Jean-Christophe Carbonel Books

In 1963, Eugen Sanger, became head of the Eurospace organization which promoted the 'AeroSpace Transporter'. In response to a Eurospace call, aircraft makers in France, Germany and UK designed recoverable, winged spacecraft. From 1964 to 1970 the French government led studies to evaluate the feasibility of the concept. Those studies, under the leadership of the French Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), coalesced into the Hermes spaceplane which was then adopted by the European Space Agency. In parallel, Germany and UK proposed fully recoverable designs while other countries, including Japan, India and Russia came to CNES to share ideas about spaceplane design. Unfortunately Hermes was never launched and by 1994 was abandoned after many alternative propositions were discussed. This book relates the story of these remarkable concepts, crossovers between aircraft and spacecraft beginning with the 'antipodal bomber' of 1944 and continuing to Aerospatiale STS-2000 project through the Transporteur Aero-Spatial, VERAS, AW Pyramid, Bumerang, Sanger II, HOTOL, Hermes, and Taranis. Non-European projects like Dyna-Soar, Hyperplane, HOPE, and MAKS are also covered. It provides a fascinating and detailed account of these projects which, being halfway between aircraft and spacecraft, have often been neglected by aviation writers and historians.

Period drawings, promotional art, photographs of prototype aircraft, mock-ups, wind tunnel and promotional models are all combined to present, for the first time in the English language, a complete view of French military aircraft design from the Liberation of France to the late twentieth-century.--Publisher.

"Based on pre-war research and captured German wartime technology, a number of French jet, ramjet and rocket-powered aircraft reached at least prototype form. Vertical take-off, variable geometry wings and even flying boat concepts were among some of the most radical aircraft designs, studies and projects ever produced anywhere in the world. Driven by the need to equip its air forces, compete in export markets and catch-up with its international competitors, French companies gave free reign to their designers to come up with radical and unconventional airctaft."--Jacket.

This well-known Italian brand will remain famous for having introduced many innovations in the world of modelling, starting with the wide dissemination of board designs. ESCI were originally known for their offerings in the very popular 1/72 scale.