt & Whitney: A Technical History
Jack Connors
$49.95
NOW $25!

From Rainbow to Gusto
Paul A. Suhler
$39.95
NOW $25!

Experiments in Aerodynamics
S. Langley
$29.95
NOW $10!

Skycrane: Igor Sikorsky’s Last Vision
John A. McKenna
$39.95
NOW $10!

Hired Minds
Bryan Gardner
$19.95
NOW $10!

Terminal Chaos: Why U.S. Air Travel Is Broken and How to Fix It
George L. Donohue; Russell D. Shaver II
$29.95
NOW $10!

Space: The Fragile Frontier
Mark Williamson
$39.95
NOW $10!

Rocketeers and Gentlemen Engineers
Tom Crouch; Buzz Aldrin
$39.95
NOW $10!

The Superpower Odyssey: A Russian Perspective on Space Cooperation
Yuri Karash
$49.95
NOW $10!

Centennial of Powered Flight
Gerard Faeth
$24.95
NOW $10!

When the Airlines Went to War
Robert Serling
$24.95
NOW $10!

Advice to Rocket Scientists
Jim Longuski
$19.95
NOW $10!

By The Light Of A Communist Moon

future projects, launch vehicles, nukes, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Dec 052013

Take this for what it’s worth:

PLA dreams of turning moon into Death Star, says expert

An expert from the China National Space Administration’s Lunar Exploration Programme Center… added that the moon is the Earth’s only natural satellite, and it can be transformed into a deadly weapon. Like the Death Star in Star Wars, the moon could hypothetically be used as a military battle station and ballistic missiles could be launched against any military target on Earth.

Various weapons testing sites could also be established on the moon, the source said.

Welcome to Project Horizon V 2.0.

For those unaware, Project Horizon was a 1959 US Army study of a moon base for military purposes. Included in that was the use of the moon as a missile base. The idea is not *entirely* ludicrous: a missile base on the moon would be several days away from a strike launched from Earth. So if Nation A launched a first strike on Nation B and Nation B has a lunar base, then Nation A can expect a rain of ruin from the moon a little later. However, the US decided that Polaris missile subs were cheaper.

Cyanotype Blueprints Are Available Again

bomber, Dyna Soar, fighter, hypersonic, launch vehicles, nukes, Recon, research, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Dec 052013

Just a reminder…

After hiatus, I am again offering cyanotype blueprints of various aerospace subjects on paper. These include the V-2, the Saturn Ib and V, the NERVA nuclear rocket, the Super Hustler, and many more.What says “Merry Christmas” better than a gift of a hand-made, awesome-looking large format cyanotype blueprint of a launch vehicle or nuclear bombardment system?

See the complete list here:

http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/catalog/cyan.htm

And while I’m not at liberty to go into the specifics, I recently provided a number of these to a certain ongoing major TV series to be used as set dressing/props. The episodes will air sometime early next spring, I believe. They should look marvelous…

The Space Show: interview now available for download

bomber, Dyna Soar, future projects, launch vehicles, nukes, research, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane, VTOL 1 Response »

Dec 032013

Seemed to go reasonably well. Some reports later that my audio faded in and out… I can only assume that my phone was either on the fritz, or perhaps the phone line itself was a bit screwy. Anyway, you can download it in MP3 format here:

http://archived.thespaceshow.com/shows/2134-BWB-2013-12-02.mp3

If you have a question raised specifically by the interview, you can ask it either here, or at the Space Show blog:

http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/scott-lowther-monday-12-2-13/

One minor correction: I was asked what the first US bomber was. I seemed to recall that the US dropped bombs from biplanes during the Pancho Villa expeditions of 1916; I was close, as there were Curtis biplanes modified to drop small incendiaries sent to Mexico, but the bombs were not dropped.

ICARUS/Ithacus

hypersonic, launch vehicles, spacecraft, transports 1 Response »

Dec 022013

A photo of dubious quality showing Phil Bono of Douglas standing next to a surprisingly large display model of the ICARUS/Ithacus intercontinental transport rocket. The photo was taken at the “Travel ’67 Show” at the Cow Palace convention center in San Fransisco. According to poster art found on eBay, this was held Feb 24 – Mar 5 of 1967. I haven’t been able to find out more about it, though it would seem that it must have been a convention about the future of transport. One can speculate that the facility was filled with representations of supersonic transports, monorails, high-speed trains, sleek cars with ridiculous fins…

More on the ICARUS/Ithacus, along with the related ROMBUS space launch booster, can be found in Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N6.

Lockheed Shuttle concept 2

launch vehicles, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane 1 Response »

Nov 302013

An early 1970’s Lockheed concept for a fully reusable shuttle. Shown here is the orbiter, a minimum-mass, low-cross-range design with a vast fuselage and relatively tiny wings. The system used a reusable flyback booster for the first stage. Far more information is available on this and related concepts in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N2 and V3N2 Addendum, available HERE.

Lockheed Shuttle concept

launch vehicles, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Nov 292013

An early 1970’s Lockheed concept for a fully reusable shuttle. Shown here is the orbiter, derived from the earlier STAR Clipper concept… but bigger and without the V-tank. The system used a reusable flyback booster for the first stage. Far more information is available on this and related concepts in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N2 and V3N2 Addendum, available HERE.

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