I wonder does anyone consider reconstruction of original Mercury-Redstone rocket

[Pawelk198604]

look what i  found i looked for original English dubbing but cannot find 

 

It's remind me SpaceCamp (1986) movie also from Disney

  

[YNM]

I think there are displays which are actual certified flying samples. Perhaps some polish and it'll be doable.

 

Or just ask BO.

[Nibb31]

Why would anyone want to refly a Mercury capsule? The movie looks they are are using a Redstone with small SRBs.

Refurbishing a 1960's capsule would cost more than designing a new one from scratch. Also, Mercury had some serious flaws.

[ModZero]

Historical interest? The motivations of hobbyists with too much money don't have to make sense, I mean, just look at Hyperloop. Also, I just spent a few hours playing Car Mechanic Simulator 2018, and my friends just bought a Fiat Panda from, as far as I can tell, 1812. I can definitely see the appeal of trying to rebuild a historical capsule, even if I think people pursuing it aren't taxed highly enough.

It couldn't be an exact replica - I doubt it would be even vaguely legal to fly it in 2017 - but matching it visually?

 

Edited November 6, 2017 by ModZero

[wumpus]

Short of the unmodified Soyuz 1.0 (the one that killed Vladimir Komarov, later ones are fine), I can't think of another spacecraft I don't want to fly.

Those closest to the program gave Alan Shepard a 50/50 chance of survival.  They had to get somebody else to push the button because the guy expected to do it refused, assuming it would kill Shepard.  Don't forget one Mercury capsule hatch blew early and sank the capsule, nearly taking Gus Grissom with it.

You don't so much ride in a Mercury capsule as wear it.  Those things are *small*.  While I've seen  the real deal in the Smithsonian, Scott Manley mentions getting into a replica (presumably a west coast museum) and commenting on how small they are.  Don't even think of wearing one if you are more than 180cm (a limit for US astronauts through the Apollo Program).

There are a lot of flight-qualified spacecraft on display.  I'd certainly pick just about any another (a Saturn V would be my favorite.  Presumably you could really launch a shuttle if you had to (most of the needed employees are still employed on SLS) or ideally the current Soyuz if it is sufficiently upgraded to be considered a "different" spacecraft).

[Nibb31]

16 hours ago, wumpus said:

There are a lot of flight-qualified spacecraft on display.  I'd certainly pick just about any another (a Saturn V would be my favorite.  Presumably you could really launch a shuttle if you had to (most of the needed employees are still employed on SLS) or ideally the current Soyuz if it is sufficiently upgraded to be considered a "different" spacecraft).

Not really. Most spacecraft that are in museums have been modified beyond repair, with sections cut out, holes drilled in, vital parts removed, and general degradation. None of the Apollo hardware or Shuttle Orbiters are anywhere near flight worthy, and restoring them to flight condition would be hugely expensive.

The Russians have been struggling to restore the Nauka lab module to flight condition for 10 years, and it only dates back to the late 1990's. The project is plagued with contamination, leaks, and lack of spare parts.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Nibb31

[ModZero]

I'm pretty sure flying actual museum exhibits would raise objections beyond the technical and financial ;-)

[wumpus]

5 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Not really. Most spacecraft that are in museums have been modified beyond repair, with sections cut out, holes drilled in, vital parts removed, and general degradation. None of the Apollo hardware or Shuttle Orbiters are anywhere near flight worthy, and restoring them to flight condition would be hugely expensive.

The Russians have been struggling to restore the Nauka lab module to flight condition for 10 years, and it only dates back to the late 1990's. The project is plagued with contamination, leaks, and lack of spare parts.

The point with the shuttles is  that they weren't anywhere near flight ready when they landed and that most of the employees who got them back to flight ready status are likely available to NASA.  I remember that by roughly 1980 it would make more sense to build a new moon rocket than to attempt to launch the remaining Saturn V, probably due to degradation (even if it wasn't outside it wouldn't be ready), but also due to "not quite complete" documentation (a certain manufacturer of training RADAR consoles for the Navy had an undocumented procedure in software that was basically "Steve makes it work".  Over one holiday, Steve died in his sleep).  There weren't enough qualified personnel to do the countdown (presumably training included launching Gemini and Saturn 1s).

Mercury and Gemini would all be far worse, and I'm guessing that X-15 would be the easiest.  With nearly 200 launches, I'm guessing it needed the smallest army to refurbish it between flights and the smallest army to launch it.  Less personnel means less cost.  Sure, shuttle had a similar number of launches, but had the high profile, high congressional support, and certainly much more personnel to refurbish and launch.

[NSEP]

Why? Other than recreation, i don't see any practical use in reviving this old machine, rather than just making a brand new one, im pretty sure we can make a Mercury-Redstone like rocket and capsule for alot less money and lower in mass than the real deal.

