Looking through ebay tonight I found a seller with a 1981 issue of a stamp issued in the island nation of Comoros, commemorating approach and landing tests of the Space Shuttle Enterprise. There have been a *lot* of spaceflight related stamps issued by dinky little nations; my assumption has always been that this is a reasonable and understandable way for these small countries to make a little scratch from foreign stamp collectors, rather than as a way to mail letter.
Anyway, this particular stamp comes still attached to a souvenir sheet. Additional artwork on the sheet includes the starship Enterprise (linking it to the Shuttle), a Boeing X-20 Dyna Soar, which I’m a little surprised they were even aware of, and a portrait of Austrian rocket engineer/scientist Eugen Sanger, who died in the 1960’s. An unusual bunch to see together.
This piece of artwork of the Convair “Outpost” seems to be a little bit later than the others. It depicts an Outpost with a nuclear reactor for a power sources; this is held off at some (not terribly great) distance for the purposes or radiation mitigation.
Illustrations from a childrens book about space stations from 1960. This was when Men were Men, Women were Women, it was okay to be white and everyone wore their best business suits to board a rocket into space.
Sigh. The optimism of that era is just plain unrecognizable. The past is like a whole different country.
Very late 1950’s Convair promo art of their “Outpost” space-base built from an Atlas launch vehicle. This was publicized enthusiastically by the likes of Krafft Ehricke; it preceded the MOL program, and would have resulted in a manned facility somewhat similar in size, thought dissimilar in capability. The MOL was a pre-finished, single-launch space lab, while the “Outpost” as a “wet lab” would have required considerable effort by workers in space suits to finish. To service the Outpost, an Atlas with a Centaur-like upper stage would orbit two wedge-like lifting bodies.
This video tackles the question “why don’t we just make more F-1 rocket engines?” A similar question, “Why don’t we just restart production of the Saturn V” has been common among space fans for *decades.* And the fact is… we can’t.
The video points to the loss of skills and direct knowledge of those who worked the F-1 fifty years ago. When the F-1s were built, it took more than the blueprints; it also took manufacturing instructions. It’s more than juat “weld these parts together,” it’s *how* to weld. And while the blueprints still exist, the notes – and the knowledge stored only in the technicians heads – are long gone. This is a problem I saw directly back in my days working at United Tech and ATK. A story I’ve related before is how through virtually sheer random chance, while working at ATK I was called up by one of the techs hoping that I could direct them to a former co-worker from United Tech, because that co-worker was responsible for the manufacturing instructions on a motor that had been transferred from the one company to the other (because United Tech collapsed and all their programs were transferred to other companies). I got them to explain just what the issue they were having was… and then I burst out laughing because *I* was the guy at United Tech who had figured out how to solve the manufacturing issue. My co-worker had apparently never gotten around to re-writing the instructions, so an important detail had been lost and only rediscovered through an unlikely circumstance. Now, the ATK techs certainly could have figured out a solution, quite possibly the exact same solution, or maybe even a better solution… but they’d never have known if their solution was the “right” one, and Odin only knows how long it would have taken them to work the problem. And in government rocketry, “well, we’re unsure how it was supposed to be done, so we’re doing it this way” is almost never the right answer. Management will Freak The Hell Out.
And along with the loss of knowledge and skills is the loss of *stuff.* If you try to rebuild the Saturn V based on a complete and pristine set of fifty-year-old blueprints, one of many problems you’ll discover is that a lot of the off-the-shelf stuff meant to go in it… doesn’t exist anymore. “Install a MomNPopCo Brand temperature sensor model 14B HERE.” Ooops, they went out of business in 1971. “Wrap with Bleedin’ Lungs Brand six-inch-wide asbestos tape.” Ooops. “Install a HAL 90 computer here.” Ooops, especially because the mass of the thing is require for balance, but that’s not called out in the blueprint because why would it be. “Insulate with bakelite.” Ooops. “Machine from thorium-alloy component 128047h-8 from Bomarc program.” Ooops.
In aerospace, once it’s lost, it’s *very* hard to get back. No more Saturns. No more F-1s. No more SR-71s. No more Avro Arrows or Peacekeeper missiles or F-22s.
See also “FOGBANK.” Never let your nuclear weapons manufacturing programs sit idle.
Modeling of all the parts is done. Some refinement is probable, as some of the bits shown here – the plumbing lines in particular – are pretty small. The plan is to include the walkway to connect the two vessels. In all likelihood the walkway will be a single solid-cast part.
Both vessels are modeled at a higher resolution than is necessary for 1/144. They’re be great at 1/72, perhaps even 1/48. but there are currently no plans for larger-scale (and much more expensive) kits.
In lieu of anything resembling a social life, I’ve been working on this…
… along with a few other projects. At one point late Friday night I looked out the window and thought, hey, what’s that, and realized that it wasn’t Friday night anymore:
That’s a hell of a thing to see when you’re expecting pitch black.
Long March 8: meant to emulate the Falcon 9 with a vertically-recovered core, but also use vertically-recovered solid rocket boosters (likely via parachute, though art seems to indicate that they too will have landing legs).
Long March 9: intended to be Saturn V class for manned missions to the Moon and beyond.
No indication that the Long March 9 is aiming for reusability, so it seems likely that the Chinese are emulating not the BFR but the SLS. It is too much to hope that China will emulate the spectacular economics of the SLS as well.
here was a time when rocket engineers and launch vehicle/spacecraft designers felts reasonably comfortable proposing the use of propellants that today would be considered *insane.* One of these was fluorine, an oxidizer so powerful that it will oxidize *oxygen.* Liquified it is denser than LOX and provides a higher specific impulse than LOX when burned with the same fuels. On paper, liquid fluorine is spectacular. In reality, fluorine is toxic and just about all of the combustion compounds are toxic (burn it with hydrogen and you get hydrofluoric acid, which will eat your bones). Fluorine has the added bonus that it will merrily combust with a whole lot of structural materials, so you have to be careful in your design and preparation for tanks, pumps, lines, etc.
Consequently, it was important to know your stuff. To that end, Douglas Missile & Space Systems Division produced a Fluorine Systems Handbook.
This Handbook contains criteria for the design of airborne fluorine feed systems and associated components. Two types of information are presented: 1) philosophical information defining general methods, and 2) detailed specifications and procedures. Although the major emphasis has been upon criteria for components exposed to elemental fluorine, the information is general applicable to systems utilizing other cryogenic oxidizers which contain fluorine as a constituent.
So if you are planning on fueling your rocketship with liquid fluorine… here ya go. You’re welcome.
