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Technology, History, and Place

Category: Space (Page 1 of 6)

Panoramic view of the Saturn V.

Johnson Space Center from Gemini to the shuttle era

Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas is synonymous with NASA’s human spaceflight program for much of the general public—especially those of us who grew up watching Apollo 13. In 2003, back when I was a high schooler, I visited Johnson Space Center for a nerdy spring break. Twenty years later, I revisited my memories and video footage from that trip to make the video embedded above about the history of JSC and what I saw when I visited.

Photos from my 2003 visit to Johnson Space Center: Your blogger and his parents posing between the S-IC and S-II stages of the Saturn V rocket on display.

Photos from my 2003 visit to Johnson Space Center: Your blogger and his parents posing between the S-IC and S-II stages of the Saturn V rocket on display.

My father taking a photo of the Saturn V.

My father taking a photo of the Saturn V.

Panoramic view of the Saturn V.

Panoramic view of the Saturn V.

In writing the script for this video, I relied heavily on Suddenly, Tomorrow Came…: A History of the Johnson Space Center, by Henry C. Dethloff [PDF]. It is a NASA History book, and as usual for books in that series, it is academic and well-researched, but also well-written. Other NASA History books I referred to included The Space Shuttle Decision, by T.A. Heppenheimer [PDF]; and Stages to Saturn, by Roger Bilstein [PDF, print].

For a video of this length, in which only a portion of it consists of footage that I shot, it was a real challenge to find archival footage or stills to match the narration. The NASA Image and Video Library was useful, and I always looked there first. Its holdings are limited, though, especially for material older than 10 or 15 years. The best source for archival footage of the Apollo program in particular was the National Archives and Records Administration, which has quite a lot of digitized footage, much of which is in HD. NARA was less useful for the Space Shuttle. I also found Internet Archive to be indispensable, because it has plenty of high-res stills and mostly low-res videos about the Space Shuttle, which I couldn’t find anywhere else even though they were created by NASA.

Back in 2003, consumer-grade HD video cameras were not widely available. Camcorders recorded video on tapes in SD (480p), either in analog format or digitally. I used a Sony DCR-TRV340 camcorder, which recorded digital video in D8 format on tapes that were backward-compatible with the analog Hi8 tapes that our previous camcorder had used. The camera had an IEEE 1394 Firewire port, which allowed a computer to capture video from the tapes in lossless digital format. Since I no longer have a computer with a Firewire card, I used a ClearClick Video2Digital Converter to transfer footage to my computer for this video. The quality of the transfer probably wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely good enough.

Overall, my video footage from 2003 was of disappointing quality. The cuts and camera movements were fast, and the colors were ugly. I couldn’t do much about the camerawork, but I could adjust the exposure and colors in Premiere, vastly improving the appearance of the picture. I’ll make it a point to do these adjustments whenever I use my old video footage in the future.

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mom-with-sic-comparison

Side-by-side comparisons of camcorder shots before and after manipulation.

Side-by-side comparisons of camcorder shots before and after manipulation.

Sources for the video

Bilstein, Roger E. Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles. 1980; repr. Washington, DC: NASA History Office, 1996.

Dethloff, Henry C. Suddenly, Tomorrow Came…: A History of the Johnson Space Center. N.p. [Houston, TX]: Johnson Space Center, 1993.

Heppenheimer, T.A. The Space Shuttle Decision: NASA’s Search for a Reusable Space Vehicle. Washington, DC: NASA History Office, 1999.

Olasky, Charles. “Shuttle Mission Simulator.” NASA conference publication, 11th Space Simulation Conference, 1980. NTRS, 19810005636.

soyuz-boosters-setup_banner

“Simplified Soyuz” model rocket

Two years ago, I watched a Soyuz launch to the International Space Station on NASA TV. I was inspired to write a blog post about how both the Soyuz rocket and spacecraft represent at once technological continuity and change. The basis of the Soyuz rocket is the R-7 Semyorka missile, which first flew in 1957. Space launchers derived from the Semyorka have been launching satellites and spacecraft into orbit since Sputnik 1.

