An early Apollo concept. At this writing, bidding stands at $739.00.
This auction is for: an in house hand built scratch model of a lunar take off vehicle by General Dynamics Corp, made sometime circa mid 1960s. Created only for the people directly involved with this particular aspect of this particular space program. Not offered for public or private sale, ever. Wood and aluminum, this is not your standard plastic desk model. Approx. H: 18.5″, with the base 1/2″. The approx. dia: 4.75″. There are some dings as shown, but overall this is a great model, and one not seen on the market much, if ever. It comes apart as shown in one of the pictures, and this is how it will be shipped to the winner. I am listing this with no reserve.
UPDATE: This is very likely an Apollo utilizing the M-2 re-entry vehicle, from Convair’s 1961 study (see comments). I’ve seen *this* design numerous times… but never in model form, always in cutaway diagram form.
7 Responses to “Found on eBay: Apollo Wood 1966 Space Ship Desk Model General Dynamics”
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It is quite similiar to the Russian TKS, some “contamination”?
TKS came much later
this here is only top part of bigger Lunar spacecraft
next to General Dynamics/Convair Astro M-1
had GD some alternate design
i think this a Convair M-2
a Lifting Body for 6 astronauts in a conical aeroshell
the model look simear in shape
more here
GD PROJECT APOLLO FINAL REPORT Volume IV, page 55
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19790076966_1979076966.pdf
Agree.
It seems to have a surfeit of rocket engines. Those outer ones are perhaps landing legs?
Regards,
Barry
My guess is that this is the *ascent* stage (with, perhaps oddly, the launch abort system), and does not represent the actual lander stage. The “Lunar Takeoff Spacecraft” label sorta gives it away.
As to having too many engines… a lot of the early Apollo designs had multiple engines. Many of the early sorta-recognizable Service Module concepts had multiple engines, upt to and including many large solid rockets for lunar takeoff. It needed a fair bit of thrust to lob the entire capsule off the lunar surface… and it was a choice of either one *long* engine, of a number of short *stubby* engines. Given that the astronauts were goign to be perched way they hell up in the sky due to the vertical nature of the Apollo lander, you’d want to shorten the engines as much as possible.
> i think this a Convair M-2
I think you nailed this one!
[…] that’s… huh. Exactly the same thing as the *last* eBay item I posted. What are the odds that two of the very same, extremely obscure display models of the 1961 General […]