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Originally Posted by the mole
Thanks, Allen, I thought there was some new pics up on these kits. I have been drooling over the two pictures on the home page ever since they were announced. I'm a Saturn 1B style rocket guy. I'm going to be in heaven when I get my hands on these kits. I already have the 50, 70, 58 and BT-19 tubes just waiting to get the go on the 3D printed parts.
Can you tell how excited I am?  |
If I might suggest another "new product lobbying effort" to a fellow Saturn IB fancier, directed at Boyce Aerospace Hobbies (it would actually facilitate the creation of ^two^--and possibly three--new Saturn scale kits, as I'll explain):
In L.B. Taylor's 1968 book "Liftoff," plans for the 1970s were discussed, and among these were two equal-performance launch vehicles for lofting interplanetary spacecraft (such as the Helios close-proximity solar probes) and planetary probes (the Viking Mars Orbiter-Lander vehicles, the multiple Grand Tour outer planet--and ultimately interstellar--probes, etc.), and:
The two proposed launch vehicles were the Titan III-Centaur (Titan IIIE) and the Saturn IB-Centaur (a drawing of which, from David S.F. Portree's Spaceflight History website, is attached below). (Interestingly, the earliest Saturn I test vehicles--SA-1 to SA-4 [and possibly SA-5 as well] were Saturn I-Centaur vehicles, having a "live" S-I first stage, a dummy S-IV second stage [which was "live" on SA-5], and a dummy S-III Centaur third stage [which might--or might not--have been considered a dummy S-III stage on the SA-5 vehicle].) Also:
While the Titan IIIE was known--even back in 1968--to be the cheaper of the two, the Saturn IB-Centaur would have had the advantage of keeping the Saturn IB assembly line open in the 1970s, making possible AAP (Apollo Applications Program) missions throughout the 1970s and beyond, if desired (the Saturn IB could have launched a "Wet Workshop," Skylab-type space station, as well as--with separate Saturn IBs, of course--station crews in Apollo CSM spacecraft). Plus:
From the earliest days of the original Saturn I test flights, there were proposals to upgrade the first stage to be reusable (being recovered via a Rogallo para-glider, see:
http://www.google.com/search?source...299.p6544WKIh-A ), to lower the launch costs of the vehicle. In those early days, a high flight rate was anticipated--that was one reason why no fewer than three Saturn I launch complexes (LC-34, LC-37A & LC-37B) were built. The Saturn series was also expected to be used for many years, making an upgrade such as the recoverable & reusable first stage (whose structural strength due to its clustered tankage--plus the relatively small performance reduction caused by adding recovery system mass to the first stage [it's about a 1:1 trade-off on the upper stage, by comparison]) a logical next step. In addition:
The Saturn IB-Centaur had a larger payload fairing (21.7' outside diameter, as opposed to 14' for the Titan IIIE), which was the same type as was used for the Skylab-Saturn V vehicle (see:
http://www.google.com/search?ei=nZO...i30.iB5qsArb3SU ). Had the Saturn IB-Centaur been adopted instead of the Titan IIIE, outer planet space probes such as the Grand Tour spacecraft (the two-spacecraft Voyager series was/is a pared-down Grand Tour project) could have used considerably larger parabolic "dish" antennas, enabling higher image and data rate transmissions from their target planets (as well as greater communications ranges after the probes escaped from the Solar System). As well:
The proposed Saturn IB-Centaur launch vehicle is covered *here* (in the February 4, 2019 article on David S.F. Portree’s Spaceflight History website, see:
http://www.oldrocketforum.com/showt...7540#post227540 ). If Boyce Aerospace Hobbies offered 1:100 and/or 1:125 scale Skylab payload fairings, modelers could--using their already-available Saturn IB models of those scale sizes--build Saturn IB-Centaur scale models (these should be "NAR-Kosher," for those who enjoy scale competition, under the Future-Fiction Scale category [encompassing scale models of proposed-but-never-built, cancelled, existing-but-still-unflown, and fictional vehicles]). They could also, using that same part, build models of the Skylab-Saturn V vehicle (and possibly also models of the SA-203 Saturn IB S-IVB LH2 tank pressure-test flight vehicle [see:
http://www.drewexmachina.com/2016/0...apollo-mission/ ; its S-IVB blew apart during the pressure test in orbit], whose nose fairing looked like it may have been the same shape as the Skylab payload fairing).