1/24 Apollo/Saturn V (enlarged 1/48 Greelt et al version)

[Algebraist]

Thanks for those posts Luke. Really fascinating. I agree there is an air of sadness that the parts never got to be used or displayed to be enjoyed.

I think (but may well be wrong) that the soviet manned moon programme ended when their launch pad was destroyed in an explosion. So I guess at that moment most of those parts suddenly became obsolete.

What I can't get my head round is how the people actually get hold of this stuff and move it. Its not like you can just put these things in the boot of your car.

Regards

Kevin

[Algebraist]

Originally Posted by dhanners

You might need the atrium of the cathedral for displaying the finished product....

Excellent work so far!

Originally Posted by rifleman

iv got a spare jig saw if you need it ????? for the celling I mean

I think the only way is to dig a hole!

Regards

Kevin

[rifleman]

now that's an idea a sunken living room sounds good

[Algebraist]

Dear all

So I have been working on stage three (and very conscious of the looming deadline). The instruction are definitely for the experienced modeller and a lot is left for your our way to do things. So here is how I did the aft skirt







Next was the construction of the (conical) thrust structure



This was a tricky glue. You have to be so accurate when joining two cones together. Error at this scale are magnified. However the design is spot on.

I had been thinking about the "helium" spheres. Checking the web I found out that they are not all of the same size, however a common size was 4.4 cubic feet. This gives a radius of (almost exactly) one foot. So at 1/24 scale that is a diameter of 1 inch (or about 25 mm). I was very pleased to find 25 mm diameter "paper pulp balls" from the web site

SMALL PAPER PULP BALLS PACK OF 100

So I order some (I have no link to the company) and sprayed them silver



So continuing with stage three, I used white card for the LOX/LH2 tank (no USA marking), as with the 1/48 model, and then made the forward skirt



Of course there is still the need for internal strut structure but on a smaller scall than that of stage one and two (only 8 struts per circle as oposed to 12 and only 50 mm deep as oposed to 80 mm). So the top of stage three is the last time struts will be needed so here is a final look (also Gunter and Wernher have a look



And here is the stage 3 stack (without thrust structure)



Next the construction of the top of the fuel tank (another tricky cone to cone join)



Now I need to add the thrust structure and the top of the fuel tank. However before doing this I need to "design" the joining rings with the top one taking into account I am adding the IU.

The clock is ticking needs to be all finished by Wednesday!

Current model height 3.67 m (12 feet 0 inch)

Regards

Kevin

[beckychestney]

Originally Posted by Algebraist

I think (but may well be wrong) that the soviet manned moon programme ended when their launch pad was destroyed in an explosion. So I guess at that moment most of those parts suddenly became obsolete.

Well....sorta. The biggest single reason for the failure of the Soviet moon program was the death of Sergei Pavlovich Koralev. When you have such a singular personality in charge of the op[eration, it leaves a very large void when they're gone. Consequently the N-1 program became embroiled in political infighting between 2 factions and Deputy Mishin was unable to fight the will of Moscow. Consequently the booster became a plumber's nightmare of piping with too many designed-in failure points.


N1


But yes, the destruction of the pad on the final test launch was the straw that broke the banker's back. Besides by then NASA had sent several men to the moon and back.

[luke strawwalker]

Originally Posted by Algebraist

Thanks for those posts Luke. Really fascinating. I agree there is an air of sadness that the parts never got to be used or displayed to be enjoyed.

I think (but may well be wrong) that the soviet manned moon programme ended when their launch pad was destroyed in an explosion. So I guess at that moment most of those parts suddenly became obsolete.

What I can't get my head round is how the people actually get hold of this stuff and move it. Its not like you can just put these things in the boot of your car.

Regards

Kevin

You're welcome... space history is a hobby (passion) of mine...

Well, in fairness, most of these parts weren't moved far... most of this stuff is all either on the grounds of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, or very close by (in the town of Baikonur itself). The sheds, water towers, gazebos, etc. are all either in the cosmodrome itself, and the playground is in the nearby town.

