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Old 03-02-2019, 08:31 AM
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blackshire blackshire is offline
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Default "Juno II day" (3/3/1959)

Hello All,

If anyone here has built a Juno II scale model, this Sunday--March 3--would be a particularly appropriate occasion on which to launch it. (Peter Alway included plans for a Juno II scale model in his now-online 1994 book, "The Art of Scale Model Rocketry," see pages 62 and 63 *here*: http://nar.org/free-reports/Art%20o...r%2 0Alway.pdf , and his "Rockets of the World" contains scale data on several Juno II rounds, including the Pioneer 4 one.) This Sunday doesn't mark the date of the first Juno II launch, but it *does* mark the 60th anniversary of the most historic one--the launch of the Pioneer IV lunar probe, the first U.S. spacecraft to escape from Earth and achieve solar orbit. Below are links to material on Pioneer 4 and its Juno II launch vehicle (which includes a downloadable card stock Pioneer 4 model):

Wikipedia article (containing additional links): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_4

YouTube videos: http://www.youtube.com/results?sear...ioneer+4+launch

Pioneer 4 paper models: http://www.google.com/search?ei=T5B...299.fQ6mYIJ1h6c

Articles, images, and videos: http://www.google.com/search?source... 9.nagIzxkLZqM

I hope this material will be useful.
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Old 03-02-2019, 11:41 AM
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JUNO II info . . .
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Old 03-02-2019, 01:11 PM
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Amazing they could get that close to the Moon with that combination... basically the upper stages were "unguided" (spin stabilized) and once the first stage engine shut down and the thing staged, it was basically going wherever it was pointed (Newton was firmly in the driver's seat).

Talk about "shooting from the hip"!!! No midcourse-corrections, and basically "bullet guidance" on the second and third stages... crazy!

Later! OL J R
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Old 03-03-2019, 02:23 AM
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Thank you, Ez2cDave, for those Juno II photographs and paper model plans! The Pioneer 3 and 4 Juno II rounds, ironically, had rather plain (mostly white, with red lettering) paint schemes. The Explorer, Explorer S, and Beacon Explorer rounds (the "S series" and Beacon Explorer satellite launches failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_II ) had more photogenic white with black checkerboard paint schemes (I'm glad that the paper model files contain both). Here (see: www.youtube.com/watch?v=61A6cpSXsnA ), for "historical completeness," are multiple views of the spectacular July 16, 1959 Juno II Explorer S-1 launch failure at LC-5 (ten years to the day before the launch of Apollo 11!). Also:

Your pictures raise another question, which at this late date may no longer be answerable: Which of the several Redstone/Jupiter steel launch tables (which are at the KSC "Rocket Garden," the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station museum at LC-5/6 and LC-26A & B, the Alabama Space and Rocket Center, and the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal musem)--if any of them--were the actual ones that were used to launch Explorer 1, Mercury-Redstone 3 & 4, and Pioneer 3 and 4? (I contacted all of these places last year, but no one knew.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by luke strawwalker
Amazing they could get that close to the Moon with that combination... basically the upper stages were "unguided" (spin stabilized) and once the first stage engine shut down and the thing staged, it was basically going wherever it was pointed (Newton was firmly in the driver's seat).

Talk about "shooting from the hip"!!! No midcourse-corrections, and basically "bullet guidance" on the second and third stages... crazy!

Later! OL J R
JPL, ABMA, von Braun & Co. weren't quite *that* crazy. They had no mid-course correction capability on the U.S. Army Pioneer 3 and 4 (even the USAF's Pioneer 0, 1, and 2 had that capability, possessing small velocity-correction solid motors as well as a Falcon missile motor as a retro-rocket, for lunar orbit insertion), but as with the Jupiter-C/Juno I, the Juno II had a gas jet-stabilized control section that housed the upper "spinning washtub" stages, and aimed them before firing them (see: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j9JfMj1rkk ). Also, here www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yOdcaTGqFA&t=113s is a short NASA film on the Pioneer 4 mission, which shows what a shoe-string--yet successful--tracking and data acquisition operation they had (it was hard to do in 1959, with only *one* deep space station, at Goldstone!). Plus:

Pioneer 3 was to carry a radiation instrumentation payload past the Moon (but it fell short, rising only 63,000 miles--still a great distance in 1958!). Pioneer 4 was to carry a spin-scan TV system to image the lunar farside, but the project scientists wanted to fly another radiation instrumentation payload on Pioneer 4 instead, and their preference won out. (Also, I suspect that the Juno II team had doubts about whether it could be aimed well enough to inject Pioneer 4 into a "Figure 8" orbit passing around the far side of the Moon and then back close to the Earth, especially after Pioneer 3's [and Pioneer 1's] "tiny-but-sufficient" velocity and aiming errors. Even Pioneer 4 was about 95 mph slower than planned, which--combined with a too-high climb angle--resulted in a more distant [~37,300 miles] lunar flyby than they wanted.) Pioneer 4 was originally supposed to have carried an automatic darkroom film camera/spot-of-light image scanner (as the later NASA Lunar Orbiter spacecraft did), but the Soviets' Luna 1, which was launched on January 2, 1959 and missed hitting the Moon, reported enough radiation that the amount of shielding that the film would have required would have made Pioneer 4 too heavy (over the Juno II's ~13-pound "lunar payload limit") for the vehicle to boost it to the Moon. As well:

Both Pioneer 3 and 4 did carry a dual-photocell, camera-triggering optical switch as an engineering test, however (for triggering cameras on future probes), although neither probe got close enough to the Moon--whose light was to shine on both, differently-angled photocells simultaneously--to trigger the optical switch. I wish NASA had tried a couple more times (they had at least one spare Pioneer 3/4-type lunar probe, and several Juno II launch vehicles), as they likely would have succeeded in getting clear TV pictures of the far side of the Moon in the spring or summer of 1959, before the Soviet Union's Luna 3 did that--getting admittedly poor-quality photographs of the lunar farside--in October of that year.
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Old 03-03-2019, 07:19 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blackshire
Thank you, Ez2cDave, for those Juno II photographs and paper model plans!