On 06/11/2017 at 1:34 PM, ModZero said:

Historical interest? The motivations of hobbyists with too much money don't have to make sense, I mean, just look at Hyperloop. 

Oh that, i almost forgot.

[wumpus]

12 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Why? Other than recreation, i don't see any practical use in reviving this old machine, rather than just making a brand new one, im pretty sure we can make a Mercury-Redstone like rocket and capsule for alot less money and lower in mass than the real deal.

I guess it would all depend how fanatical you are about using "old new stock" vs. a printed replica.  NASA famously printed out a somewhat simplified copy of an F1 engine and fired it up, presumably because firing a real F1 would be vastly to expensive and to dangerous to its historical value.  Which brings the point of firing a single use historical artifact: it would seem a crime against the historical artifact unless you were using a shuttle, X-15, or similar reusable rocket.

[Nibb31]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

The point with the shuttles is  that they weren't anywhere near flight ready when they landed and that most of the employees who got them back to flight ready status are likely available to NASA.  I remember that by roughly 1980 it would make more sense to build a new moon rocket than to attempt to launch the remaining Saturn V, probably due to degradation (even if it wasn't outside it wouldn't be ready), but also due to "not quite complete" documentation (a certain manufacturer of training RADAR consoles for the Navy had an undocumented procedure in software that was basically "Steve makes it work".  Over one holiday, Steve died in his sleep).  There weren't enough qualified personnel to do the countdown (presumably training included launching Gemini and Saturn 1s).

Mercury and Gemini would all be far worse, and I'm guessing that X-15 would be the easiest.  With nearly 200 launches, I'm guessing it needed the smallest army to refurbish it between flights and the smallest army to launch it.  Less personnel means less cost.  Sure, shuttle had a similar number of launches, but had the high profile, high congressional support, and certainly much more personnel to refurbish and launch.

The Shuttle Orbiters have been butchered beyond repair. You can forget them ever flying again. Critical systems have been removed, engines are being irreversibly modified for SLS and Orion, holes have been drilled, wings have been cut off and bolted back on, etc...

It's not just about people. It's also about materials and part supply lines. For example, the issue with the Russian Nauka MLM is that the entire fuel system, including the 6 side-mounted bladder tanks, were contaminated with metal shavings and corrosion. Nobody can make these tanks any more because the tooling is gone, the parts to make the valves and the material to make the bladders are no longer available. The idea of fitting other tanks that they had available didn't work. So the latest plan is to cut open each tank to clean it out, and weld them back together. The plan to deal with the corrosion is to file down the corroded metal and then to check that the tank walls are still thick enough to hold the pressure. If it isn't, the tanks are scrap and the last option is to either scrap Nauka, or to spend millions of rubles on designing and certifying new tanks, with tooling and procedures, for a total run of 6 units.

The same is true for all of these old designs. If a part is no longer available, you need to redesign it again, which includes new CAD/CAM drawings, new materials with different properties, new manufacturing procedures, unit testing and integration testing. In many cases, you wouldn't simply replicate the design as it was, but you would probably want to improve it and the way it interfaces with the parts around it, and redesign those at the same time. The result is that in the end, you would basically end up with a different vehicle.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Nibb31

[DerekL1963]

2 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

The same is true for all of these old designs. If a part is no longer available, you need to redesign it again, which includes new CAD/CAM drawings, new materials with different properties, new manufacturing procedures, unit testing and integration testing.

Precisely.  A friend of my who works at the nearby naval shipyard was a part of a recently completed project to replace a pair of motor generators (originally designed in the 1970's) on each Ohio class SSBN/SSGN with a pair of new design switchable static inverters...   because it was cheaper to replace them entirely than to restart and requalify the production lines needed to replenish the spares pool.

If for some insane reason I was tasked with re establishing MR or MA capability...  I'd start with a clean sheet.  Anything less is madness. 

[wumpus]

7 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

The Shuttle Orbiters have been butchered beyond repair. You can forget them ever flying again. Critical systems have been removed, engines are being irreversibly modified for SLS and Orion, holes have been drilled, wings have been cut off and bolted back on, etc...

It's not just about people. It's also about materials and part supply lines.

That was the main point about the Shuttle.  Most of the supply lines still exist (although if you can only get 5 segement [SLS] SRBs instead of 4 segment [STS] SRBs thanks to tooling changes you will have a problem (see also SSME issues).  Mercury Redstone has every link in the chain failing while Shuttle merely has "too many broken chains".

Also don't underestimate just how expensive it is to "build new".  SLS is "merely" a lightly modified use of shuttle parts and still is a bottomless hole for funding.  Trying to build a new shuttle from scratch would be wildly too expensive.

