Vanguard rocket & transporter car done

Very nice Lee. I'm just wondering if there's any clearance problems on the layout (trees,etc.) with these rockets your building.

Very impressive, Lee. Not many have modeled a missile facility and your is top drawer.

Lee, you are a skilled craftsman and your imagination/ingenuity is off the charts. Look forward to the next installment.

Lee,

Shouldn't there be a gondola car with the post fireball bits and pieces of those failed Vanguard launches in there??

Even as a kid, I remember wondering why they didn't just use an Air Force rocket they knew would get off the ground?

Great Lee!

I may have a couple of gondola cars around or something I could sweep all the wreckage into.  Of course, I would need eight cars, one for each failure.  

My lack of respect for politicians began when my father explained to my, after the second failed Vanguard attempt, why the US kept trying to get the "civilian" Vanguard to work.  Because Washington wanted the US to have a non-military satellite launcher designed by someone other than ex-German engineers.  Werner von Braun could have put a satellite into orbit ahead of the Soviets, but nooooo . . .   So we got embarrassed by the Russians who used their military rockets, designed by their ex-German engineers, and ultimately we had to have Werner put out first one in orbit anyway.  Like me, my Dad had no respect for the thing.  Even the Navy, as I hear, was embarrassed by having to own it.  

I still remember that Tom Lehrer song about Von Braun:

I just shoot them up,

Who cares where they come down,

That's not my department,

Says Werner von Brown. . .

There is a dang good biography of Von Braun, title just Von Braun, by Richard Neufeld, by the way.  I recommend it to any aging "junior rocket scientists" like me out there.   

Impressive Lee, as usual.

George

By the way, I realized while doing research on Redstone-Mercury that I had the spare parts here to make a model of Little Joe, the Wallops island rocket they used in the initial tests of the Mercury capsule's re-entry system and so forth.  It took only five minutes to make the major components - took twice as long to Google picture and diagrams and take measurements.  Besides the fact that it was a cool little rocket and project, it will fit on a normal flatcar. 

Redstone-Mercury.  I know the letters on the rocket were prototypically red, but I remember them as black (B&W TV) so I did them red on one side and black on the side I prefer to have showing, as here.  With the escape tower removed, it fits okay on a long flatcar.

One of Walter Matuch's little flatcars does super to carry the escape tower.  It came with a small missile of its own held by two of the support structure you see.  I removed the missile and one structure and it fits the escape tower perfectly.  

Very cool! Thanks for the history on the rockets as well.

Once again. . . Nice job Lee  

Lee:

amazing-

We were at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral this past October.  If you want to do some in-person research, that's the place.  The contrast between the Redstone on display and the Saturn V also on display is unreal.  I'm old enough to remember listening to those Mercury launches on a transistor radio while in grammar school.

Also, you can't believe how large the space shuttle is until you stand next to it.

Very impressive, Lee!  Having been stationed at Vandenberg AFB in California from '98 to '02 I've had the pleasure of watching many satellites be launched into polar orbit.  The Titan IV was the most impressive at the time.  Your talent and imagination is really incredible,  thank you so much for sharing it with the rest of us! 

-Nick

Lee, very cool!

The contrast between the Redstone on display and the Saturn V also on display is unreal. 

Not surprised.

I may be wrong about this, as it goes way back in my memory. But I recall reading somewhere that the first stage tanks of the Saturn V is actually made of Redstone bodies.

Chris

LVHR

WOW!!! Very impressive, nice job.

The Saturn 1B was made using a bunch of redstone rockets as fuel tanks clustered around one Jupiter rocket body in the middle, but it used different engines, etc., not Restone or Jupiter.  If you look at the Saturn iB, you can tell: it looks like a bundle of smaller tubes, the redstones.  The Saturn V was a bigger all new set of designs.

I completed the Little John today.  It was used early on to test the Mercury capsules re-entry shields and escape towers, etc.  it could boost a capsule about 100 miles straight up, enough to test re-entry.  Not the greatest rocket, but it was easy to make.  I found about a dozen photos of it and no two looked the same - apparently every launch they painted it different, so i just sort of did what I thought looked good.

It will be quite a while before I post any more rockets.  Next, its either Atlas-Mercury or Thor-Agena.  Not sure which I will do first, but either will be all scratch built and much bigger than these guys.  A challenge regardless.  I can't wait!

Nice work Lee 

I thought this might interest you ...

It's a very cool rocket actually, just a little big for my layout.  Still, maybe eventually.

Lee, 

In my travels out West I saw a nice 1/48 V2 kit by Pegasus.......I know it's not what you are doing.....but cool it was 1/48 scale.

Thanks.  I appreciate it.

 I have it.  It's a really nice model.  I used in my "1947 V-1 . . . "  here is a close up.  I have ordered a second one which I plan to paint in the civilian post-war R&D colors used at White Sands and include in my rocket train . . . 

When my three boys were young we built and flew a lot of Estes rockets.  I built the Mercury Redstone and still have the Atlas in a box in my basement.  They were a lot of fun.

.....

Dennis

what are you going to use to tie the rocket down,or will it just sit in the cradle.

Well, so far they sort of clip into place although you can't see that in the photos - the supports have a bit of tension to hold them.  However, I an thinking so strapping would look appropriate.  The whole thing is really fantasy - they never would have shipped them by rail with the satellites and capsules attached etc., but I figure just go with what looks fun.  

I'm on to the next one, and decided to violate my self-imposed rule of doing them in order because I want something big for once, so I am doing Titan-Gemini.

How seridipidous is this?  The Revel 1:48 Gemini kit fits right atop a 2.5 inch PVC pipe - it slips on a firm holds with a lip of about .03 inches.  I had intended to wrap the pipe with a sheet of .025 inch white styrene (using contact cement) for a better outer surface.   Titan-Gemini will be straightforward, and big - requiring two large cars, one for each stage, for transport.