Early SF, MON Interplanetary Rocket

[Diderick A. den Bakker]

Polish is perhaps not as difficult as it might seem: Rakieta Miedzyplanetarna (Interplanetary rocket) seems easy enough... Published in 1959 by the Ministerestwa Obrony Nadoraowej - Ministry of Peace (if you don't really remember the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall) or Ministry of War (if you are older than that). The building instructions were not much help: experience, a few very vague pictures, and common sense came in useful.
Obviously, designer Hanna Kowalczyk leaned heavily on the illustrations and ideas of Walther von Braun, illustrator Chesley Bonestel,l and the documentary department of Walt Disney, as you will find when you go to page 'Early SF' on my site www.zeistbouwplaten.nl, or to Google Illustrations etc.
I managed to borrow the original from a friend, scanned and scaled it down a little to fit A4, and started building. As the second picture shows, this part was straightforward. More in my next instalment.

[legion]

Oh, that looks really nice, Diderick! I think Gerry Anderson has also seen this, as the TB1 has similar lines (cross finned back, swept wings).

[Diderick A. den Bakker]

I now realise some more explanation might be a good idea. The second picture shows my workplace with the bottom 2/3rds of the fuselage, the main engine, some fins and wings. The landing module and the detachable nose cone are also in evidence.

This model raises some interesting points.
OK, imagine the rocket having taken off from a vertical position - you will see the pads at the next stage of my build. These pads are no longer in evidence in the picture of the rocket in full flight, so, presumably, they are jettisoned after take off - or perhaps retracted into the very narrow pods in the tail fins? That would be a minor technical miracle, but why not...
So now we have reached our goal, like the moon, or some distant planet. In preparation for our landing the nose cone is jettisoned, revealing a large glass dome at the front end of the landing module. The fairings covering the module legs are also jettisoned. Now the module detaches itself from the main body of the rocket and lands, bottom down, on its extended legs (wait for the next pictures of this build).
Important question: how will the module, and the people in it, return to Earth?! Unless, of course, the crew are on a one way trip, like the loveable Sputnik dog Laika ... You will probably find pictures of the poor animal on Google...

Watch this spot!

[Uyraell]

As I understand it, in the early concepts of space travel (and I'll use to the Moon as the example, here, for the sake of convenience of logic) the initial landing(s) was to be followed-up by unmanned cargo-landings near the initial site, from which cargoes both habitations and resource-collection modules were to be built/assembled/erected.
Further cargo-landings were to provide extra oxygen and water and food reserves, along with a small nuclear electricity plant, which powered phase 3 of the Experimental Program:
Either building and fueling the return ship from local resources collected, or more simply, refueling the return vessel.

In either case, those who had made the initial landing were conceived of as being on the Moon for at least 6 months to a year, before returning home to Earth.
Regular cargo shipments were to support them during their Lunar residency.

The reason for such a fractured system having to operate was the most simple of all:
at the time the initial concept was evolved, there had not been developed rockets with sufficient thrust to loft the required masses into orbit, nor to transit to the moon itself. Which in effect meant that everything had to be accomplished by repeated flights of smaller rockets, frequently launched. It also meant that the rocket which made the transit to the Moon may well have been assembled in Stationary Earth Orbit, even though it would likely have retained an atmospherically streamlined design unnecessary in space itself.

The descriptions could go on, but the general notion has been expressed sufficiently.

As for the MON model, it is certainly visually reminiscent of the A4B, but then too: most rockets of that era, be it in drawing or as a model, were. I certainly enjoy seeing this model being built.

Kind and Respectful Regards, Uyraell.

[Diderick A. den Bakker]

Thank you, Uyraell, for your very detailed information - I had not realised that this was the way of thinking behind this space ship. Thinking about it now, of course it fits in with Werher von Braun's ideas in the Collier's Magazine articles.
It might be interesting at what stage in his thinking he switched to the Saturn V principle of 'there and back'.

Back to my build. As the pictures show, once the various elements have been finished, completing the model is not too difficult. Just as in the MON 'artificial moon' some improvisation was asked for, me not being able to read the instructions. The legs of the landing module were a bit fiddly; the fairings are not glued, so they tend to fall spontaneously. The nose cone fits perfectly (which can't be said for many of the parts of this model). I made the 'feet' removable - after Uyraell's explanation I now suppose they would indeed have been jettisoned after take off.

The last picture shows the completed Rakieta Interplanetarna with part of the MON space station hovering over it. Both have been fun builds, and form a nice addition to my Early SF collection.

[Retired_for_now]

Thanks Diderick, a very nice model build and some equally interesting historical context. The early SF models/concepts seem to be more grounded in the real science and engineering of the time than todays more "fantastic" SF starships (OK - broad generalization that is not true in all cases, but I'm trying for a colorful way to make the point).
Yogi

[Uyraell]

Diderick, you're very welcome to the bit of info I mentioned.
I'm rather glad you found it of interest.

As to when Werner Von Braun shifted to the Saturn V concept, the anecdotal evidence at least heavily suggests it was around the time of the "Jupiter, Juno, Atlas" rocket debate, that was running between Von Braun's Engineering Team, NASA, USAF, and US Army. Von Braun's "take " on the entire debate was that he didn't care which US agency got into space or to the Moon first, just so long as the person(s) first setting foot on the Moon was American, and arrived there before the Russians.

As the debate went on and on, longer and longer, the anecdotal evidence is that Von Braun late one afternoon turned to his First Assistant (Reichert?) and said in effect: "To hell with them and their silly debate: Let's just go ahead and design a completely NEW rocket from the ground up!" , and thus was born Nova, later to become Saturn V.

I certainly like how your MON rocket has turned out, Diderick.
It looks very good indeed, and is certainly a fine memento of the engineering concepts of it's era.

Kind and Respectful Regards, Uyraell.

[Neptune]

Originally Posted by Diderick A. den Bakker

Thank you, Uyraell, for your very detailed information - I had not realised that this was the way of thinking behind this space ship. Thinking about it now, of course it fits in with Werher von Braun's ideas in the Collier's Magazine articles.
It might be interesting at what stage in his thinking he switched to the Saturn V principle of 'there and back'.

Back to my build. As the pictures show, once the various elements have been finished, completing the model is not too difficult. Just as in the MON 'artificial moon' some improvisation was asked for, me not being able to read the instructions. The legs of the landing module were a bit fiddly; the fairings are not glued, so they tend to fall spontaneously. The nose cone fits perfectly (which can't be said for many of the parts of this model). I made the 'feet' removable - after Uyraell's explanation I now suppose they would indeed have been jettisoned after take off.

The last picture shows the completed Rakieta Interplanetarna with part of the MON space station hovering over it. Both have been fun builds, and form a nice addition to my Early SF collection.

Those are some very nice builds. I don't know how I missed this thread, guess I got it mixed up with one of the others.

[rmks2000]

Very nice build. I like the breadown of the stages on this kit.

[Mirco]

I love models that can be played with. This dismantlable rocket would be exactly one of them . Nice work on it.

"Wydawnictwo ministerstwa obrony narodowej" literally means "Publishing house of the ministry of national defence". You're very right that "war" would be much more appropriate term than "peace" or "defence", in all times and all countries alike .

By the way, the pads on the fins would be in fact quite useless, because the rocketship would surely use a special ramp for takeoff (why to waste precious fuel just to lift the feet off the ground and then drop them?) and would probably never land tail-first. But at least you don't need a display stand .