[1.12.5] Bluedog Design Bureau - Stockalike Saturn, Apollo, and more! (v1.14.0 "металл" 30/Sep/2024)

[Pappystein]

  On 1/20/2024 at 7:36 PM, dave1904 said:

It's the earliest version I'm wondering about. I play with engine ignitor and live recreating rockets as realistic as possible in order to learn how they worked. I cannot find anything about the Thor and Vangaurd second stages. If they are pressure fed ullage would not be an issue right? If so I can just disable ullage and keep the ignition to 1? 

I'm not entirely sure how it works. If I remember correctly the shuttle used rcs before it fired its aj10s but it might have been to protect the engine. 

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Ullage is to settle the fluids in the tanks so you can actually squeeze fuel into the engine.   Prevents rough/explosive starts because of gaseous vapors between the tank exit and the fuel/oxidizer.  So you run the RCS for a moment and ignite the engine

That does mean if there is no Ullage Cold Gas exhaust then it would have to hotstage

Edited January 20, 2024 by Pappystein

[dave1904]

  On 1/20/2024 at 11:10 PM, Pappystein said:

Ullage is to settle the fluids in the tanks so you can actually squeeze fuel into the engine.   Prevents rough/explosive starts because of gaseous vapors between the tank exit and the fuel/oxidizer.  So you run the RCS for a moment and ignite the engine

That does mean if there is no Ullage Cold Gas exhaust then it would have to hotstage

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And how do you think able dealt with that? The AJ10-37 for example? Able doesnt have any ullage trusters and the engine doesnt have cold gas exhaust right? Sorry for being such a pain in the black haha

[septemberWaves]

  On 1/21/2024 at 10:33 AM, dave1904 said:

And how do you think able dealt with that? The AJ10-37 for example? Able doesnt have any ullage trusters and the engine doesnt have cold gas exhaust right? Sorry for being such a pain in the black haha

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Able does have built-in ullage thrusters. Look at the fuel tank, it has RCS thrusters for ullage in addition to the ones for attitude control.

Edit: I just double-checked this and it turned out I was thinking of Ablestar. I also double-checked the in-game part models, and the Thor-Able interstage fairing has a couple of holes in it which are presumably for hotstaging purposes. The Thor-Delta engine fairing lacks these holes, which leads me to assume that the real rocket would've had breakaway panels for hotstaging installed somewhere in the interstage section, similar to the S-IV (either that, or BDB just doesn't model the hotstaging holes for Thor-Delta).

I have not managed to find any clear source information regarding how Able was staged, so I am just going by how it is represented in BDB.

Edited January 21, 2024 by septemberWaves

[OrbitalManeuvers]

  On 1/20/2024 at 7:36 PM, dave1904 said:

I play with engine ignitor and live recreating rockets as realistic as possible in order to learn how they worked.

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This is absolutely me, too. Maybe it's a Dave thing. Anyway, I guess I'm a little pragmatic about it, in addition to wanting to learn the real life procedures as much as reasonably possible. In the two cases you cited, the Able and Vandgaurd upper stages, when using EngineIgnitor there is no choice but to hotstage both of them. Both of them have some room in the interstage which I always interpreted as being for the buildup of boom boom gas, and as long as there's no significant delay after ignition before staging, I've never had an issue. I'm right with you on the NEED for correct info, though - which I also failed to find for either. So I put my trust in Zorg's EI configs. One ignition means either ullage or hostage, and on those two there's no ullage. 

Edited January 21, 2024 by OrbitalManeuvers

[dave1904]

  On 1/21/2024 at 11:32 AM, septemberWaves said:

Able does have built-in ullage thrusters. Look at the fuel tank, it has RCS thrusters for ullage in addition to the ones for attitude control.

Edit: I just double-checked this and it turned out I was thinking of Ablestar. I also double-checked the in-game part models, and the Thor-Able interstage fairing has a couple of holes in it which are presumably for hotstaging purposes. The Thor-Delta engine fairing lacks these holes, which leads me to assume that the real rocket would've had breakaway panels for hotstaging installed somewhere in the interstage section, similar to the S-IV (either that, or BDB just doesn't model the hotstaging holes for Thor-Delta).

I have not managed to find any clear source information regarding how Able was staged, so I am just going by how it is represented in BDB.

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I have to check the model put again. I've looked everywhere. Even vangaurd because it would be based on it.

Wait. Did the original S-IV hotstage?

  On 1/21/2024 at 2:16 PM, OrbitalManeuvers said:

This is absolutely me, too. Maybe it's a Dave thing. Anyway, I guess I'm a little pragmatic about it, in addition to wanting to learn the real life procedures as much as reasonably possible. In the two cases you cited, the Able and Vandgaurd upper stages, when using EngineIgnitor there is no choice but to hotstage both of them. Both of them have some room in the interstage which I always interpreted as being for the buildup of boom boom gas, and as long as there's no significant delay after ignition before staging, I've never had an issue. I'm right with you on the NEED for correct info, though - which I also failed to find for either. So I put my trust in Zorg's EI configs. One ignition means either ullage or hostage, and on those two there's no ullage. 

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I hotstage them too using smart parts. Since I'm playing carrer with 3.5 rescale I hat to edit the smart parts mass and price however. It makes it easy however. It starts the aj10 when the 1st stage has 1% fuel and again when it has 0%. 

[OrbitalManeuvers]

  On 1/21/2024 at 2:22 PM, dave1904 said:

I hotstage them too using smart parts.

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 smartparts!

I have a fully automated Titan III somewhere that requires only the initial command to launch, and it gets to orbit with proper staging (Titans are the titans of special staging needs) all using SmartParts   This is a very fun approach.