One elephant in the room that hasn't been noted is that since rockets are designed with almost no "fudge factors", *all* parts must be manufactured to the same tolerances as originally used.  This can be an issue if parts not only aren't available, but the materials for said parts have been banned (asbestos in heat shields is one.  I'm surprised hyrdazine is still legal.  If you think modern OSHA would object to build a Mercury or Apollo not to mention the hellish conditions where slaves built V2s.

I'd be fairly surprised if the Smithsonian allowed their shuttle to be that badly manged.  While I don't expect the engines to be there, they tend to be careful about maintaining the integrity of their artifacts.

- they have one of the [low single digit] zeros (actual zeros, not later planes called that by US sailors and Marines), basically it a bunch of twisted metal that is beyond repair.
- the fabric on the Wright Flyer happens to be the same pattern from the same factory near Dayton Ohio.  They were shocked to find it actually available 100 years later when the material desperately needed to be replaced.

Edited November 8, 2017 by wumpus
Shift-return for single space, Ctrl-return posts. This always gets me...

[Ultimate Steve]

On 11/7/2017 at 9:12 AM, wumpus said:

a certain manufacturer of training RADAR consoles for the Navy had an undocumented procedure in software that was basically "Steve makes it work".

Reminds me of my own code... I wake up and I'm like "How does this work again?"

 

If I had half a million bucks I could probably design and build a suborbital manned rocket myself (if done efficiently). The hastle of recreating Mercury would probably cost much more.

 

[wumpus]

On 11/8/2017 at 10:29 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

Reminds me of my own code... I wake up and I'm like "How does this work again?"

If I had half a million bucks I could probably design and build a suborbital manned rocket myself (if done efficiently). The hastle of recreating Mercury would probably cost much more.

It cost Burt Rutan [charged Paul Allan] $25 million to do it, although his had to turn around and quickly do it again.
One forum user has a $60k budget to loft 1kg 500m/s (working in San Jose might be hard on the cost budget but helpful for time).
Space is hard.  And expensive.  John Carmack put something like $5 million into Armadillo Aerospace (suborbital) and got some exploded rockets out of it.

"Done efficiently" presumably involves lighting the candle without telling the FAA.  I'd bet you could sink $500k alone in getting permissions (this doesn't appear to be a problem for the $60k project, although that is the reason for the 500m/s limit (they can't go higher)).  And I'd love to hear the tale of somebody trying to export a rocket "more powerful than an early ICBM" to a less regulated country (manufacture in said country is more reasonable, but importing some custom parts might have the same issues.  Note that the 500m/s project does not include guidance systems for that exact reason.

Edited November 16, 2017 by wumpus
fixed who did and who paid.

[Nibb31]

16 hours ago, wumpus said:

It cost Burt Rutan $25 million to do it, although his had to turn around and quickly do it again.

SpaceShipOne was closer to X-15 than Mercury. It barely reached 100km, with a top speed of Mach 3, and vehicle that was not designed for actual spaceflight or orbital reentry.

The Mercury-Redstone flights reached twice that altitude, flying at Mach 8. They weren't really designed as suborbital stunts, but more like test flights for the orbital Mercury spacecraft.

 

Edited November 9, 2017 by Nibb31

[Ultimate Steve]

3 hours ago, wumpus said:

It cost Burt Rutan $25 million to do it, although his had to turn around and quickly do it again.
One forum user has a $60k budget to loft 1kg 500m/s (working in San Jose might be hard on the cost budget but helpful for time).
Space is hard.  And expensive.  John Carmack put something like $5 million into Armadillo Aerospace (suborbital) and got some exploded rockets out of it.

"Done efficiently" presumably involves lighting the candle without telling the FAA.  I'd bet you could sink $500k alone in getting permissions (this doesn't appear to be a problem for the $60k project, although that is the reason for the 500m/s limit (they can't go higher)).  And I'd love to hear the tale of somebody trying to export a rocket "more powerful than an early ICBM" to a less regulated country (manufacture in said country is more reasonable, but importing some custom parts might have the same issues.  Note that the 500m/s project does not include guidance systems for that exact reason.

I actually began the initial design today. Just a design, I'm never ever going to build it. I'm fairly confident I can get the dry mass of the entire rocket down to <2t. My current design is about 6m tall but smaller is possible (only 2m of that is the propellant tanks - 0.5m LES skirt, 1m cabin, 1m engine compartment, 0.5m RCS/guidance section, 1m nose cone with parachutes) with a 1m diameter.

Honestly the hardest thing would probably be the engine. Everything else is probably manageable.

Not that I'd actually be able to do it, though. If it was legal without 500k of permits, believe me, I'd try...