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View Full Version : NASA Study Summary: "Saturn IB SA-217 Reference Launch Vehicle"


luke strawwalker
04-18-2011, 01:36 PM
Here's another quickie... about 67 pages of mostly charts, graphs, and other mathematical goodness... with some interesting descriptive stuff hidden here and there within and a nice Saturn IB reference diagram, along with a few other things Saturn IB related I had in the folder...

Pic one is the reference diagram from the document.


Pic two is a Skylab Saturn IB (they were all-white first stage tanks) and a notional "Jarvis" launcher concept from Hughes Aerospace after the Challenger disaster, using a shuttle ET diameter core stage (presumably constructed on ET tooling) powered by a pair of F-1 engines, with a shuttle ET diameter upper stage powered by a J-2S engine. This one is off of nasaspaceflight.com/forums "NASA model building thread".


Pic three is the Apollo crest from the back cover of the study...


Enjoy! OL JR

mkrobel
05-01-2011, 09:22 AM
Actually, Pic 2 is the Skylab Rescue vehicle, now lying ignominously on its side at the Kennedy Space Center Rocket Park. The CSM assembly is in the Saturn V Center. The Skylab and ASTP missions can be distinguished by the white tankage on the first stage and the "broken" roll patterns on the 2nd stage and Interstage.

Mike

luke strawwalker
05-01-2011, 11:07 AM
Ah, Ok... just had the pic saved didn't know where it was from. Credit goes to Mike Robel for those two models of the Jarvis and Skylab CRV. I knew the Skylab Saturn IB's dispensed with painting the kerosene tanks black like all the early Saturn I's/IB's had done, so I knew it was Skylab related...

Hard to beleive that they had a flight ready vehicle on the pad and ready to go and they decided to junk it rather than fly it... guess the stupidity at NASA started earlier than I realized... LOL:)

Later! OL JR :)

CPMcGraw
05-01-2011, 02:06 PM
...Hard to beleive that they had a flight ready vehicle on the pad and ready to go and they decided to junk it rather than fly it... guess the stupidity at NASA started earlier than I realized...

At least they didn't scrap it...

Someone held on to a measure of sense amidst an onrushing wave of apathy and opted to preserve it for the public to see...

Royatl
05-01-2011, 03:16 PM
At least they didn't scrap it...

Someone held on to a measure of sense amidst an onrushing wave of apathy and opted to preserve it for the public to see...

I was just there Friday. Stupid me took a telephoto zoom lens into the Visitor Center, so the pictures I got are of details (camera is still in the trunk of the car, so you'll have to wait to see them). The thing I noticed is paint starting to flake off in big chunks on the SIV-B stringers. Of course two fins were cut through in order to mount it, and possibly some details were cut through for the hold down straps around various parts of the rocket. One interesting detail (when I upload the pics) you'll see is they have one of the hold down arms, and they show how it clamped on the structures under each fin (which almost no one models on smaller 1B's but were present on both the MDRA 1/9th rockets)

(the attachment is from my camera phone, from under the Kids' Center tent as it started to rain. Note the orange structure to the right. That is the access arm from the LUT that lead to the White Room. You can get up in it, and they have it attached to a mockup Command Module. It seems like the actual White Room was bigger than what they have there, but it does look like actual equipment, so maybe this was an earlier version for AS-500F?)

luke strawwalker
05-01-2011, 10:48 PM
I was just there Friday. Stupid me took a telephoto zoom lens into the Visitor Center, so the pictures I got are of details (camera is still in the trunk of the car, so you'll have to wait to see them). The thing I noticed is paint starting to flake off in big chunks on the SIV-B stringers. Of course two fins were cut through in order to mount it, and possibly some details were cut through for the hold down straps around various parts of the rocket. One interesting detail (when I upload the pics) you'll see is they have one of the hold down arms, and they show how it clamped on the structures under each fin (which almost no one models on smaller 1B's but were present on both the MDRA 1/9th rockets)

(the attachment is from my camera phone, from under the Kids' Center tent as it started to rain. Note the orange structure to the right. That is the access arm from the LUT that lead to the White Room. You can get up in it, and they have it attached to a mockup Command Module. It seems like the actual White Room was bigger than what they have there, but it does look like actual equipment, so maybe this was an earlier version for AS-500F?)

