GAF

Bakster>  Wow!  That looks great!  Can't wait to see it with the X-1.

Thanks sir.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Bakster>  Wow!  That looks great!  Can't wait to see it with the X-1.

Mach71> In case you haven't found something, here's some plans for the Mercury Capsule in for paper models.  These might be good projects if anyone wants to build something in an unavailable scale.

This is actually 1/24th scale.  There are also plans for other items.

http://www.spacecraftreplicas.com/paper

Same model, I think but with instructions:

http://jleslie48.com/tonmercury/

Hope these might be useful for the sensor windows.

Gary

Today in Space History:

You're on your way, Jose!

1961 May 5 - . 14:34 GMT - . Launch Site: Cape Canaveral. Launch Complex: Cape Canaveral LC5. LV Family: Redstone. Launch Vehicle: Redstone MRLV.

• Mercury MR-3 - . Call Sign: Freedom 7. Crew: Shepard. Backup Crew: Grissom. Nation: USA. Related Persons: Grissom, Shepard. Agency: NASA. Class: Manned. Type: Manned spacecraft. Flight: Mercury MR-3. Spacecraft: Mercury. Duration: 0.0107 days. Apogee: 187 km (116 mi).

  Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., made the first United States manned space flight in a Mercury spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral atop the Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR-3) vehicle. "Freedom 7" completed the suborbital, ballistic flight without incident in this historical first mission of NASA's Project Mercury. Alan Shepard first American in space, less than a month after Gagarin and only on a 15 minute suborbital flight. Only manned flight with original Mercury capsule design (tiny round porthole and periscope a la Vostok). If NASA had not listened to Von Braun, Shepard would have flown on the MR-BD flight of 24 March, beating Gagarin by three weeks and becoming the first man in space (though not in orbit). Shepard's capsule reached an altitude of 115.696 miles, range of 302 miles,and speed of 5,100 miles per hour. He demonstrated control of a vehicle during weightlessness and high G stresses. Recovery operations were perfect; there was no damage to the spacecraft; and Astronaut Shepard was in excellent condition.

Work on the base continues. Trying this, trying that--still working it out. The berm will be painted next.

Great idea Gary to find  paper kit! Thanks.

I used to have a set of French curves, along with my sliderule! We are dating ourselves here.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with your rockets!

Lewbud>  Good luck with the decals!  I'm sure you'll get something together, or find the old ones.

Mach71>  That's too bad!  I understand about arcs and decals.  I wish I had a set of "French Curves".  Older draftsmen will know what those are.

Meanwhile, I wonder if there is a paper model of the Mercury capsule that could be scaled up in order to get a plan of that area that could be traced?  I'll check around.

Update:  Still not much to report.  I've cut the Redstone booster for the lower portion, and have been filling and sanding on the bodies.  I'll post some pics when there's really something interesting to show.

Gary

Today in Space History:

1970 May 4 - . LV Family: Shuttle. Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle.

• DC-3 drop tests - . Nation: USA. NASA conducted drop tests of a 1/10 scale model of Faget's 'DC-3' straight-wing shuttle design. The model was 4 m long, weighed 270 kg, and was dropped from 3,700 m altitude. Recovery was by parachute.

1971 May 4 - .

• Soyuz 11 EVA pushed. - . Nation: Russia. Related Persons: Mishin, Rukavishnikov, Shatalov, Yeliseyev. Program: Salyut. Flight: Soyuz 10, Soyuz 11. Spacecraft: Salyut 1, Soyuz 7KT-OK.

  At 10:00 the Soyuz 10 crew has the traditional post-flight meeting with the Central Committee, followed by speeches at 15:00 before the workers and engineers at TsKBEM. The truth about the flight is not revealed. Mishin is still pushing for an EVA on Soyuz 11; Kamanin tells him the idea is absurd. Kamanin fumes that Mishin still hasn't reliable solved the problem of automated space docking, on which he began work in 1962.

2003 May 4 - .

• Landing of Soyuz TMA-1 - . Return Crew: Bowersox, Budarin, Pettit. Nation: Russia. Related Persons: Bowersox, Budarin, Pettit. Program: ISS. Flight: STS-113 ISS EO-6.

