was Felxibility of Apollo design

(darn Google Groups interface has stopped letting me post follow-ups; it
says "Unable to retrieve message ". So,
a new thread it must be...

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."

Jeff Findley ) wrote

wrote in message
oups.com...
MPC's Pilgrim Observer. One of the best fictional spacecraft kits ever
made.

A quick Google search brings up a page with pictures. Very cool looking
design.

http://www.greysteele.com/models/pilgrim.htm

and Pat Flannery ) added:

The Apollo in the kit has two odd features- its CM is corrugated on the
exterior like a Mercury or Gemini, and there's a odd depression
on the CM that has a chrome rod set in it.
You can see the modified Apollo on this PDF of the instruction sheet;
it's on page 4, step 11:
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/model...ns/mpc9001.pdf
The Pilgrim Observer's design has a major problem; there is almost no
propellant on board for the three base-mounted J-2 engines.

Thanks *very* much, Gene and Jeff and Pat, for those links! (Wouldn't it
be nice to find one of those old kits?)

This does indeed closely match the big 1962 drawing that I was looking at the
other day. I'll have to compare both of them in detail, when I have some
spare time.

Owen said that he got a patent for this design, so there may be
some more info available from the US Patent Office database.

- Kieran A. Carroll

Kieran A. Carroll wrote:

Thanks *very* much, Gene and Jeff and Pat, for those links! (Wouldn't it
be nice to find one of those old kits?)


They show up on E-bay all the time:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW
They made a scad of them, and they had all the sales success of a Ford
Edsel.
Two of them are twelve feet from me at the moment, making up the basis
of the crew quarters of my six-foot long Saturn exploration spacecraft
design. (I can send you jpegs of the thing if you are interested- the
origin of some of the parts is "unique", to say the least: "That may
look like a spun-wood milk can to you...but it looks like a fission
reactor housing for onboard power to me." Then there are the HO scale
garbage dumpsters and bicycle safety reflectors).

This does indeed closely match the big 1962 drawing that I was looking at the
other day. I'll have to compare both of them in detail, when I have some
spare time.

Owen said that he got a patent for this design, so there may be
some more info available from the US Patent Office database.



Figure out where the propellant for the three J-2s was going to go...the
model has enough on board for a good five second engine burn.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

"That may look like a spun-wood milk can to you...but it looks like a
fission reactor housing for onboard power to me."


Whoops... the milk cans are the reactor housings for the three big
nuclear-thermal motors; the spun-wood _oil drums_ are the basis for
fission onboard power supply.

Pat

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 13:26:54 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Figure out where the propellant for the three J-2s was going to go...the
model has enough on board for a good five second engine burn.

....What's needed is for someone to:

1) Correct the issue regarding the J-2 fuel supply.

2) Construct a more logical interior kit.

3) Produce a photo-etch replacement for the NERVA boom.

4) Produce a lander and docking adapter, because common sense and past
precedence makes it perfectly ****ing clear that any manned mission to
Mars will carry a lander and not be just a flyby. Venus, perhaps...

5) Produce a better "Apollo-M" design.

6) The proper adapter to mate it on a Saturn V kit.
....The kit is also a kitbasher's dream for raw resources.
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

OM wrote:

...What's needed is for someone to:

1) Correct the issue regarding the J-2 fuel supply.

That would mean adding a tank structure between the upper part of the
spacecraft and the NERVA area... and that is a mighty heavy ship to set
on such tanks...we're talking about something in the Saturn V S-2 stage;
I suggest a alternative- strengthen the first and second stage on the
Saturn V, put Shuttle SRB sized solids on the Saturn V's first stage,
and lose the three J-2's on the Pilgrim.

2) Construct a more logical interior kit.

One of the crew quarters would be interesting in cutaway; obviously the
spiral staircase on the bridge has to go.


3) Produce a photo-etch replacement for the NERVA boom.

Yeah, the kit one is pretty clunky.


4) Produce a lander and docking adapter, because common sense and past
precedence makes it perfectly ****ing clear that any manned mission to
Mars will carry a lander and not be just a flyby. Venus, perhaps...


My massive kit bash goes to Saturn, puts two manned landers on
"surfboard" heatshields down on Titan, sends manned expeditions to the
airless moons, and drops unmanned probes of various types all over the
atmosphere of Saturn itself.


5) Produce a better "Apollo-M" design.


I'm still trying to make heads or tails of what the corrugations on the
command module are all about...especially considering all the trouble
the kit's designers went to to put them on the spacecraft, as they are
very petite.


6) The proper adapter to mate it on a Saturn V kit.


Been there, done that...the kit is in 1/130th scale; the Saturn V is in
1/144th scale... the base is wider than the diameter of the second
stage. Which sucks.
The kit has the top cone for liftoff, but I think it needs some
jettisonable covering over the three folding rotator arms.

...The kit is also a kitbasher's dream for raw resources.


Ranks right up there with the AMT 1/200 scale rocket set, which is
rocket nozzle central for scratchbuilders. Another great one is the
Revell "Space Operations Center" space station. There was also strange
Monogram (?) release of a Japanese model "what's-it" that could
transform from a space shuttle into a super space taxi that had a mess
of good parts to play with.
My big ship used one of those, two Pilgrim Observers, and four Space
Operation Centers as its main source of parts.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

...The kit is also a kitbasher's dream for raw resources.


Ranks right up there with the AMT 1/200 scale rocket set, which is
rocket nozzle central for scratchbuilders.

Is that the one that has the A-3/C-3/C-4 all the same size? I had
that one as a kid, but discarded it later over that detail. (Not to
mention all three were simple cylinders, which the C-3 and C-4 are
decidedly not.)

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL