Mercury boilerplates

[MaxwellsDemon]

I've been trying to see if I can compile a list of all individual flown spacecraft, both flight-rated and test articles.   (In doing so, I've noticed some discrepancies among sources... working on those.)   No real reason to do so, other than my own curiosity.

I have observed that Apollo boilerplates were individually numbered/identified-- for instance, the Apollo A-002 mission launched on 8 Dec 1964, the Max Q abort test, used boilerplate capsule 23 (BP-23).

I haven't (yet) found that Mercury boilerplates were tracked in the same fashion.  One source seems to indicate that the same boilerplate was used for all the Little Joe launches (?) but that obviously wouldn't account for the one on Big Joe, or the one from MR-BD (24 Mar 1961).  Has anyone bumped into anything that identifies them individually?

(Interestingly, it appears that, although boilerplate Geminis did exist, none of them actually ever flew.)*

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* I'm only counting situations where a vehicle was lofted (or intended to be lofted) by a rocket as "flights."  There may have been some drop tests of boilerplate Geminis, but I'm not interested in those.

Edited August 2, 2017 by MaxwellsDemon
Addendum

[MaxwellsDemon]

Update...  from the website 'Field Guide to American Spacecraft' (http://www.americanspacecraft.com/pages/mercury/index.html), it appears that there were either four or five distinct 'boilerplates' flown.

• One unit was flown on Little Joe 1, Little Joe 1A, and Mercury Redstone Booster Development (MR-BD) and not recovered after the last flight.
• One unit was flown on Big Joe, and is presently in the Udvar-Hazy center of the Smithsonian.
• One unit was flown on Little Joe 6, and was destroyed (deliberately) during the test flight.
• One unit carried rhesus monkey "Sam" on Little Joe 2; this unit is in Hampton, Virginia.
• That leaves the unit that carried rhesus monkey "Miss Sam" on Little Joe 1B...  it could have been the same as the one that carried "Sam", or it might have been a different unit.  Its disposition appears to be unknown.

Still no indication that any of them were formally uniquely identified...

[Nibb31]

19 hours ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

(Interestingly, it appears that, although boilerplate Geminis did exist, none of them actually ever flew.)*

The main reason to launch a boilerplate is to test the launch abort system. Since Gemini didn't have one, it makes sense that no boilerplates where actually launched.

There were quite a couple of Gemini boilerplate capsules that were flown during the paraglider tests, but per your classification, they don't count as flights since they weren't launched on a rocket.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Nibb31

[MaxwellsDemon]

23 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

There were quite a couple of Gemini boilerplate capsules that were flown during the paraglider tests, but per your classification, they don't count as flights since they weren't launched on a rocket.

Yeah, I have to draw the line somewhere.  I didn't want to try to start tracking nonflying test articles like trainers or wooden mockups, at least not for my present purposes!

[MaxwellsDemon]

Hm.   This New Ocean appears to indicate, contra the 'Field Guide,' that the boilerplate expended on MR-BD was the one from Little Joe 1B, rather than Little Joe 1A.   Which still leaves one unaccounted for.  

[monophonic]

4 hours ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Hm.   This New Ocean appears to indicate, contra the 'Field Guide,' that the boilerplate expended on MR-BD was the one from Little Joe 1B, rather than Little Joe 1A.   Which still leaves one unaccounted for.  

Unless same unit flew both 1A and 1B (4 flights in total?)? Of course, [citation needed].

[MaxwellsDemon]

Possible.  More research is indicated.  (dives back into books)