  The loss of the shuttle Columbia on the STS-107 mission grounded the shuttle fleet and meant that the Soyuz TMA-1 attached to the ISS would be used in its lifeboat role for the first time. Soyuz TMA-2 carried the EO-7 skeleton crew to the ISS with the mission of keeping the station in operation until shuttle flights could resume. This allowed the EO-6 crew, after their extended stay aboard the ISS, to finally return home. They readied the TMA-1 for landing and then undocked from the ISS at 22:40 GMT on 2 May. This marked the first return of American astronauts in a Soyuz capsule (though several had ridden Soyuz capsules to the Mir station). During the re-entry, the first for the Soyuz TMA-1 model, the guidance failed and the capsule reverted to a rolling ballistic re-entry. This subjected the crew to over 8 G's, as opposed to under 3 G's for a normal Soyuz lifting re-entry. It also resulted in a landing 460 km short of the target. Soyuz TMA-1 landed at 2:07 GMT, but there was a delay of over two hours before recovery forces arrived at the capsule.

Thanks Lewbud, That makes sense, Enterprise was the 1st shuttle. If I remember The Revell Apollo kits are based on the block 1 early spacecraft and I think the Gemini was the same.

Here is Enterprise:

Here is Discovery:

It's not easy to see from the photos, but the shape of Discovery and Atlantis is slightly different from Enterprise. 

It might be the surface texture but, while shuttles are boxy, Enterprise seems more boxy to me.

Good news/ bad news on my Mercury. 

The decals came from Bare-metal, they cover perfectly, but the shape is not true. There is a slight arc to the area. I'm not really sure how to cut the arc/angles in the decal. I tried to use a true rectangle and it looks odd. 

I might just mask and paint it.

Mach71,

All of the Shuttle models are based on Enterprise. Most differences are internal so it's hard to tell the individual shuttles apart without the nameplates. Of the three 1/144 kits, the Airfix is considered to be the best orbiter, the Revell kit has the best SRB's and the Minicraft kit is somewhat better than no shuttle at all (although I've heard it makes a good beginning for Buran).  As for the decals on the Shuttle itself (name, NASA logos, thrusters, etc.) I'm either going to raid my Revell kit for the decals, or see if I can find a cheap kit at Scalefest in June. A cheap kit will provide the basis for the Shuttle-C concept that I've been longing to build. 

Gamera,

The decals I'm upset about losing are the tile decals for the underside. Cutting Edge made the best and they are unobtanium at the moment. There have been some copies availble sporadically, but at the time I didn't need them. The other decals (name plates, NASA logos, SRB loaded markings, etc) are available from RealSpace Models.  Right now I'm leaning toward STS-1 Columbia for the build.

Lewbud: Could you maybe find the font online and print some decals up yourself? Or even take another set and cut out and rearrange to the letters to 'Enterprise'? 

Gary: I'm moving on the astronaut albeit slowly. I'll sand a little, get worn out and set it aside for a day or so and then come back to him. The landing leg is horrible, two parts to cement together and it's nowhere near round. I might see if I can source a dowel rod or small pipe of the same size and just replace it. 

Lewbud, 

Isn't that kit based on the Enterprise rather than the later design?

That really stinks about losing the decals, I've seen photo's of those and they looked

amazing.

Gary, Glad to hear the CM decal fix worked!

I'm away until tomorrow so no updates here.

Lewbud>  I understand about the decals.  Hard to find something like that now except (maybe) on Ebay.  And that's going to be expensive!  That shuttle is one of the earlier ones.  Quite a nice spec-i-man! 

Bakster>  Mach71 didn't actually announce it, he just kinda hinted.  I actually suggested something like the Corvettes in the first post.  I think the M113 recovery vehicles would be good if you wanted to do armor.

Gamera>  Hope the astronaut figure isn't giving you too much trouble?

Update:  Nothing to report here.  I've been working on a couple of other projects that I need to get finished, but I've been looking at parts for the rockets that I'll need.

On another note, I decided to do something further on the Apollo model that was bothering me.  I took the CM and redid the decals.  They just didn't flatten out sufficiently, and so I lifted them up carefully with an X-Acto knife and brushed Microsol underneath.  It actually worked!  I didn't smear the ink as I feared I would, and it did help smooth them out.  So I'm happy. 

Gary

PS> Haven't ordered the Vostok yet.  I plan to get the three I'm working on put together and progressed before I tackle a 4th one.  Not going to tackle something else while I've got other things I need to finish up.

Great work guys!!! 

Lewbud: Welcome, very cool looking Shuttle! 

Mach71: Great idea there on thinking outside the box. And the engine looks super. 

GAF

Bakster>  Didn't you know that Mach71 is building a Corvette to be launched on Scottrc's Saturn V?  Elon Musk is going to be outdone!

Ha! No! I missed that memo. I saw a car engine on a Space build and thought, ok--Mach is up to something here. Afterall--he DID put red lipstick on Gordo Cooper. 

Great to see more builds being added here. Very cool.

Here is picture of my kit box in all it's 1978 first issue glory. It's just a little inaccurate, but inspiring.