No, the Soviet N-1 moon rocket program didn't end with the pad explosion of the first N-1. Actually, the rocket DID lift off, and functioned normally for a few seconds, basically just long enough to clear the tower... but then the KORD engine control system experienced a failure, probably due to a fire in one of the 30 engines or the complex plumbing feeding them, which burned through the complex control and data cables running from the control system-- the KORD system was designed to guide and stabilize the rocket, not through traditional gimbaling of main engines or smaller steering vernier engines, but by THROTTLING opposing engines to "steer" the rocket through differential thrust... IOW, if you want the rocket to move left, you throttle down the engines on the left side, so the full thrust of the engines on the right side PUSH it to the left. It was felt that with SO many engines (30) that this would be the lightest way to do it (no bulky, heavy hydraulic actuators, gimbals, etc) and that the high engine count would provide redundancy... in the event of an engine failure, the KORD system was designed to shut down the engine directly opposite it on the other side of the rocket, thus maintaining the "balance of thrust" necessary to provide the differential thrust control authority required to steer the vehicle. In the case of the first N-1, several engines failed, KORD shut down the opposing engines, then control wiring burned through, causing more engines to shut down, so KORD shut down the engines opposite those engines (despite nothing being physically wrong with them) and the rocket had insufficient thrust with so many engines shut down, and so it keeled over and fell out of the sky right back onto the launch pad, while still containing probably 80% or more of its huge load of kerosene/LOX propellants (and hypergolic third and fourth stage propellants) and millions of pounds of rocket impacting the pad and exploding with the force of a small nuclear weapon of course destroyed the pad.

BUT, the pad was rebuilt. In the years that followed, changes were made to the KORD system, additional shielding of cables and controls was made, and the rocket was improved. This was the traditional method of Soviet designing and testing of rockets-- build prototypes and fly them... the first few blow up, you figure out why, make changes, and keep flying. More blow up, you figure out why, make changes, build and fly more. Sooner or later you get a successful rocket. Then, later on, if one blows up, you figure out why, make necessary changes, and fly it again. Thus you perfect the design. Of course that works with smaller "Semyorka" (Soyuz rocket) size designs, but with a Saturn-V class super-heavy lift rocket, it gets TERRIBLY expensive to operate that way. The biggest problem they had was, the Kuznetsov NK-33 engines Korolev had built to power the N-1, were not only highly cutting-edge high performance engines (still record holders for thrust/weight ratio to this day!) but Kuznetsov was a jet engine manufacturer with NO rocket engine experience at all when Korolev tapped him to build the N-1 engines... Glushko, the famous Soviet rocket engine designer, had refused to build LOX/kerosene engines for N-1, insisting that hypergolic engines were the way to go. Korolev correctly pointed out that not only were hypergolic engines too inefficient (they're a good choice for "lower power" ICBM's needing to launch on a moment's notice, and even for some "heavy lift" rockets like the Proton, but they're a poor choice for super-heavy rockets like N-1 or Saturn V), but if a rocket the size of N-1 crashed (as they knew it inevitably would in the early development phases) it would create an ecological disaster from thousands of tons of highly toxic hypergolic propellants spilling, burning, vaporizing, drifting in massive toxic clouds, and poisoning the soil for decades... Proton was about as big as is practical for a hypergolic rocket to get. Anyway, since Glushko refused, he gave the job to Kuznetsov... The PROBLEM was, Kuznetsov's engines were SO cutting edge, they could NOT be test fired before flight... test firing ruined the engines. SO, they built them in batches of six, with one engine of the group being test fired to "prove" the reliability of the other five. This created a fatal quality control flaw in the system. This was established when an engine exploded on the second N-1 test flight and blew up the rocket in flight. Kuznetsov realized that the engines needed to be designed to be "reusable", ie could be test fired on a test stand for verification BEFORE being installed on the rocket. There was no money to build an enormous first-stage test stand for static test firings, so the engines would have to be test fired individually. The third flight test of N-1 proceeded however, as Kuznetsov's redesigned "reusable" test-fire capable engines would not be ready until after the deadline for the third test flight of N-1, and thus would be incorporated as one of the "improvements" for the fourth test flight... The third test flight of N-1 got within a couple seconds of shutdown and staging, and the first stage spun out of control and the rocket broke up and exploded. They sacked Korolev's replacement, Vasily Mishin, who had run his old design bureau since his untimely death in early 1966, and replaced him with Valentin Glushko, who merged his organization with Korolev's old design bureau to create NKK Energia. He promptly scrapped the N-1, which was swept under the rug as "it never existed" and set about designing his own version of a super-heavy lift rocket... by this time NASA had abandoned Saturn V and was developing the space shuttle, which scared the Soviets greatly as it had the capability of being an orbital bomber, and so Glushko's new rocket would lift the Buran Soviet shuttle, as well as being a super-heavy lift rocket. His mighty "Energia" rocket eventually did fly twice, successfully both times, first launching the "Polyus" space battle station (the Soviet answer to the US Strategic Defense Initiative "Star Wars" program), but due to a programming error it retro-burned instead of posigrade burned to insert itself in orbit after the rocket shut down, and reentered into the Pacific Ocean. The second Energia launch successfully orbited the Soviet Buran shuttle on an unmanned test flight, which guided itself down autonomously to a runway landing at Baikonur Cosmodrome in 1986 (IIRC) on its one and only test flight. Energia never flew again and Buran was abandoned in the Soviet economic problems of the late 80's before their collapse in 1991.

