SUPPLY FORCE MERCURY ORIGIN BY PAUL VREEDE

Paul Vreede has sent in another tremendous piece of Spacex research:

Here's what I think might be the origin of the Spacex Supply Force Mercury design. Not close in detail perhaps, but the general outline is certainlythere. It's the 1959 Convair XAB-1 atomic powered bomber, which I first came across on a picture of a Hawk model kit box above. Seen from that angle,the similarity is pretty evident. As the picture of the built model shows (picture used by kind permissionof Allen B. Ury, who built this beauty - third pic down), there are plenty of differences of course. So I have two hypotheses: maybe there's a spacecraft flying in some comic strip that was based on the XAB-1 but looks like the Spacex Mercury.

Or maybe the people behind Spacex found one of those top & sideview diagrams of the XAB-1 in a book or magazine and used that to start from. Unfortunately I can't find anything like that, so I've made up a little side-by-side (distorting and mirroring another of Mr Ury's photographs - bottom pic). When seen from above, I think the similarity is again apparent. More pictures of Mr Ury's XAB-1 model plus a brief bit of background can be found on his website. A further look at his other models is highly recommended - there's a brilliant collection of prototype aircraft and spacecraft to discover there.

Great research Paul!