Sep 162011
A concept from 1957 for a manned space capsule based on the as-yet unflown “Discoverer” capsule shape. The basic geometry has proven itself over the years.
10 Responses to “Early Air Force Manned Capsule”
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On the cutaway… is the thing he has before him a control panel, or is it some sort of viewing system that combines views from the two “Observation Ports” atop the capsule? The flat “V” shape of the arms that holds it in place ahead of him looks like the two arms of a periscopic range finder in layout, and they are heading straight towards the observation ports in the drawing.
That’s from the NRO website, BTW.
The whole PDF it’s from is here:
http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/WS117L_Records/53.PDF
NRO has a whole pile of declassified data PDFs:
http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/collections.html
If Dwayne Day’s info is correct, today (Saturday) the optical systems of the KH-9 “Big Bird” and KH-7 “Gambit” satellites are going to be put on display to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the NRO:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1927/1
I’m hoping they show how the multiple film drop capsules on “Big Bird” were done.
The KH-9 “Big Bird” was put on display, with photographing it being okay; photos and video of it here: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1568
…lots of gold plating and foil around the film reentry capsules.
KH-8 Gambit will be revealed tonight indoors.
Someone in that racket at the time certainly loved apes. What were the dimensions on the capsule? Can we learn more about the application of it? Was it to lead directly to Lunex or Horizon?
Dwayne Day wrote an article about this program’s manned aspects:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1410/1
In the above drawing showing it atop the Atlas, it looks to be around the same size as the Mercury capsule; I think they are being pretty optimistic that the whole heatshield will weigh only 250 pounds.
It would be fun to know what sort of g loads a design like this would expose the pilot to on reentry.
Scott, a silly question.
That font used in the headers, what is it? I’ve seen it before in late 50’s early 60’s stuff, and I know it’s pre-cad hand drawn stuff, but did it ever have a formal status?
I can still recall my high school drafting instructor yelling at us for introducing “personality” into our lettering. “When you’re a SENIOR draftsman, THEN you can draw things the way you like. Until then you do it the MY way, the RIGHT way!”.
ed
Not a silly question at all. I’m a retired art director and a “fontfag” (i.e. a person who enjoys typography as a hobby). There are several digital fonts that mimic the look of this kind of hand lettering used on old engineering drawings. Four that you might find useful are:
Brush Script
Brushwood Italic
Komika Axis
VTC SUPERMARKETSALE
All four are available for free (in .ttf form) on the Internet.
Hope you found this helpful.
B Lewis:
Many thanks!
Ed
If they had launched a person (or two, or more) into orbit to manage a spy satellite, would we know it?
Well, that would mean the spy sattilite would have to have living quarters, life support and some way to get the crew back… like a Gemini capsule.
Meet KH-10 Dorian – better known as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL):
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/kh-10-schem.htm
The idea was that the 2-man crew could scan the Earth’s surface looking for interesting targets of opportunity to photograph.
The Soviets came up with a almost identical concept with their Almaz military space stations:
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/almaz_ops.html
…and actually used some (Salyut 3 and 5; Salyut 2 was one also, but it blew up in orbit before any crew could be put aboard), but it turned out that the crew didn’t see much of interest to photograph; at least not enough to make all the added weight of their living quarters and supplies worth the weight that could have been used towards a automatic camera system and its film.
They were also supposed to be very cramped and uncomfortable to live in with the big camera and its control equipment taking up most of the internal space. The original plan was to have a TKS spacecraft dock to them carrying the crew’s living area, but that would have taken two Proton launches… so to cut cost the crew had only the Almaz and attached Soyuz ferry to live in.
I would think watching the Earth go by very fast underneath you with any sort of magnified viewing system, so you could identify interesting things, would have gotten you sick in no time – like spooling through a focused reel of microfilm at high speed. I once did that and was sick for several hours afterwards.