Energia, however, launched off the same pads (which were modified) as the original N-1... the same horizontal assembly building ("MIK" in Russian, equivalent to the NASA "VAB" but not "vertical" like US rockets are built/stacked and moved to the pad-- the Soviets/Russians put their rockets together horizontally on rail car movers, roll them to the pads on rail cars, then stand them upright onto the pad, instead of using crawlers and launch platforms and doing it all vertically like NASA does).

It was a shame N-1 was cancelled, and many of the engineers and designers working on it lobbied the Soviet government leadership to keep it going, because they were on the cusp of success... the third N-1 test flight was *almost* successful; had it made it just another few seconds to staging... the improvements to the control system and heat shielding of components and redesigns to the first stage thrust structure, along with the greatly improved test-fire capable Kuznetsov "reusable" engines, were already incorporated into the next N-1, which was almost ready for test launch. But, the ax dropped and that was that. N-1 was swept away and "forgotten". (If you really want to dive into the history of it, read Boris Chertok's "Rockets and People" books, particularly the last one).

Later! OL J R

[beckychestney]

N-1 (later Energiya) assembly hall with rotting Buran orbiters:





Then the roof caved in on them:





Eventually one went to Germany:





Buran today:

[Algebraist]

Originally Posted by luke strawwalker

You're welcome... space history is a hobby (passion) of mine...

Well, in fairness, most of these parts weren't moved far... most of this stuff is all either on the grounds of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, or very close by (in the town of Baikonur itself). The sheds, water towers, gazebos, etc. are all either in the cosmodrome itself, and the playground is in the nearby town.

No, the Soviet N-1 moon rocket program didn't end with the pad explosion of the first N-1. Actually, the rocket DID lift off, and functioned normally for a few seconds, basically just long enough to clear the tower... but then the KORD engine control system experienced a failure, probably due to a fire in one of the 30 engines or the complex plumbing feeding them, which burned through the complex control and data cables running from the control system-- the KORD system was designed to guide and stabilize the rocket, not through traditional gimbaling of main engines or smaller steering vernier engines, but by THROTTLING opposing engines to "steer" the rocket through differential thrust... IOW, if you want the rocket to move left, you throttle down the engines on the left side, so the full thrust of the engines on the right side PUSH it to the left. It was felt that with SO many engines (30) that this would be the lightest way to do it (no bulky, heavy hydraulic actuators, gimbals, etc) and that the high engine count would provide redundancy... in the event of an engine failure, the KORD system was designed to shut down the engine directly opposite it on the other side of the rocket, thus maintaining the "balance of thrust" necessary to provide the differential thrust control authority required to steer the vehicle. In the case of the first N-1, several engines failed, KORD shut down the opposing engines, then control wiring burned through, causing more engines to shut down, so KORD shut down the engines opposite those engines (despite nothing being physically wrong with them) and the rocket had insufficient thrust with so many engines shut down, and so it keeled over and fell out of the sky right back onto the launch pad, while still containing probably 80% or more of its huge load of kerosene/LOX propellants (and hypergolic third and fourth stage propellants) and millions of pounds of rocket impacting the pad and exploding with the force of a small nuclear weapon of course destroyed the pad.