Your pictures raise another question, which at this late date may no longer be answerable: Which of the several Redstone/Jupiter steel launch tables (which are at the KSC "Rocket Garden," the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station museum at LC-5/6 and LC-26A & B, the Alabama Space and Rocket Center, and the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal musem)--if any of them--were the actual ones that were used to launch Explorer 1, Mercury-Redstone 3 & 4, and Pioneer 3 and 4? (I contacted all of these places last year, but no one knew.)




You're very welcome !

As for the launch tables, I have no clue. It's possible the were identical, but maybe not.

Another thing to consider is that is a display and the "wrong" launch table could have been used, or not.

The pics below are JUNO, JUPITER, and MERCURY REDSTONE.
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Old 03-03-2019, 07:37 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ez2cDave
You're very welcome !

As for the launch tables, I have no clue. It's possible the were identical, but maybe not.

Another thing to consider is that is a display and the "wrong" launch table could have been used, or not.

The pics below are JUNO, JUPITER, and MERCURY REDSTONE.
Thank you for posting these additional, closeup pictures. That's what I'm wondering (if the launch tables might have been swapped or replaced due to corrosion, etc.); John Hilliard told me that the one used at LC-5 for Alan Shepard's and Gus Grissom's Mercury-Redstone flights was moved from there to the KSC Visitor Center in 1969 (but with a Mercury-Redstone, a Jupiter-C/Juno I, and a Juno II in the "Rocket Garden," there are two--and possibly three--possibilities for which one launched Alan and Gus [and maybe Pioneer 3 and 4, in 1959]).

It's also possible that, due to the basic similarity between the Redstone and Jupiter launch tables, one could have been modified to support the other's missile, since some of the outdoor hardware at the Cape has succumbed to corrosion over the decades (such as the original LC-5 gantry; the one there now is a replacement one). Since the two firing tables are similar (or maybe, "later-model" ones were made to support either missile [that's a kind of thing that von Braun and the Army would have done, for logistical simplicity and to save money]), they were swapped out if the originals rusted too much (since the average person couldn't tell the difference).
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Old 03-03-2019, 02:38 PM
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A few more pics . . .
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Old 03-03-2019, 02:49 PM
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Images related to the Redstone, circa 1959 - 1960.
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Old 03-06-2019, 05:09 AM
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I have not lost interest or forgotten (after my [monthly] dual clinic and hospital "outings," it takes more than a day to recover)--Than You for posting the additional picture sets! The second shot in the first set shows nicely the differences between the Redstone and Jupiter launching tables (I was sorrowed to see the rusted-through holes in the Redstone fin, though). The largely-German Redstone/Jupiter (and later, with NASA, Saturn) team were used to working with meager facilities; that the Redstone and Jupiter tables resemble the V-2's is no coincidence.

They shook their heads when they saw the first concrete pads being poured at the Cape, as they were used to just setting up the portable launching table, then hardening the ground with LOX if necessary. Although the capability was seldom if ever used, even the Jupiter IRBM squadrons--unlike the Thors--were mobile, following German Army (and U.S. Army) requirements and practices. That built-in portability also made it easy for Launch Complexes 5/6 and 26 (Pads A and B) to launch Redstone, Jupiter-C/Juno I, Jupiter, and Juno II vehicles; pretty much all they had to do was swap out launching tables and roll the most convenient gantry over to whichever pad they wanted to use (eventually they connected all four pads with railroad tracks, so that one gantry could serve any of them), and:

Looking at the bottom set of pictures (I recall seeing a similar shot of the "A-frame" erector lifting a Redstone onto its launching table, possibly in C.B. Colby's "Our Space Age Army"), it's impressive how few people were needed to set up and launch a Redstone. With today's improved equipment (even LOX tanking is much more straightforward, as an Air Liquide LOX tanker driver/unloader showed me at our hospital), such mobile cryogenic propellant ballistic missiles--if anyone wanted to build them--would probably be quite practical today.
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Old 03-06-2019, 12:46 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blackshire
I have not lost interest or forgotten (after my [monthly] dual clinic and hospital "outings," it takes more than a day to recover)--Than You for posting the additional picture sets! The second shot in the first set shows nicely the differences between the Redstone and Jupiter launching tables (I was sorrowed to see the rusted-through holes in the Redstone fin, though). The largely-German Redstone/Jupiter (and later, with NASA, Saturn) team were used to working with meager facilities; that the Redstone and Jupiter tables resemble the V-2's is no coincidence.


Hope you are feeling better !

I'm glad the photo's were helpful . . .

Dave F.
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