Gary,

The problem isn't the resin, I can order that any day of the week. The bad part is the decals. I had a set of Cutting Edge's tile decals, Cutting Edge's 1/72 X-1 (in all it's variations), the Cutting Edge Shuttle mask set, New Ware's 1/48 Mercury and Gemini set (which included ASTP decals for Ogonyek's 1/30 Soyuz, which I paid the grand sum of 20.00 bucks for in a local militaria shop many years ago), and a New Ware pe and decal set for the Monogram 1/32 CSM. The decals are now unobtanium as Cutting Edge has been oob for a loooooong time and New Ware has discontinued those decals and the set that replaced them.  They are in my stash somewhere, I just have to find them.

Steve> Hey!  Thanks.  I've already set it up on a table in the living room.  It does look nice. 

Mach71>  Good luck with the decals!  There's always home-printing, though there's problems with that.  If you need help, let me know.

Bakster>  Didn't you know that Mach71 is building a Corvette to be launched on Scottrc's Saturn V?  Elon Musk is going to be outdone!  

Project Report:

Thought I would go ahead and post images of the next small project I'm doing for the GB.  This will be part of restoring three of the rockets from the AMT Man In Space set.  I only have one Mercury capsule, so I'm going to convert the Redstone/Mercury booster into a ballistic missle Redstone.  This will involve shortening the booster (by about 1/2" to 5/8").  The original Redstone booster for the Mercury capsule was lengthened by about 6 feet to contain fuel tanks and guidance system components.

This is what they looked like originally:

I've removed the old paint and separated the parts for sanding, clean-up and reassembly.  I have a wooden base I'll fix up to mount them on.

Once again I need to find new engines for the Titan.  Time for some more plastic mechanical pencils. 

Mission Director (GAF)

Today In Space History:

Happy Birthday Scott Carpenter!

1925 May 1 - .

• Birth of Malcolm Scott Carpenter - . Nation: USA. Related Persons: Carpenter. American test pilot astronaut 1959-1967. 1 spaceflight, 4.9 hours in space. Flew to orbit on Mercury 7 (1962). Left NASA under a cloud after running out of propellant on his mission and splashing down 'way down range..

1971 May 1 - . LV Family: Shuttle. Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle.

• NASA budget constraints - . Nation: USA.

  Nixon's Office of Management of the Budget (OMB) tells NASA to expect no budget increases in the next five years (e.g. $ 3.2 billion per year, meaning no more than $1 billion per year could be spent on the shuttle). Since the peak funding to develop a two-stage-to-orbit shuttle as defined in Phase B studies would be $2 billion, this meant that development of a fully reusable shuttle would not be possible.

1974 May 1 - . Launch Vehicle: N1.

• N1 cancellation imminent - . Nation: Russia. Related Persons: Keldysh, Mishin, Ustinov. Program: Lunar L3. Spacecraft: L3M-1972, LK, Mars 5NM, MKBS, Soyuz 7K-LOK.

  Ustinov achieved a leadership consensus to kill the N1 by the beginning of May 1974. He achieved the agreement of the other Ministers on the Military-Industrial Commission, and finally Keldysh. Projects that were ongoing that were linked with the N1 included: the lunar base, MKBS space station, Mars robotic soil return spacecraft and manned expedition, a space radio telescope with a 100 m antenna, and multiple channel communications satellites. All of these died with the cancellation. If 8L had been successful, then after 1 or 2 further test launches, the N1-L3M could begin flying. That meant that the Soviet Union was within 3 to 4 years of establishing long-term lunar expeditions and a moon base. The Americans would have been leapfrogged. Instead, the leadership decided to develop a completely new heavy-lift launch vehicle, which never became operational before the Soviet Union collapsed.

1979 May 1 - . LV Family: Shuttle. Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle.

• First shuttle roll-out - . Nation: USA. Non-flight shuttle Enterprise, mated to External Tank number 2, and two inert solid rocket motors, is rolled out to LC39A for facility checks..

1988 May 1 - .

• Death of Robert A Heinlein - . Nation: USA. Related Persons: Heinlein. Leading American writer of technical science fiction, inspired many engineers that would later make space travel a reality. Major corporations, the military, and nuclear power were key aspects of the colonization of space in his stories..

Thanks for the info lewbud! I couldn't find any decals so if you remember where they are from that would help.

Well, I guess I should have read this thread closer, Mach. I didn’t realize what you are building and why. Sorry about that. Sigh. 

Lewbud> That too bad about the missing parts.  I can sympathise as I had a bunch of missing parts for my own build.  They'll probably turn up right after you order new ones!  That's how it seems to work.

