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  #21  
Old 02-22-2019, 09:15 AM
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blackshire blackshire is offline
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Oh, yes--in photographic composition, good contrast makes a big difference, and the shiny CM sides did that for Rusty's spacesuit. That red-helmeted suit reminds me of the 1969 movie, "Marooned," where David Janssen's character (Ted Dougherty) flew the experimental X-RV lifting body to effect the rescue.
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  #22  
Old 02-22-2019, 05:11 PM
Neal Miller Neal Miller is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chas Russell
All of the RCS motors were test fired after manufacture. I took this picture at NARCON last year in Houston. They are sort of goldish and silver. One recommendation that I heard was a burnt platinum. I would not go straight white or silver.

Chas

the nozzles look like they are constructed of a Cadmium and Nickel Alloy. Cadmium gives off that Yellow / pink hue. my guess would be that these motors are probable Hypergolic.
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  #23  
Old 02-22-2019, 10:57 PM
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tbzep tbzep is offline
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Those thruster nozzles are related to our hobby. Back in the mid to late 90's, some friends down in Huntsville decided to do an amateur high altitude project. It was a rockoon (balloon launched rocket). My buddy Jim built the motor hardware and we cast a few propellant grains for the hybrid. However, they wanted it to be a "dirt rocket". I.E. use tar for the propellant grain. Jim's grains were more potent, but the tar was just something they wanted to use because somebody said it wouldn't work. We did test firings at Tim Pickens' (eventual designer of Spaceship One motor) parents' land. The rocket was successfully tested via a ground launch in Manchester, TN that used every bit of the 15k waiver. The balloon was eventually launched off a barge in the Gulf and the rocket made a successful flight, but I don't recall the altitude. It was in Guinness as the highest amateur flight for a few years.

Now to relate it to the space program's reaction control thrusters. A lot of old hardware from NASA ended up in a couple of junkyards in Huntsville. Tim found some of them and used an expansion bell from one to make a mold for the dirt rocket's high altitude motor. The more I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was from Surveyor instead of Apollo, but it's still cool as heck. Maybe Tim, Dan or one of the old crew is lurking and can remember it better than me.
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Old 02-23-2019, 01:16 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
Those thruster nozzles are related to our hobby. Back in the mid to late 90's, some friends down in Huntsville decided to do an amateur high altitude project. It was a rockoon (balloon launched rocket). My buddy Jim built the motor hardware and we cast a few propellant grains for the hybrid. However, they wanted it to be a "dirt rocket". I.E. use tar for the propellant grain. Jim's grains were more potent, but the tar was just something they wanted to use because somebody said it wouldn't work. We did test firings at Tim Pickens' (eventual designer of Spaceship One motor) parents' land. The rocket was successfully tested via a ground launch in Manchester, TN that used every bit of the 15k waiver. The balloon was eventually launched off a barge in the Gulf and the rocket made a successful flight, but I don't recall the altitude. It was in Guinness as the highest amateur flight for a few years.

Now to relate it to the space program's reaction control thrusters. A lot of old hardware from NASA ended up in a couple of junkyards in Huntsville. Tim found some of them and used an expansion bell from one to make a mold for the dirt rocket's high altitude motor. The more I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was from Surveyor instead of Apollo, but it's still cool as heck. Maybe Tim, Dan or one of the old crew is lurking and can remember it better than me.
Wow--talk about melding (or molding, in this case) past and present! Those Surveyor verniers (three per lander) stabilized the spacecraft while the big, spherical STAR-37 solid motor (a derivative of which served as the Thor-Burner II and Thor-Burner IIA second stage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor-Burner ) did the "heavy lowering," then--after the spent STAR-37 was jettisoned at about 6 miles up and 250 miles per hour--braked the lander to 0 mph about 13 feet above the surface, then shut down. The 13' free-fall was equivalent to just a 2' one on Earth, whose impact the landing gear shock absorbers and crush-able footpads (which were never compacted, to my knowledge) easily absorbed. Also:

The World War II-era Private A and/or Private F used asphalt-fueled composite solid propellant. It worked well, but got very soft at tropical/desert temperatures and cracked at very cold temperatures; tar, I imagine, is more physically stable over such a temperature range.
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http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
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