BUT, the pad was rebuilt. In the years that followed, changes were made to the KORD system, additional shielding of cables and controls was made, and the rocket was improved. This was the traditional method of Soviet designing and testing of rockets-- build prototypes and fly them... the first few blow up, you figure out why, make changes, and keep flying. More blow up, you figure out why, make changes, build and fly more. Sooner or later you get a successful rocket. Then, later on, if one blows up, you figure out why, make necessary changes, and fly it again. Thus you perfect the design. Of course that works with smaller "Semyorka" (Soyuz rocket) size designs, but with a Saturn-V class super-heavy lift rocket, it gets TERRIBLY expensive to operate that way. The biggest problem they had was, the Kuznetsov NK-33 engines Korolev had built to power the N-1, were not only highly cutting-edge high performance engines (still record holders for thrust/weight ratio to this day!) but Kuznetsov was a jet engine manufacturer with NO rocket engine experience at all when Korolev tapped him to build the N-1 engines... Glushko, the famous Soviet rocket engine designer, had refused to build LOX/kerosene engines for N-1, insisting that hypergolic engines were the way to go. Korolev correctly pointed out that not only were hypergolic engines too inefficient (they're a good choice for "lower power" ICBM's needing to launch on a moment's notice, and even for some "heavy lift" rockets like the Proton, but they're a poor choice for super-heavy rockets like N-1 or Saturn V), but if a rocket the size of N-1 crashed (as they knew it inevitably would in the early development phases) it would create an ecological disaster from thousands of tons of highly toxic hypergolic propellants spilling, burning, vaporizing, drifting in massive toxic clouds, and poisoning the soil for decades... Proton was about as big as is practical for a hypergolic rocket to get. Anyway, since Glushko refused, he gave the job to Kuznetsov... The PROBLEM was, Kuznetsov's engines were SO cutting edge, they could NOT be test fired before flight... test firing ruined the engines. SO, they built them in batches of six, with one engine of the group being test fired to "prove" the reliability of the other five. This created a fatal quality control flaw in the system. This was established when an engine exploded on the second N-1 test flight and blew up the rocket in flight. Kuznetsov realized that the engines needed to be designed to be "reusable", ie could be test fired on a test stand for verification BEFORE being installed on the rocket. There was no money to build an enormous first-stage test stand for static test firings, so the engines would have to be test fired individually. The third flight test of N-1 proceeded however, as Kuznetsov's redesigned "reusable" test-fire capable engines would not be ready until after the deadline for the third test flight of N-1, and thus would be incorporated as one of the "improvements" for the fourth test flight... The third test flight of N-1 got within a couple seconds of shutdown and staging, and the first stage spun out of control and the rocket broke up and exploded. They sacked Korolev's replacement, Vasily Mishin, who had run his old design bureau since his untimely death in early 1966, and replaced him with Valentin Glushko, who merged his organization with Korolev's old design bureau to create NKK Energia. He promptly scrapped the N-1, which was swept under the rug as "it never existed" and set about designing his own version of a super-heavy lift rocket... by this time NASA had abandoned Saturn V and was developing the space shuttle, which scared the Soviets greatly as it had the capability of being an orbital bomber, and so Glushko's new rocket would lift the Buran Soviet shuttle, as well as being a super-heavy lift rocket. His mighty "Energia" rocket eventually did fly twice, successfully both times, first launching the "Polyus" space battle station (the Soviet answer to the US Strategic Defense Initiative "Star Wars" program), but due to a programming error it retro-burned instead of posigrade burned to insert itself in orbit after the rocket shut down, and reentered into the Pacific Ocean. The second Energia launch successfully orbited the Soviet Buran shuttle on an unmanned test flight, which guided itself down autonomously to a runway landing at Baikonur Cosmodrome in 1986 (IIRC) on its one and only test flight. Energia never flew again and Buran was abandoned in the Soviet economic problems of the late 80's before their collapse in 1991.

Energia, however, launched off the same pads (which were modified) as the original N-1... the same horizontal assembly building ("MIK" in Russian, equivalent to the NASA "VAB" but not "vertical" like US rockets are built/stacked and moved to the pad-- the Soviets/Russians put their rockets together horizontally on rail car movers, roll them to the pads on rail cars, then stand them upright onto the pad, instead of using crawlers and launch platforms and doing it all vertically like NASA does).

It was a shame N-1 was cancelled, and many of the engineers and designers working on it lobbied the Soviet government leadership to keep it going, because they were on the cusp of success... the third N-1 test flight was *almost* successful; had it made it just another few seconds to staging... the improvements to the control system and heat shielding of components and redesigns to the first stage thrust structure, along with the greatly improved test-fire capable Kuznetsov "reusable" engines, were already incorporated into the next N-1, which was almost ready for test launch. But, the ax dropped and that was that. N-1 was swept away and "forgotten". (If you really want to dive into the history of it, read Boris Chertok's "Rockets and People" books, particularly the last one).

Later! OL J R

What a terrific post Luke. Thank you so much for taking the time to write it. I have learned a lot from it. Very much enjoyed and appreciated.

I did not know that the Soviet "space shuttle"actually was launched.

Regards

Kevin

[Algebraist]

Originally Posted by beckychestney

N-1 (later Energiya) assembly hall with rotting Buran orbiters:





Then the roof caved in on them:





Eventually one went to Germany:





Buran today:

Fascinating Becky. Thanks for sharing.

Regards

Kevin

[Algebraist]

Dear all

So I have now decided what to do with regard to the Instrument Unit which means that the "joining" of the stage three is decided

So here is the "bottom" of stage three with the thrust structure added, including silver helium tanks (which I am very pleased with that they are paper) and the joining ring



You can see at the "end" of the thrust structure is a "magnetic" tab which I will use to join the J-2 engine (when made).

Here is the "top" of stage three with top of fuel tank and joining ring



The "lip" of the ring is 50 mm deep. I decided that since the IU is 40 mm deep to just use the stage three lip for both the IU and the LM adaptor.

Finally stage three stacked on top of the interstage 2-3 cone



Current model height (not counting lip) still 3.67 m (12 ft 0 in)

Regards

Kevin