Nice pic... hope to see the rest... :)

Later! OL JR :)

Earl
05-02-2011, 12:13 AM
(the attachment is from my camera phone, from under the Kids' Center tent as it started to rain. Note the orange structure to the right. That is the access arm from the LUT that lead to the White Room. You can get up in it, and they have it attached to a mockup Command Module. It seems like the actual White Room was bigger than what they have there, but it does look like actual equipment, so maybe this was an earlier version for AS-500F?)

Roy-

Thanks for the pic of the 'Rocket Garden' there at KSC.

My best knowledge and understanding of that L/UT Swing Arm (Arm 9) from a fair amount of study and trips to KSC and the KSC History Office in the late 80s and 90s (and studies of the L/UT #1 hardware that used to be stored in a backlot there at KSC before it was scrapped completely in 2004), is that particular Swing Arm 9 is from L/UT#1, which was used for Saturn V Apollos 4, 8, and 11 (and later the crew launches for Skylab aboard 1b's).

At some point when the 'Milkstool' was added to L/UT #1, the White Room was changed or 'updated' somewhat (the overall design was largely the same, but there are some differences). But, that is a (the) real whiteroom on display there.

The Command Module on display with it, while obviously not a 'flight model', was an 'actual' CM mockup built by North American (I used to know the exact nomenclature for the model, but I've since forgotten which one it is).

So......when you take that walk down that arm, you are walking down the same arm that Borman, Lovell, and Anders from Apollo 8 walked (first humans to leave Earth orbit) and Neil, Buzz, and Mike from Apollo 11 (and we all know what little feat those three chaps pulled off....).
;)

Earl

MartG
05-06-2011, 08:16 AM
I knew the Skylab Saturn IB's dispensed with painting the kerosene tanks black like all the early Saturn I's/IB's had done, so I knew it was Skylab related... )



The change was made after SA-205 ( Apollo 7 ) due to problems caused by the black coloured tanks absorbing heat from the Florida sun - differential thermal expansion caused the skin of the black tanks to form creases requiring time consuming repair. With all tanks painted white the problem didn't occur

luke strawwalker
05-06-2011, 09:00 AM
The change was made after SA-205 ( Apollo 7 ) due to problems caused by the black coloured tanks absorbing heat from the Florida sun - differential thermal expansion caused the skin of the black tanks to form creases requiring time consuming repair. With all tanks painted white the problem didn't occur

Interesting... where did the creases occur??

I was reading about the structures of the Saturn I/IB recently-- the fuel tanks were not attached directly to the spider beam at the top-- they had a sliding pin(S) connection to the spider beam sliding in trunnion holes in the spider beam structure itself. Seems the oxygen tanks shrank in length by a couple of inches or so when loaded with LOX, compared to the kerosene tanks which were taking on ambient temperature kerosene and did not shrink-- hence the need for a sliding pin attachment to allow the oxygen tanks to shrink without putting the entire structure in a bind...

I read the story that the reason the kerosene tanks were no longer painted black was that they absorbed too much heat in the sun and re-radiated that heat onto the adjoining cold LOX tanks, causing excessive boiloff of the LOX while waiting for liftoff. Painting all the tanks white reflected the sunlight and kept it from being absorbed into the tank and fuel and prevented it being re-radiated as infrared heat...

So the story goes anyway... :)

later! OL JR :)

MartG
05-06-2011, 09:43 AM
According to Alan lawrie's Book 'Saturn 1/1B':

S-1B-1 suffered five 'ripples' in the F-3 tank - they were 12" by 1/4" deep and required repair

S-1B-2 suffered 'large dents' in F-2 tank which appeared when the tank was in sunlight but dissapeared when the tank was shaded

On page 102 of the book it also states that S-1B-6 was "the first stage to have all white propellant tanks to overcome the deformations seen on earlier black painted tank sections"

Cheers

Martin