Back when I was in high school, I built and flew a model rocket of another Semyorka-derived space launcher, the Vostok rocket. The model was based on plans by Peter Alway, scale model rocketeer extraordinaire and author of the ever-fascinating (and now apparently back-in-print!) Rockets of the World. Alway had posted the plans on his website (now offline). The geometry of the Semyorka is pretty complex, with lots of tapered cones and tubes of different diameters. Alway simplified the geometry a little and called his plan “Simplified Vostok.”

My own Simplified Vostok was difficult to build, and it took me a couple of years to complete it. The one time I launched the rocket, it had a rough landing, and some of the boosters (made out of paper) got damaged. Years later, I put the rocket on display in my office, with the damaged parts turned toward the wall.

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My “Simplified Vostok” rocket.

Some time after I watched the 2020 Soyuz launch and wrote the blog post about it, it occurred to me that I could adapt the Simplified Vostok plans to make a Soyuz rocket, or in this case “Simplified Soyuz.” Right around this time, NASA was commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Expedition 1 mission, the first crew rotation on the International Space Station, which launched on a Soyuz rocket on October 31, 2000. I decided that this would be a good Soyuz launch to portray in my own model.

Expedition 1 (Soyuz TM-31) rocket on its way to the launch pad in Kazakhstan. (NASA photo)

Expedition 1 (Soyuz TM-31) rocket on its way to the launch pad in Kazakhstan. (NASA photo)

Soyuz TM-31 before its erection on the launch pad. (NASA photo)

Soyuz TM-31 before its erection on the launch pad. (NASA photo)

Launch of Soyuz TM-31 on October 31, 2000.

Launch of Soyuz TM-31 on October 31, 2000. (NASA photo)

To convert the Simplified Vostok plans to Simplified Soyuz, I had to lengthen the rocket, as the Soyuz rocket has a larger upper stage than the Vostok rocket did. I also had to redesign the nose cone.

The Soyuz spacecraft has an escape tower, which is used to pull the crew cabin away from the rocket in the event of an emergency. (Mercury and Apollo spacecraft also had escape towers, as does the Orion spacecraft. Vostok had an ejection seat for the lone cosmonaut inside.) Initially, I thought that I would craft the escape tower out of dowels, but I decided instead to try using a new technology that hadn’t been available when I was building rockets twenty years earlier: 3D printing.

Using FreeCAD, I designed a nose cone with an escape tower, basing it off of data in Rockets of the World. I exported the design to an .stl file and ordered a plastic print of it from Shapeways. I ordered two copies of it, in case I messed one of them up, but this turned out not to be necessary. The printed piece was rough, so I had to putty and sand the surface multiple times until I was satisfied with the result.

Simplified Soyuz plans

Original Simplified Vostok plans by Peter Alway, with my modifications to make it Simplified Soyuz. When I made these modifications, I hadn’t yet decided that the nose would be a 3D-printed part.

Simplified Soyuz nose cone CAD model

Nose cone for Simplified Soyuz, as designed in FreeCAD.

Soyuz nose cone 3D-printed part

Simplified Soyuz nose cone from Shapeways, with its first layers of putty to make the surface smooth.

The hardest part of building Simplified Soyuz was assembling the paper boosters. Another challenging aspect of this build was adding little details made out of balsa scraps to make the model look more like the real thing. It took me a couple of tries to get the fins of the launch-abort system to look right.

Soyuz booster assembly

Assembling Soyuz boosters.

Paper Soyuz boosters

Completed boosters, all ready to paint.

Spacecraft fairing attempts

Two attempts at making the spacecraft fairing. The one on top is the one I actually used.

Working on Simplified Soyuz while watching a real Soyuz launch on NASA TV!

Working on Simplified Soyuz while watching a real Soyuz launch on NASA TV!

Painting the rocket was also a big challenge, and it took me more than a year to complete. I did most of the painting with an airbrush, which made for a very smooth finish. The final product looks far better than the Vostok model that I built in high school.

Simplified Soyuz complete

The finished product.

Semyorka boosters

The boosters of the Semyorka.

Interstage trusswork

Detail of the interstage between the second and third stages. (This is open trusswork on the real thing. My model only has one stage.)

Spacecraft fairing

Detail of the completed spacecraft fairing.

