I used to paint models of rockets

Steverino

Steverino

black sheep
So it was cool to paint on a real one.
This is the final S1C Stage built, it was to have been Apollo 19. It had been on display at the New Orleans Michoud Facility since the late '70s until it was moved to (Infinity I-10 at the LA/MS line) a couple of years ago. It's been in need of a cleaning and paint job, and PPG has been doing the work for the past few weeks.

This weekend a few volunteers showed up to put the finishing touches on the carriers underneath the First Stage. Fred Haise (Apollo 13) was there so I took pic with him (again lol). He is largely responsible for getting Infinity up and running. Fred was to be the commander of A19. He was also the first pilot to dead-stick the landing of the first Space Shuttle prototype, dropped from a 747 at 30,000 feet at Edwards. He's 86.


 
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I took this standing directly under the nozzles, but flipped the image. Looks cooler this way!
 
That last image is AMAZING!

I was just discussing the other day how much of an impact that the Apollo astronauts and then the Enterprise Orbiter and subsequent Shuttle program had on my entire childhood. I was still in diapers when they walked on the moon, but I watched many other liftoffs and remember the Apollo-Soyuz link up and Skylab. The first big shuttle disaster happened when I was a freshman in college and everyone was glued to their TV's because at the time it really felt like Space Travel was on the verge of becoming an everyday thing like flying in an airplane. Since the last shuttle explosion, it really feels like space no longer captures the world's imagination like it once did. It's all about small rockets and satellites now.... while we continue to destroy our home that is becoming less and less welcoming to our presence.
 
I once took a photo of myself on a skateboard in one of the F-1 cones of JSC's Saturn V using a tripod and the camera's timer. It was near sunset and a little dark, but I later destroyed the photo and negative because I was paranoid (while awaiting my security clearance investigation) that it would fall into the wrong hands and get me fired!
 
baimun said:
That last image is AMAZING!

I was just discussing the other day how much of an impact that the Apollo astronauts and then the Enterprise Orbiter and subsequent Shuttle program had on my entire childhood. I was still in diapers when they walked on the moon, but I watched many other liftoffs and remember the Apollo-Soyuz link up and Skylab. The first big shuttle disaster happened when I was a freshman in college and everyone was glued to their TV's because at the time it really felt like Space Travel was on the verge of becoming an everyday thing like flying in an airplane. Since the last shuttle explosion, it really feels like space no longer captures the world's imagination like it once did. It's all about small rockets and satellites now.... while we continue to destroy our home that is becoming less and less welcoming to our presence.
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Fred told me that since he piloted the Enterprise he's apparently a hero to Trekkies as well. He gets a kick out of that.

It's all about funding. I get aggravated when people complain about the money being spent on the space program. It's roughly 20B, and yes that's lot of money. But it's still <1% of the entire budget.

Jim Bridenstine, the new NASA Administrator, is doing a much better job at PR than the last few and it's sorely needed. There's a lot of info out there on SLS, and that's good too. In this age, it's difficult to get the entire public into it like it was in the '60s.

The SLS Core Stage has been the holdup in this first EM-1 mission. EM-1 will be unmanned, but that's not in stone. The Core Stage is in final assembly here in New Orleans, and once it's finished it will be brought here to Stennis for firing of all four RS25s. I can't wait, but it's going to be a nail-biter. We know the engines are proven, but this will be the first time a cluster-fire of a giant first stage like this has been done since Apollo. We're shooting for June 2020.
 
While we're at it, here is Pathfinder, a scale model of the Core Stage in front of the B Test Stand here at SSC. This pic is about a month old. It's now been vertically installed.
Pathfinder is the identical size and weight of the Core Stage and will allow techs and engineers to fit the model into place to sure everything fits when the CS gets here around December.
59918155_2191736690942136_7986288470534389760_o.jpg
 
Steverino said:
While we're at it, here is Pathfinder, a scale model of the Core Stage in front of the B Test Stand here at SSC. This pic is about a month old. It's now been vertically installed.
Pathfinder is the identical size and weight of the Core Stage and will allow techs and engineers to fit the model into place to sure everything fits when the CS gets here around December.
59918155_2191736690942136_7986288470534389760_o.jpg
Click to expand...
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Super cool!!!

