03-06-2019, 05:09 AM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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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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