Well, if nothing else, you might do the NASA Mars-1 Humvee...

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?/topic/273412-mars-1-moon-1-humvee-rovers/

Look forward to seeing your shuttle!

Gary

Mach71,

I wouldn't sweat the spark plug wiring or the battery as neither would be seen. The wires were covered by chrome plated metal shields to protect the radio from electrical interference caused by the ignition system. Not necessary on a metal bodied car, but necessary on the plastic fantastic.  As for the battery, it was located in the package well behind the driver's seat and wouldn't be seen. You'll also have to source the proper insignia as each of them had their rank badge on the front fenders, i.e. Gordo had his CMP badge on his car to tell them apart. I recall someone issuing a decal sheet with the badges on them, but I don't remember who exactly.  Let me rattle some electrons and I'll get back to you. I think I''ve got an article on the Astro's Vettes somewhere, let me check the stacks.

To whoever asked if my kit was a Smithsonian Edition or red box, the answer is neither. My kit has markings for one orbiter and that is Enterprise (not that they are usable by any stretch of the imagination). The good news is I found my SIM book on the shuttle.  The bad news is that I have no idea where my Cutting Edge tile decal set and Shuttle Mask set are , nor my RealspaceModels resin engines and SILTS pod.  The last place I remember seeing them was in the Airfix kit (I have the Revell Shuttle and SCA, combo, but they weren't there). I did find some 1/72 resin Humvee wheels for my Dragon Humvee kits in the Airfix box, so who knows where they are.  Looks like Glenn at RealspaceModels will be getting some of my money soon. Not sure which orbiter I'll be doing.

Hey Lew--

I laugh at your tag line every time I see it. Why? Because it's true.

"Buddy- Those who say there are no stupid questions have never worked in customer service."

mach71

Thanks, the decals should do the trick.

 

I started the engine today.

 

 

I'm waiting on the aftermarket distributor with wires from Mega hobby. They were shipped today.

I'm going to have to stop by the Auto forum and ask some advise. I'm guessing that i just use my pin vice and drill small holes in the heads for the wires.

Also, the kit does not come with a battery so I'll make one. I have scale battery wires coming also.

 

Thanks, the decals should do the trick.

I started the engine today.

I'm waiting on the aftermarket distributor with wires from Mega hobby. They were shipped today.

I'm going to have to stop by the Auto forum and ask some advise. I'm guessing that i just use my pin vice and drill small holes in the heads for the wires.

Also, the kit does not come with a battery so I'll make one. I have scale battery wires coming also.

lewbud

I could've sworn I signed up for this build. I've got to about page 15 at work and there is some fantastic work being done here. Put me down for Airfix's 1/144 Shuttle.

 

Very nice job Gary, it'll make a great display.

Mach, look sweet, I wouldn't know about the windows unless you told me. I hope the decals work.

Lewbud>  Welcome aboard!  I'll get you down on the front page duty roster ASAP. 

You've got a rare kit there.  What version of the Airfix Shuttle is it?  The Smithsonian kit or the regular Airfix red box?

Gary

I could've sworn I signed up for this build. I've got to about page 15 at work and there is some fantastic work being done here. Put me down for Airfix's 1/144 Shuttle.

Yah, most of the equipment available is US. I think there are only a few injection molded Soviet subjects.

The MPC Vostok is a good kit.

I was doing some looking today, and I found aftermarket pre-wired distributors! and a bunch of other stuff. Cool.

Mach71>  LOL!  You know, the Apollo 12 anniversary and golden kind of gave it away.    Still, I think it's great!  I must admit that I thought that one of the auto guys might try their hand at one.  The selection is pretty varied as most of the astronauts got Corvettes of various vintages.  I was just looking at Gordo's '63 Corvette.  Nice!  It will be an interesting project.

Meanwhile, I was thinking that we don't have anything besides American subjects in the build (except for your V2).  I was thinking of ordering one of the MPC Vostok models.  They're pretty cheap, and would go right along with the small Redstone, Mercury/Atlas and Titan/Gemini I was planning to do.

Gary

Yup, I picked up a Revell 1969 'vette kit and some gold paint. 

I started painting the engine parts the other day. I havent built a car kit in decades, should be fun.

I think the only mod I'll do is trying to add the sparkplug wires. I'll have to find some really fine wire.

Mach71> Yeah, the white decal paper should work fine!  I've got strips of the stuff lying around after the build from applying it as seams on the SLA.  I figure I'll be using that and some black printed decal paper on my upcoming small projects.

As for guessing, I'm not quite sure.  Are you modeling a golden bust of Gordo Cooper?

Or maybe one of those gold Corvettes...

Gary