What a great experience.

Serious question though: wouldn't the paint for logos and the flag etc interrupt the laminar flow over the rocket's surface? Being such a minutely exacting science, I just wonder what if any effect on dynamics that could have.

Or...

Does the pressure cone surrounding the rocket body during high velocity atmospheric flight make it a moot issue by creating a relative vacuum around the rocket body?
 
OGG said:
Super cool!!!

What a great experience.

Serious question though: wouldn't the paint for logos and the flag etc interrupt the laminar flow over the rocket's surface? Being such a minutely exacting science, I just wonder what if any effect on dynamics that could have.

Or...

Does the pressure cone surrounding the rocket body during high velocity atmospheric flight make it a moot issue by creating a relative vacuum around the rocket body?
Click to expand...

First, they are painting an Apollo era booster, not a current rocket.

Second, no. We paint fairings all the time.

C5OiMEjUEAAqNHK.jpg


Third, no. Rockets are launched using massive amounts of horsepower to get through our thick atmosphere. A little turbulence from a rough paint edge is like a gnats fart in a hurricane.
 
335 is correct, in fact the entire SLS Core Stage will be covered in SOFI, Spray On Foam Insulation. Same stuff the Shuttle ET was covered with.
 
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335clone said:
First, they are painting an Apollo era booster, not a current rocket.

Second, no. We paint fairings all the time.

View attachment 48587

Third, no. Rockets are launched using massive amounts of horsepower to get through our thick atmosphere. A little turbulence from a rough paint edge is like a gnats fart in a hurricane.
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Understood.

A gnat fart by itself may not present a problem, but enough of them could potentially induce unpredictability in the drag coefficient if the surface in question has direct airflow over it. Efficiency is everything. I was fairly certain that I'd answered my own question when I mentioned shockwave cone, just my inner aerodynamic nerd showing.

The biggest thing that set the venerable P-51 Mustang apart from virtually everything else in the sky at the time, and what led to massive leaps in aerospace design, was eliminating gnat farts in the form of exposed rivets from the aircraft surface... laminar flow. That is also one of the big reasons why it could escort bombers all the way to their targets and back. The increased airflow efficiency enabled it to carry all that added fuel, drop the tanks, tangle with German fighters with a hugely lopsided kill ratio, and then return home. So to say that such a thing is unimportant is incorrect.

It's only unimportant if it's not an issue due to there being no airflow to effect.
 
Cool stuff

OGG said:
Understood.

A gnat fart by itself may not present a problem, but enough of them could potentially induce unpredictability in the drag coefficient if the surface in question has direct airflow over it. Efficiency is everything. I was fairly certain that I'd answered my own question when I mentioned shockwave cone, just my inner aerodynamic nerd showing.

The biggest thing that set the venerable P-51 Mustang apart from virtually everything else in the sky at the time, and what led to massive leaps in aerospace design, was eliminating gnat farts in the form of exposed rivets from the aircraft surface... laminar flow. That is also one of the big reasons why it could escort bombers all the way to their targets and back. The increased airflow efficiency enabled it to carry all that added fuel, drop the tanks, tangle with German fighters with a hugely lopsided kill ratio, and then return home. So to say that such a thing is unimportant is incorrect.

It's only unimportant if it's not an issue due to there being no airflow to effect.
Click to expand...

Actually the issues of rivets was well known and had actually been dealt with since the Mosquito was made of wood it had no rivets and was why it was faster than a Spitfire even though it was a bomber. However with rockets they really don't have worry about air for that long so the gnat fart might be a good analogy. The Falcon 9 rockets hit MaxQ about a minute into flight.
 
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