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#11
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You are quite right. I totally failed to notice that the core is significantly larger in diameter than the SRBs. I was hoping to see a drawing with a hammerhead not much longer than the SM, but now realize that the large nozzle of the SM engine requires a significant length of straight 154" tube between the SM and the Titan booster. Bill
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It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill! If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too... Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit. : countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ; Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding... |
#12
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Bill,
Here's a couple more pics from Mike Robel over on nasaspaceflight.com/forums. I had the pic of his excellent model saved on my hard drive but it somehow disappeared in the fray of reorganizing everything... I looked for about two hours last night on the forum trying to find it again, and after having no luck, PM'd him and he graciously sent me a copy, along with a few other things, including the neat photoshop by our own Wes Oleszewski, aka Dr. Zooch... This is the Titan III-M topped by an adapter to support the Apollo CSM. The study showed that this version was about 10,000 lbs or more shy of the lift performance they were advocating for combined resupply/crew rotation missions to the interim space stations, and so they eliminated this version fairly quickly in their studies, followed shortly thereafter by the Saturn IB which was still incapable of the kind of cargo lift they were advocating to support the stations. I guess part of the answer to that was the FOUR 120 inch SRB Titan III... That would have been a real beast... The scale model pic I posted before can be clearly seen to have FOUR SRM's attached... BUT, if you need THAT much lift, as this study seemed to imply was required, then you might as well drop the Titan core vehicle altogether and simply bolt the four SRM's together into a single clustered first stage, and top it with the S-IVB hydrogen upperstage and get some HD lift capability to orbit with less engines and staging/separation events, and without all the hypergols... (except the CSM anyway). Enjoy! OL JR
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#13
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The CSM appears to be overly large in the Dr. Zooch composite picture. But that was the kind of wicked look I had envisioned. The model in the second picture appears to combine an Apogee Apollo capsule and LES with an Estes Titan-IIIE kit. The scales of the two are somewhat close, but not the same. Few would know the difference though. I had to look this up. The SM engine nozzle is just under 100" in diameter, so it could hide within a 120" Titan-sized tube, allowing a short reducer to be attached directly to the SM. Bill
__________________
It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill! If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too... Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit. : countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ; Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding... |
#14
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I noticed that too... looking closely at the pic, I think that it's a photoshop of a standard Titan IV with the big fairing, spliced in with a CSM/tower shot... that's why the CSM is "too big" for the rocket. Not sure how Mike built his rocket... I know he's got a ton of them and some REALLY neat prototypes/paper rockets. Remember, the Apollo CSM was 154 inches in diameter and the Titan was 120 inches, so that's less than 3 feet difference, or only a 1.5 foot radius increase from one end of the adapter to the other... pretty small difference when you think about it. I don't know how much room there would be in the front end of a Titan upper stage for the SPS nozzle-- plus the required clearance at separation... At any rate, an Apollo WOULD look neat on top of a Titan III, but it wouldn't be a terrific payload carrier... just a basic LEO taxi kind of vehicle AT MOST... The true "workhorse" was the four Titan IV SRM cluster first stage topped by the S-IVB-- 55,000 lbs to orbit, half again what Saturn IB could do... Later! OL JR
__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round! |
#15
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Thanks for mistaking the Titan IIIC/Apollo for the Estes/Apogee combination kit bash. But it is a 1/144 kitbash of the Realspace Models Titan IIIC + their 1/144 CSM. Glenn made a special adapter for me. On the other hand, I do own the Ested Titan IIID and the Apogee Saturns (unbuilt) It would be an easy conversion...
If only I could come up with a reliable way to parallel stage. |
#16
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With the new Q2G2 low current ignitors from Quest, igniting clusters is nearly as easy as single motors nowdays... as for dropping the boosters, there's a number of good designs out there for linkages that will reliably drop the boosters (and I have another one in mind myself that I'm tinkering with). So don't let that stop you! Later! OL JR
__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round! |
#17
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Not being familar with the Realspace models, the detail on the Apollo BPC said "Apogee" to me. Welcome to the forum, BTW. Bill
__________________
It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill! If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too... Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit. : countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ; Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding... |
#18
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Parallel Staging Design 101
The August 1970 issue of Model Rocketry Magazine http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/Mo...02n11_08-70.pdf was the introduction to parallel staging for many of us. In his column, The Escape Tower, Bob Parks describes his construction and flight of a Titan III-M with working solid rocket boosters.
