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  1. Small Steps, Giant Leaps: An Alternate History of the Space Age

    Is the experimental truss connected to the Power Module or the ELM? From this perspective it looks like it's connected to the former.

  2. A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster

    Well, it's explicitly described as "Apollo derived" in the post where the plan for Freedom first comes up - supporting a crew of two on a lunar mission. My best guess, based on how it looks in the renders of the expanded Skylab, is that the Freedom capsule is about the same diameter as Apollo...

  3. A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster

    IIRC, the CRVs are actually using something closer to the Skylab Rescue configuration, ie., 5-seats at the cost of limited storage for supplies internally - perfect for use as a station lifeboat, because if the crew ever have to board it and undock from Skylab they're coming home ASAP anyways...

  4. And Now, For Something A Little Different: The Jupiter Timeline

    It also helps that this concept for Jupiter is effectively SLS come early - which, for all its flaws, is a capable rocket. Are we still going to get COTS in this timeline? And if we do, is that going to get expanded into a Commercial Crew Program down the road? Even if NASA settles on the...

  5. The Cool Aviation Picture 2 - Electric Boogaloo

    I'm honestly curious if someone could catalog all of the projects axed as a result of the 1957 Defence White Paper, and then see if it's plausible those projects could still have been useful had they been continued.

  6. Solar Dreams: a history of solar energy (1878 - 2025)

    Another option might just be to have two engines, and cycle between them - when one is too covered by ice to run efficiently, you switch over to the other and use a portion of the energy from the second engine to run a defrost cycle on the first engine (or the heat exchanger used to boil the...

  7. A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster

    Just got around to reading the most recent updates, and that's a solid YIKES. With hindsight, I could see an obvious modification to the nuclear powered stations being deliberately configuring the reactors to be recovered by Baikal orbiters - ie., have Tsiklon be fitted with a new sarcophagus...

  8. Solar Dreams: a history of solar energy (1878 - 2025)

    I mean, one option for reducing ice build up could just be deliberately making the engine shake/rattle while in operation - ie., shake the ice off as soon as it starts forming on the exterior.

  9. Alternative History Armoured Fighting Vehicles Part 4

    There's a real vehicle with a similar-ish layout in a Russian tank museum (videos about it can be found on YouTube) but I don't recall it having any form of turret - and even if it did, I don't think there were ever plans for a Panther or Panzer IV turreted version.

  10. A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster

    Well, in all fairness it kind of has to be - it's a horizontal landing spaceplane that needs to be launched atop a conventional launch vehicle, which guarantees that it's going to be aerodynamically tricky no matter what the designers do.

  11. Alternate warships of nations

    Not to mention even basic napkin math tells you that a faster carrier is better - higher speed in the water means a higher airspeed over the deck, especially when turned into the wind, which in turn improves the performance of aircraft launched by the carrier (higher MTOW/shorter takeoff run)...

  12. Small Steps, Giant Leaps: An Alternate History of the Space Age

    So, based on how things were described, I'm guessing that Starlab was a proper Wet Workshop configuration? Did they use a more "To Boldly Go"-esque mounting system for flooring and hardware this go around, or did they just update the Wet Workshop plans from the original Skylab proposals?

  13. Alternative History Armoured Fighting Vehicles Part 4

    Those fins absolutely are going to get crushed when the tank is rolling onto the beach, unless they fold the other direction when force is applied - which probably isn't going to help them with getting off the beaches, even if the extra firepower does increase the ability of the troops to break...

  14. A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster

    My guess would be that N11 was sacrificed so Mishin's design bureau could focus on making N-1 reliable enough for regular missions, as well as getting the support for the upgrades it desperately needs to keep up with weight growth on future payloads - as well as limited engine output from...

  15. Small Steps, Giant Leaps: An Alternate History of the Space Age

    Still using the "airlock built into the MDA" approach? Or is that just until it can be expanded with an external airlock? I can't imagine NASA would be too happy to have to have non-EVA crew decamp to the ACRV every time the airlock needs to be used, after all.

  16. A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster

    One suggestion might instead be to increase the spacing of the outer engines into separate rings, to potentially allow the introduction of gimbal hardware on at least some engines - it would potentially eliminate the need to shut down opposing engines after a failure, which could mitigate...

  17. A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster

    Of course, for the STS-3xx mission profile, there's also the factor that they're only needed for orbits where it'd be impossible for the Shuttle to make it to Skylab-B or its replacement - if they can make it to Skylab-B, then they could potentially use the station as a stand-in for the STS-3xx...

  18. Alternate History Combat Aircraft

    Theoretically, yes, but the major issue there would be figuring out how to route the main wing-spar around the jet engine and its intake path, while keeping the engines mostly external to the wing structure simplifies engineering and can potentially reduce structural weight (due to the wing not...

  19. Alternate History Combat Aircraft

    In that case, you'd have traded higher speed for a colossal reduction in firepower, unless the wing-mounted guns were swapped to 20mm autocannons (and the cowling guns were at least .50 cals, if not more 20mm).

  20. Alternate History Combat Aircraft

    Considering that, IIRC, the space where the forward engine lives in this image is where the 37mm is housed on the normal P-39/P-63, I believe you would be correct.
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