[SOT] Movies

OM wrote:

...IIRC, the plan called for two Titan II launches - one with a
Gemini, one with an uprated Centaur with an ADTA on the end. The
Gemini would dock with the Centaur, and Pete Conrad and whoever got
lucky enough to tag along would get shot backwards into a Circumlunar
trajectory.


There were some variants on the plan, I think they use both Titan II and
Titan III, as well as Saturn I
This one uses two Titan III transtages:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/lunemini.htm
The one at the bottom of these three is interesting- a Gemini on a
Centaur, and a minimalist LEM on a Agena:
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/g/geml640.gif

Pat

"OM" om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote
in message ...
On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 02:23:35 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

I've always said the Concorde is the only plane I've seen in flight that
actually looks like it was MEANT to fly.

...Distant second only to the Habu and the Valkyrie, in that order.

Note, I've never seen those in flight so I'll have to take your word on that
one.



OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote:
That's what is in the movie, but wasn't the actual possible plan to do
a figure 8 with a Gemini around the moon, launched with a Titan III?

...IIRC, the plan called for two Titan II launches - one with a
Gemini, one with an uprated Centaur with an ADTA on the end...

There were a number of such plans, using a variety of upper stages and
launchers. The one included as an appendix in Apogee's Gemini 12 book,
for example, uses a Titan IIIC to launch a modified Transtage, plus the
usual Titan II to launch a slightly modified Gemini.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 21:32:03 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

That was one plan, but there also was a Gemini based lander..

That would have been exciting.

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On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 21:48:35 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

The one at the bottom of these three is interesting- a Gemini on a
Centaur, and a minimalist LEM on a Agena:
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/g/geml640.gif

....The middle one - the Gemin-Centaur - is the one that Pete Conrad
was proposing, as it had a) more power and b) could be assembled in
the shortest time with tested parts - Centaur and ADTA. The ironic
thing is that if either the middle or bottom options had been excised,
Volkswagon could have still used it for a certain ad campaign :-) :-)

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Jud McCranie wrote:




That was one plan, but there also was a Gemini based lander..



That would have been exciting.


McDonnell was trying to figure some way to get involved with the Apollo
program using Gemini-based spacecraft; NASA told them to forget it.
The really outlandish one is the Gemini capsule-carrying Mars lander,
though; this was something General Electric came up with:
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/gemini/wg_02.html
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/gemini/wg_01.jpg
And no, I don't know how it's supposed to control itself after entry to
the Martian atmosphere, given that it has no reaction control system or
aerodynamic control surfaces. :-)

Pat

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 04:41:47 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

McDonnell was trying to figure some way to get involved with the Apollo
program using Gemini-based spacecraft; NASA told them to forget it.

Just my outsider's opinion - I think the figure-8 loop around the moon
could have worked. I think the other ideas like landing on the moon
with the modified Gemini were half-baked. Even for the rescue
mission, it seems to me that it wouldn't get there in time unless you
already had it in orbit around the moon. And how are you going to
remotely land it close enough to the LM? The A 11 Eagle landing site
wasn't known accurately for some time. It seems to me that if you
wanted a rescue Lander, it would be better to modify a LM, and even
then a rescue is probably unlikely.

Just my opinion.

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Jud McCranie wrote:

Just my outsider's opinion - I think the figure-8 loop around the moon
could have worked. I think the other ideas like landing on the moon
with the modified Gemini were half-baked.



What makes this scenario interesting is that the Soviets tried something
along these lines with Chelomei's LK-1 spacecraft, which looked a bit
like a Gemini (a Air Force "Blue Gemini" specifically- it ended up
having a hatch in its heat shield as the program moved from lunar flight
to military space station support) and was also designed to go from
figure-8 flight to eventual landing on the Moon:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/lk1.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/lk700.htm
All that the program accomplished in the end was a dilution of the
resources that the Soviets were able to put toward Korolev's N-1/L-3
lunar landing program. A lunar-loop Gemini would have been a stunt
flight, not able to return much scientific data; even if you mounted a
camera in its equipment module to get large numbers of photos of the
lunar surface, stowing the completed film in the Gemini reentry capsule
would have presented problems due to its cramped dimensions.
It doesn't take much imagination to see what McDonnell had in mind- once
it gets its foot in the door with the lunar loop Gemini, it's going to
try to grab the entire lunar landing program step-by-step by citing the
fact that it has existing and proven equipment that can do the job in an
incremental manner using EOR or even direct ascent via a Saturn V.
Although you do get two guys on the lunar surface this way, you don't
get the sample return capacity that Apollo had, and your crew spends the
trip with about as much room to live in as sardines in a can.
NASA made the right decision in not letting itself get sidetracked from
Apollo.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:


What makes this scenario interesting is that the Soviets tried something
along these lines with Chelomei's LK-1 spacecraft, which looked a bit
like a Gemini (a Air Force "Blue Gemini" specifically- it ended up
having a hatch in its heat shield as the program moved from lunar flight
to military space station support)

OK, is it just my almost all-encompassing ignorance of
engineering speaking or is that a _really_ bad idea?


--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.marryanamerican.ca
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

James Nicoll wrote:
In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:


What makes this scenario interesting is that the Soviets tried
something
along these lines with Chelomei's LK-1 spacecraft, which looked a
bit
like a Gemini (a Air Force "Blue Gemini" specifically- it ended up
having a hatch in its heat shield as the program moved from lunar
flight
to military space station support)

OK, is it just my almost all-encompassing ignorance of
engineering speaking or is that a _really_ bad idea?

Interestingly enough, a Gemini boilerplate was flown with a hatch in
the heat shield, to test out the practicality. Reportedly the ablative
material melted over and sealed the gap well enough that it came down
intact. But- I'd have wanted more such tests, on articles which had
been left on orbit for extended times, with exposure to many repeated
day/night cycles.

-Mark Martin