I found this article very inspiring, but did not build one myself for several reasons:
But the main reason was that I was chicken. There, I said it. The model seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. The main problem was that Bob's design barely held the boosters onto the core. And it depended on the higher thrust of B14 motors to keep the boosters from falling off prematurely. Should one of the B14s be late to light, the main vehicle is likely to vacate the pad without it, leaving it behind to skywrite wildly. More to come... Bill
__________________
It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill! If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too... Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit. : countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ; Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding... |
#19
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I vaguely remember that article. At about that time, I did convert a Gemini-Titan II to the MOL configuration, mounted D engines in the strap-ons. Test flew the core while I was trying to figure out how to hold the boosters on. Launched in from the back of my kid brothers elementry school, and it promptly flew into the canal/swamp/forest behind the school and I couldn't find it. About 6 months later two kids showed up at my doore with the remnants. Never tried with that one again.
I found an article years later with a GEO-SAT LV converted to parallel staging, but never finished or flew it. It is still in the big model rocket box in the closet together with the Estes Mercury Redstone (partially built), Atlas (not built), pieces and plans to build the Gemin-Titan with the BT-70 tube (and a Titan IIIM veresion), 1/100 saturn IB (partial), 1/100 Saturn V (built and flown), another GEO-SAT LV (unbuilt), 2 Black Brant IIIs (unbuilt), Semroc Mars Lander, (unbuilt)m, 1/100 Little Joe II (built and flown), 2 Space shuttles (with the ET, and so on, 1 partial, 1 unbuilt), Mars Mini-Lander (flown) awaiting a better paint job, two of the follow on Mars Lander thing (I forget what it is called, not built), and maybe a couple other ones. In their own boxes, the 1/70 Apogee Saturn IB and Saturn V. Everynow and then I think about taking them out and flying them, and then I stop. Not currently for sale. |
#20
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Parallel Staging Design 101, part 2
Though I never built a Bob Parks Titan III-M, I did ponder quite a bit on ways to improve upon his design to make it safer and more reliable.
Nothing more came of it until the early 90s. While hanging around on the discussion boards of the Prodigy online service, I came across a question about parallel staging in the hobbies area. Not having possession of Model Rocketry Magazine at the time and this being long before the ninfinger archive became available, I summarized what I could remember about Bob's article and listed the problems with the design. We bounced some ideas around. I really wish there was some way to find out with whom I had exchanged those messages. I think he was a kid at the time, but even if that was the case, he should be old enough to BAR by now. My best concept at that time was to attach two short lengths of launch lug on the core stage near the ends of the booster. At the tail end of the booster is a short strip of wood topped with a slightly longer piece of 1/8" dowel with the extra length extending forward from the end of the wood to engage the rear launch lug from behind. A similar fixture facing aft would be attached to the nose cone of the booster to engage the forward lug from the front. The idea was that as long as the nose cone stayed on the booster, the assembly would be locked onto the core. Such a strap-on booster would more likely than not stay attached in case its motor does not light, but that was not guaranteed; there was still a chance that if the booster misfired, it may be dragged down by its set of clips and pulled loose from the core. Whether it ignited late or not, the flight would be interesting due to the nose cone of the booster remaining attached to the rapidly accelerating core. But it no longer demanded B14s in the boosters. At the time, I had yet to be exposed to the joys of flying with a club, with access to good launch equipment and a number of knowledgeable people to discuss concepts like this. So again, I did not pursue it. My BARdom will have to wait for more years to pass. More to come... Bill
__________________
It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill! If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too... Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit. : countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ; Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding... |
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