Maynard's space station (was Felxibility of Apollo design )

I originally wrote:

I have in front of me right now, a drawing that Owen left me, of
the "Radial Module All-Rigid Space Station" that one of the
draftsmen did for him in 1962; designed to be launched on a Saturn V,
using a ciyple of "6-man ferry-logistics vehicles" docked to it,
basically an Apollo CSM. Owen also prepared (and patented) a design
for a trans-Mars space station based on this design (I think that
one was planning on using a NERVA upper stage to push it out to Mars
and back again)---this was actually released by one of the
commercial model companies as a plastic kid's model in the 1960s,
as "NASA's Space Station."

Just for the fun of it, I looked up "Maynard" and "NASA" in a US
Patent Office search web site, and found the patent in question: US
patent number 3300162,
O. E. Maynard et al., Jan. 24 1967 (filed Jan. 20, 1964). "Al." in
this case are
William Taub (who did the 1962 blueprint that I have), David Brown
(interestingly, like Owen he's one of the "NASA Canadians" who went to
NASA from Avro after the cancellation of the Arrow project), and
Robert M. Mason. You can view the 9 pages of this patent on the USPO
web site via the following link:

http://patimg2.uspto.gov/.piw?docid=...6RS=PN/3300162

(I'm not sure how to get printed copies; I've managed this before, but
I recall it's been made deliberately tedious, I guess to encourage you
to buy patent printing services from one of the many companies that
make a living from doing that...).

The drawings in this patent are pretty close to the ones in Willam
Taub's blueprint (the blueprint also shows how to stack this for
launch on a Saturn V).
The Pilgrim Explorer model kit retains many of the concepts and
details from these earlier drawings, but has numerous differences as
well---the main one being the NERVA engine at the bottom, its
associated "fuel" tanks, and the "backbone" connecting these to the
"space station" itself. (In the spirit of the ealier discussion on
modularity, I guess we'd call that something like the Interplanetary
Propulsion Module", or IPM :-) Taub's blueprint includes accomodation
for a pair of CSMs in the space station launch configuration, one
right-side up (in the Apollo sense) located aft of the main space
station on the launch vehicle, the other upside-down located ahead of
the space station.

- Kieran A. Carroll

On 16 Dec 2004 10:29:56 -0800, Kieran A. Carroll wrote:

Just for the fun of it, I looked up "Maynard" and "NASA" in a US
Patent Office search web site, and found the patent in question:US
patent number 3300162, O. E. Maynard et al., Jan. 24 1967 (filed Jan.
20, 1964).


Referenced in another interesting patent, No. 4,728,060

(BTW, the link previously provided is expired...maybe best to use the
"search by number" feature at
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm

/dps


--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:32:54 -0800, D Schneider
wrote:

On 16 Dec 2004 10:29:56 -0800, Kieran A. Carroll wrote:

Just for the fun of it, I looked up "Maynard" and "NASA" in a US
Patent Office search web site, and found the patent in question:US
patent number 3300162, O. E. Maynard et al., Jan. 24 1967 (filed Jan.
20, 1964).

At first glance, this one looks like a serious effort with a dash of NCC
1701: Pat. No. 6,045,094

"A space vehicle which is a combined space ship and space station, able to
combine the functions of a lunar mission transport and a lunar support
station. Propulsion rockets are used for translation, and thrusters for
attitude control and station keeping. The vehicle inner components are
rotated to produce variable finite gravities, while the outer components
are stationary for zero gravity."

Use the Pat No search (which isn't about Mr Flannery), and then click to
the images section.

/dps

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

D Schneider wrote:



Use the Pat No search (which isn't about Mr Flannery),


Well, I don't know if I'm patentable, but some have suggested that I'm
certifiable... :-)

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
[...] Well, I don't know if I'm patentable, but some have suggested that
I'm
certifiable... :-)

vbg


--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/