Just released today… an official “History of the Manned Orbital Laboratory” by Carl Berger of the MOL Program Office, 1970. This originally Top Secret history still has a number of blacked-out text redactions and, sadly, no illustrations in its 356 pages. I’ve only skimmed through it, but it looks to be an interesting read.
Direct link to the “History of MOL” PDF file
The table of contents:
Due to the contributions of APR Patreon patrons, over the past little while I have been able to acquire some useful aerospace history publications:
If you would like to help the cause, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.
Here’s a presentation describing a number of European space transport concepts, including the HOTOL, Sanger II and Hermes spaceplanes, Automatic Transfer System and a few others. As a presentation, it is loaded with illustration. I have clipped out some of the better Hermes illustrations and included them below.
Much more aerospace stuff is available via the APR Patreon.
It’s not much, but here’s a color schematic of a nuclear light bulb, taken from a NASA report.
The Shuttle C program was fairly well advanced when it was cancelled; a full-scale mockup was built, indicating that detailed large format diagrams should have been created. Sadly… this is the best three-view I’ve seen of this concept.
In the 1990’s, into the early 2000’s, NASA gave a few brief looks at Orion-style nuclear pulse propulsion. A few papers on the concept were published, but it does not appear that a great deal of real engineering effort was expended. Given the political impossibility of an Orion in the Clinton years and the diplomatic nightmare than an Orion would have been post 9/11, it’s hardly surprising that the NASA efforts were low level and apparently led to little.
Some artwork was produced. Generally computer generated, and generally reproduced at relatively low resolution, only a little can be gleaned from these pieces. The design shown below uses Transhab technology for the crew compartment and, unlike every known vintage Orion design, it has substantial radiator area. This presumably was for an internal nuclear reactor. If the Transhab used here is the same 8.2 meter diameter as the standard Transhab design, this indicates that the pusher plate is probably smaller than the 10 meter design.
I have added the full-rez version of this to the 2015-07 sub-folder of the APR Patreon “Extras” folder on Dropbox. What is depicted is a 1985 Martin Marietta design for an Unmanned Launch Vehicle, a Shuttle derived vehicle that replaced the Orbiter hanging off the side with an inline payload shroud up top and a small propulsion/avionics module that would have three SSME and two OMS engines, in much the same positions as the Orbiter engines. This would allow the booster to lift off from existing Shuttle facilities with minimal modifications. The P/A module would be a biconic lifting body allowing recovery and re-use. Not only would the P/A module go into orbit, but so would the external tank. Each flight of this vehicle would have the potential to orbit the shell of a fantastic space station.
This vehicle was described in greater detail in US Launch Vehicle Projects #2.
If you are interested in the high-rez version of this, it and many more are available to all $4 and up patrons at the APR Patreon.
A follow-up to the earlier photo set of Burans at Baikonur left to rot: a full -scale mockup of the Energia-M launcher. The Energia-M was a planned smaller two-booster version of the four-booster Energia used to launch the Buran orbiter… and, like the Buran orbiters, it has been left in place and is slowly rusting away.
I have added three hi-rez scans to the APR Patreon “Extras” Dropbox folder for the month of 2015-07. If you are interested in these, they are available to all $4 and up patrons at the APR Patreon.
Bell artwork from the late 70’s or ’80’s depicting the D316 tiltrotor, a proposed operational derivative of their XV-15 research tiltrotor.
Convair 58-9 SST, derived from the B-58 bomber (see HERE for a well illustrated article on this and other B-58 SSTs):
Early artwork for a VTOL fighter concept from Ryan; this would eventually become the X-13:
Rockwell art of an early Shuttle configuration. The full-rez version has been made available for $10-level patrons at the APR Patreon.
While this is broadly much like the STS as actually built, there are a lot of important differences. The spine down the top of the cargo bay… that was to give room for the cargo manipulator arm without putting it actually in the cylindrical bay, taking up valuable cargo space. The booster rockets have teardrop ports on the cylindrical sections just aft of the nosecones… these are the thrust termination ports that, in the event of an abort, would blow out through the forward dome of the rocket motors. This would not only slash the chamber pressure in the motors, it would provide an escape route for the hot gas to go forward, cancelling the thrust from the aft nozzle. The ET is of a slightly simpler geometry; the small cylinder on the nosecone contained the de-orbit solid rocket motor (because the ET would either go into orbit with the Shuttle, or so close to orbit that the splashdown location would be somewhat randomized).
