Aerospace Projects Review Blog – Page 28 – Unbuilt aircraft and Spacecraft Projects

Orbital HL-10 Artwork

Dyna Soar, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Jan 192021

A ca. 1964 Boeing rendering of an HL-10-derived spaceplane in orbit. Numerous companies – Boeing, McDonnell, Lockheed, Northrop, etc. – contemplated the development of a logistics spaceplane based on the HL-10. The spaceplane itself would, rather like the X-20 Dyna Soar, have been minimally functional in space; most of the propulsion and power would have come from the attached adapter module. The conical adapter would have also carried the bulk of the vehicles payload to be delivered to orbit, and would be used to provide a de-orbit burn for the spaceplane. The adapter would therefore burn up on re-entry, leaving the lifting body to glide to a runway landing. The spaceplane itself would be crammed full of astronauts and the life support they’d need; there would generally be little capacity for anything else, certainly not payload going back downhill. This was fine, though, as there were few enough payloads other than humans that made sense to send *back* down the gravity well.

MA20S-4 Ramjet

Recon, stealth No Responses »

Jan 172021

An exploded view of the Marquardt ramjet engine that powered the Lockheed D-21B. The engine was derived from the ramjet that powered the Bomarc missile; interestingly, it went from a SAM engine that ran for at most fifteen minutes to a continent-crossing drone engine that ran for an hour and a half. The D-21 program was riddled with failures, but the engine was not a real source of trouble. What did become a minor source of trouble: after the seventeen surviving D-21s were mothballed, the nosecones of the engines had to be specially removed: being made of a thorium alloy, they were slightly radioactive.

AMROC art

launch vehicles, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Jan 142021

A piece of concept art depicting the AMROC Industrial Launch Vehicle 1, circa 1987. AMROC specialized in hybrid launch vehicles, and the privately funded and developed ILV was no different. What the vehicle looks like is a liquid propellant core vehicle with a bunch of solid rocket strap-on boosters… but what it actually is is a core made up of liquid oxygen tanks, surrounded by clusters of solid fuel motors. The motors were fed LOX from the core, firings together to create a sort of plug nozzle using the aft end of the propellant tank to react against (though it appears the bulk of the expansion took place within individual nozzles). When the first stage motors burned out, the whole thing fell off as a single stage. The vehicle had four stages; stages 2,3 and 4 were made of different solid motors around a common liquid tank core. The whole stack was 82 feet long. It was supposed to have been able to deliver 1800 kilograms to a 200 km orbit from KSC, or 1350 kg to 200 km polar orbit from Vandenberg; a little over 1400 kg to a 1000 km KSC orbit or about 1050 kg to a 1000 km polar orbit. First launch attempt was to be in the latter half of 1988… that didn’t happen.

XB-46 photos & early F-111 concept

bomber, fighter, hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon No Responses »

Jan 102021

A few seemingly random (because they are) photos. First: a display model of an early General Dynamics concept for what would become the F-111.

And then… two photos of the Convair XB-46 in flight.

I’ve uploaded the full-rez versions of these to the APR Dropbox, into the 2021-01 APR Extras folder. This is available to any APR Patron or Subscriber at the $4 level and above.

Now THAT is a flying car

future projects, transports No Responses »

Jan 042021

Let me get this out of the way: flying cars are a COOL IDEA that, when the rubber meets the road and the math hits the calculator, generally doesn’t make much sense. You end up with a car that isn’t that good married to an airplane that isn’t that good. More expensive than either a car or a light airplane should be, with the performance of neither.

Nevertheless, it remains an evocative notion. And from the standpoint of an aerospace engineer, an interesting engineering exercise. And one of the more recent, more interesting flying car concepts is the “Firenze Lancaire.” This design says “to hell with making a flying car for the masses” and goes straight for the “hypercar” market. The end result is a carbon fiber bodied vehicle with Tesla motors and batteries for getting around on the roads, and two turbojets for getting around in the air. The car is quite large and would be difficult to park, but if you’re paying five million dollars for a car you’re probably not taking it to WalMart.

The website is filled with snazzy images. It just looks sci-fi-cool. But it also looks… kinda incomplete. There are no control surfaces; the wing structure is largely undefined. The wing folding mechanism is interesting and all, but the wings do not appear to have a good structural attachment to the car. They look like a modest G-load and they’ll snap right off.

Is this for real? Is it a serious engineering effort… or is it just someone’s demonstration of their ability to make spiffy CAD models? I don’t know, though I have suspicions. There are enough moving parts on this thing to get it legally qualified as an Autobot, and that worries me some.

December 2020 APR Rewards

bomber, hi-rez, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft No Responses »

Dec 312020

Just released, the December 2020 rewards for APR Patrons and Subscribers. Included this month:

Diagram: a large format diagram of a Lockheed cruise missile. The designation of the missile is not given, but this looks like a SCAD design.

Document 1: Consolidated Class VB Carrier Based Bomber, from 1946

Document2: “Economic Aspects of a Reusable Single Stage To Orbit Vehicle,” a paper by Phil Bono on the ROOST launch vehicle from 1963

Document 3: “Shuttle Derived Vehicles,” a NASA-MSFC briefing to General Abrahamson from 1984

CAD Diagram: XSM-64A Navaho, the configuration that would have been built as an operational vehicle had the program gone forward

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

Possibilities of New Business Growth: ET Tank Farms

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

Dec 252020

In 1985, Rockwell International considered the possibility that there might be profit in clustering the External Tank from the Space Shuttle in Earth orbit. There the tanks could be filled with propellant to serve as orbital “gas stations,” or rebuilt into space habitats or other structures, or simple reprocessed for the raw structural materials. In order to do this the Shuttle would have to shed a noticeable fraction of total payload. Something not given a whole lot of thought was what to do about the insulating foam applied to the tanks; ultraviolet sunlight, thermal cycling and a harsh vacuum would cause the foam to break down ans turn each orbiting tank into a little comet, the nucleus of a cloud of foam bits.

Still, it would have been nice if the tanks had been used rather than simply dumped into the Indian Ocean.

Possibilities of New Business Growth: ICBMs

nukes, rockets No Responses »

Dec 242020

In 1985, Rockwell International considered the possibility that there might be profit in ICBMs. In particular, small ICBMs (“Midgetman”), road-mobile with a single warhead. Sadly, the SICBM did not come to be. Nor did any other ICBM. The current ICBM that the USAF fields is the Minuteman, merely an updated version of the same missile first fielded nearly *sixty* years ago. The Peacekeeper ICBM was deployed the year after Rockwell produced this document… and the Peacekeeper was withdrawn twenty years later with no replacement in sight

Possibilities of New Business Growth: Space Cocoons

spacecraft No Responses »

Dec 232020

In 1985, Rockwell International considered the possibility that there might be profit in long-term “storage sheds” for satellites. These would provide physical protection for the satellites against radiation, micrometeoroids, lasers and the like; the satellites within would be kept in reserve for the day when other satellites are disabled, such as by enemy action. Presumably these cocoons would provide communications and power as well.

Possibilities of New Business Growth: Space-Based Radar

research, spacecraft No Responses »

Dec 212020

So, picking up after a *slight* delay…

In 1985, Rockwell International considered the possibility that there might be profit in an orbital radar system that looks back at Earth. Such a system would have both civilian and defense applications… air traffic control and spotting sea ice were possibilities for the civilian sector, and spotting cruise missiles, fighters, bombers and surface vessels for the military. In reality a system like this would probably be far more interesting to the military.

Older Entries Newer Entries