Crowdfund: Shuttle II stuff: Success

 hi-rez, launch vehicles, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft  2 Responses »
Feb 082022
 

The package of Shuttle II stuff (actually, “Shuttle Evolved”) arrived today and has been scanned and uploaded to Dropbox (some 350 megabytes). Enough funders came on board to drop the per-funder price to a mere $13. The artwork was particularly nice; it was scanned in at 600 dpi and provided both as-scanned, and with some process to de-age and brighten the art. The documents have been turned into PDFs, as well as providing the raw scans.

The collection of stuff was expensive, but crowdfunding it made it inexpensive for everyone. If you see anything on ebay or elsewhere that might benefit from such an approach, don’t hesitate to point it out.

Funders who have paid the $13 should have received a Dropbox notification about the uploads providing access to the files.

 Posted by at 12:38 am

Crowdfund: Shuttle II stuff

 hi-rez, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane  No Responses »
Feb 022022
 

So a lot of “Shuttle II” stuff appeared on eBay for an exorbitant price. I’m becoming increasingly leery of plunking down excessive sums for this sort of thing… not only due to my own finances and the onrushing economic meltdown, but because doing so incentivizes sellers to slap even more exorbitant prices on things. But, I put this lot before my APR patrons/subscribers as a potential crowdfunding opportunity, and enough signed on that I went ahead and purchased the lot. It should arrive early next week.

As with all my APR crowdfunds, the cost of the item is split evenly among the funders; the more funders, the lower the price per person. Each funder will receive a complete set of high-rez (300 DPI, full color… higher rez if called for) scans of the items. Typically these crowdfunded items then get sent on to appropriate archive, library or museum, though this time I’m not quite sure where they should go.

If you would be interested in signing on, send me an email . There are currently enough funders that the per-funder price is ~$24 under $14; the more sign on, the lower it’ll get. If you have a price limit noticeably lower than $24 $14, let me know in your email. This will remain open until the stuff arrives, presumably early next week. At that point it’ll be closed and the price set.

Additionally: the box shown below, loaded with blueprints/diagrams, is somewhere in the system headed my way. It was procured sight unseen; I have high hopes. This sort of thing is made possible by the APR Patrons/Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers. If you want to help preserve aerospace history and get in on these goodies, please consider subscribing.

 



 

 Posted by at 5:20 pm

“SR-71” references: Lockheed M-21/D-21 diagram

 hi-rez, Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Origins and Evolution, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, Recon  No Responses »
Jan 262022
 

Below is one of the diagrams that I used to help create  “Lockheed SR-71: Origins and Evolution.” It is a Lockheed diagram taken from a CIA report showing the D-21 drone atop an M-21 mothership… basically a two-seat version of the A-12 spyplane. The D-21 program as a whole was a dismal failure, but launching it from the back of a manned Mach 3 aircraft proved to be fatal. Still, the D-21, for all the trouble it had, was an impressive piece of work; had there been more of a drive to make it work, doubtless Lockheed would have made it into a successful recon platform. But the time, effort and expense just didn’t compare well to results from spy satellites, and the program was ended. A number of airframes have been preserved, and there have been attempts to resurrect them for use as experimental platforms.

 

The full-rez diagram has been uploaded to the 2022-01 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is available to all $4 and up Patrons and Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 

I plan on uploading a number of the diagrams, art and whatnot that I used to create the CAD diagrams in “SR-71” the the APR extras Dropbox in the coming months.

 Posted by at 12:11 am

This seems familiar

 future projects, hypersonic, launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane  1 Response »
Jan 192022
 

Radian announces plans to build one of the holy grails of spaceflight

The “holy grail” in this case is an SSTO spaceplane. It is to *not* incorporate airbreathing or wacky unproven technologies; instead, it is to use fairly conventional liquid propellant rocket engines in the tail of a cranked-delta spaceplane. To lob it off the ground, it will use a powered sled for a horizontal runway launch.

Ehh.

Same basic concept as the Sanger Silverbird of 1944 vintage, or the Boeing “Windjammer” and RASV concepts from the 70’s. If they can get the mass ratio to work… sure, it’s possible. They’re claiming a 48-hour turnaround. Uh-huh. I’ll believe it when I see it. I wish them the best, but I’ve seen far too many such press releases since the 90’s to get all excited.

A few patent applications that might be of interest:

“Earth to Orbit Transportation System”

“Rocket propulsion systems and associated methods”

The not terribly enlightening website is here:

https://www.radianaerospace.com/

Curiously, one of the names attached to both patent applications that might be of interest to readers of this blog is Gary Hudson, of the Phoenix SSTO, Air Launch and Roton fame. But he doesn’t seem to be listed on the website.

 Posted by at 1:59 pm

McDonnell-Douglas hypersonic concepts

 hypersonic  1 Response »
Dec 292021
 

All I have is this single page. This would be from the 1980’s, probably before or concurrent with the X-30 NASP program. The range of possibilities for hypersonic cruise airbreathing vehicles is pretty remarkable.

 Posted by at 9:07 pm

J48 cutaway

 hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon  No Responses »
Dec 282021
 

I recently stumbled across an old turbojet maintenance manual. Included within the manual was a rather nice cutaway illustration, colored in the way that only early 1950’s technical manuals were.

A 300 dpi scan of the diagram has been made available to above-$10 patrons/subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 Posted by at 8:48 pm
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