I built Simplified Soyuz to fly, but I don’t think I will launch it. Thinking back to what happened to Simplified Vostok, I don’t want to risk the same sort of damage to this rocket, at least not any time soon. Maybe later!

Rocket test stands on Leuhman Ridge

Rocket-testing relics in the Mojave Desert

Edwards Air Force Base, where the Air Force and NACA or NASA have tested experimental aircraft since before the Cold War, occupies a vast dry lakebed in the Mojave Desert in Southern California. Although the base lies just south of California State Highway 58, most of it isn’t visible from the road, because sight-lines are blocked by low hills and a railway embankment between the highway and the lakebed. One exception to this is Leuhman Ridge, which rises above the desert floor southwest of the junction of CA-58 and US Highway 395. Several large metal and concrete structures stand on the crest of the ridge, plainly visible from the highway miles away. These are rocket test stands, used in the Cold War and Space Race to test out new rocket engines and test articles of complete rocket stages.

Rocket test stands on Leuhman Ridge

View of the Rocket Engine Test Site on Leuhman Ridge, Edwards Air Force Base.

The Air Force started out testing missile components on Leuhman Ridge in the 1950s. Missiles tested there included the Thor IRBM, the Atlas and Titan ICBMs, and the Bomarc cruise missile. Some of the test stands had large gantries that could hold complete missile stages like the Atlas. One of the stands, Test Stand 1-1, still has its gantry in place.

Test stands used for Air Force missiles on the western end of the ridge. Test Stand 1-A is on the left of the picture.

Test stands used for Air Force missiles on the western end of Leuhman Ridge. Test Stand 1-1 is on the left of the picture, with a large gantry that could hold a complete Atlas missile in a vertical position for tests. The stand on the right is 1-2.

Atlas missile exploding during test in stand 1-A

Photo of an Atlas missile exploding in Test Stand 1-A, March 27, 1959. The stand was never repaired for Atlas use but was instead modified for F-1 engine testing. (Source: HAER)

Subsequently, NASA and Rocketdyne tested the F-1 engine for the first stage of the Saturn V moon rocket on Leuhman Ridge. F-1 tests started on stands originally used for the Atlas missiles, then moved to purpose-built stands that were much larger than the earlier missile stands. Rocketdyne test-fired a prototype F-1 for the first time on February 10, 1961, before Alan Shepard’s first flight and before President Kennedy had committed America to the moon race.

F-1 prototype firing in Test Stand 1-A

F-1 prototype test-firing in stand 1-A. This test engine is firing without its nozzle skirt, or rear part of the nozzle. (Source: HAER)

The biggest of the F-1 stands was Test Stand 1-C, which could hold a pair of engines side-by-side. As tall as an 11-storey building, it had foundations deep into the granite bedrock of the ridge in order to withstand the power of the engines.

Test Stand 1-C during a test-firing of an F-1 engine in 1962. (Source: NASA)

Test Stand 1-C during a test-firing of an F-1 engine in 1962. (Source: NASA)

Test Stand 1-C is the most prominent of the stands on Leuhman Ridge, because it now has a huge white building on top of it with an American flag painted down the side. Two similar test stands nearby, 1-D and 1-E, were also built for F-1 engine testing.

Apollo-era test stands on Leuhman Ridge: 1-D (L) and 1-C (R). Test Stand 1-C has been modified from its original configuration with the addition of a white tower on top, but 1-D looks about as it did in the 1960s. Test Stand 1-B is out of view to the right.

Apollo-era test stands on Leuhman Ridge: 1-D (L) and 1-C (R). Test Stand 1-C has been modified from its original configuration with the addition of a white tower on top, but 1-D looks about as it did in the 1960s. The large tanks directly behind and to the right of 1-C held water that was pumped over the flame deflector during tests. Test Stand 1-E is out of view on the other side of the ridge behind 1-D.

Since the Apollo-Saturn Program, some of the test stands have been modified for use on other programs. Even with the modifications, the stands are still visible relics of the Cold War and the race to the Moon.

Rocket test stands on Leuhman Ridge with annotations

Panoramic view of the rocket test stands on Leuhman Ridge, with annotations.

Sources and links

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