[Pappystein]

  On 1/21/2024 at 2:22 PM, dave1904 said:

Wait. Did the original S-IV hotstage?

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Ahh was waiting for someone to ask that.   Did it Hot Stage? 

No,  But yes.

S-IV did have solid Ullage thrusters but it was always meant to stage on MECO for S-I stage so there ARE blow-out holes  (half-ish circles on S-IV-260, and on the OG S-IV-240 it was Half-ish CONIC bumps,   I posted a photo in both articles I published last week.,)

 

Oh and we are not talking about my Great Grandma Ish!

  On 1/21/2024 at 3:00 PM, OrbitalManeuvers said:

 smartparts!

*Titan III*

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Titan with SRM almost NEEDS the SmartParts mod to do effectively!  

I also use Smart Parts for Delta when separating all 9 SRMs at once... it quickly (quicker than I can do it) stages 3,3,3 to prevent collisions and re-attack of the central core.   I have had issues staging all 9 SRMs at the same instance.   Atlas has it's own semi-smart part with the Booster skirt.   Although I am tempted to use smart parts on it too....

 

[OrbitalManeuvers]

  On 1/21/2024 at 7:24 PM, Pappystein said:

Atlas has it's own semi-smart part with the Booster skirt.   Although I am tempted to use smart parts on it too....

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The thing I really like about the Atlas skirt is that since it's triggered by g-forces, it's basically like saying "when we have enough thrust to make it..." which smartparts can't do, since it doesn't have a g-force trigger part. I suppose altitude is an ok trigger, but seems like that might be more dependent on payload mass? You'd know better than I what the trigger or set of triggers was for the Atlas skirt. Maybe just straight up timing? I have the same question about the center F1 on the S1-C, too. 

[septemberWaves]

  On 1/21/2024 at 9:07 PM, OrbitalManeuvers said:

The thing I really like about the Atlas skirt is that since it's triggered by g-forces, it's basically like saying "when we have enough thrust to make it..." which smartparts can't do, since it doesn't have a g-force trigger part. I suppose altitude is an ok trigger, but seems like that might be more dependent on payload mass? You'd know better than I what the trigger or set of triggers was for the Atlas skirt. Maybe just straight up timing? I have the same question about the center F1 on the S1-C, too. 

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The way the half-stage skirts (Saturn has one too) decouple based on acceleration is useful but still quite limited. I've especially run into trouble with solid-boosted half-staged Saturns, where peak acceleration happens during the solid stage. In that circumstance, the half-stage can't auto-jettison because it has to jettison after booster burn-out (because the lower structural attachment points for the boosters are on the half-stage skirt). It also has to be configured differently depending on payload mass like you said.

Half-stage timing in general is heavily dependent on the payload and the desired orbit for that payload. You need enough extra time-to-apoapsis for the reduced thrust after jettison, which requires a significant vertical component of the vector prior to jettison, but that vertical component takes away from horizontal delta-v (which is of course the main thing you need to reach orbit). It's a matter of balancing how much delta-v you need to send your payload to the correct trajectory (either orbit or beyond) with the trajectory that the rocket is capable of acheiving. Jettisoning the half-stage early is good for delta-v but bad for thrust (meaning it's less capable of sending larger payloads to orbit); jettisoning it late is good for thrust but bad for delta-v (the thrust is therefore good for more massive payloads but delta-v margins become the limiting factor). And you typically also have to avoid jettisoning the half-stage while dynamic pressure is high, if you want to retain control of the rocket.

In general, heavier payloads are restricted by how late you can jettison the half-stage while still having enough delta-v to reach orbit, and lighter payloads are limited by how early you can jettison the half-stage while still having enough thrust.

[610yesnolovely]

  On 1/21/2024 at 3:00 PM, OrbitalManeuvers said:

 smartparts!

I have a fully automated Titan III somewhere that requires only the initial command to launch, and it gets to orbit with proper staging (Titans are the titans of special staging needs) all using SmartParts   This is a very fun approach.

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I automate all my launches using anything reasonable: typically the Scripting Module in MechJeb which is easier than kOS. Probe science and launces are two clicks "Start" on MechJeb script and then "Launch" on NASA Countdown (which automates some pre-launch sequencing via staging).

Sometimes I restart my career, and it's always fun to launch several rockets in a row and just watch it go and take pictures.

If Kerbals are present, I switch to using some automation and Kerbals 1st person in IVA - both fun alternatives.

Below is Pioneer-1 in BDB, with KSRSS Reborn, Skyhawk Science System and History of Spaceflight contract. The script has a "parallel" section where the left panel is sequencing the staging to orbit, and the right panel is doing roll, pitch and circularizing. The last four actions are using action groups to collect science. I just unlocked MechJeb's Ascent Guidance, so it gets easier to program as you get more MJ modules.

Usually later though I have multiple programs (launch, orbit, transfer, return).

Edited January 22, 2024 by 610yesnolovely

[Zorg]

  On 1/20/2024 at 7:36 PM, dave1904 said:

It's the earliest version I'm wondering about. I play with engine ignitor and live recreating rockets as realistic as possible in order to learn how they worked. I cannot find anything about the Thor and Vangaurd second stages. If they are pressure fed ullage would not be an issue right? If so I can just disable ullage and keep the ignition to 1? 

I'm not entirely sure how it works. If I remember correctly the shuttle used rcs before it fired its aj10s but it might have been to protect the engine. 

Expand  

I'll need to double check on the staging, dont remember what sources I looked at for those configs. But pressure fed does not necessarily mean ullage is not required. Most pressure fed rocket stages for which I've found information show that they need ullage including the Apollo LM and CSM (seems like very small propulsion systems used on probes and satellites didn't).

I do remember I found some specific information about a (version of?) Agena that included a sump tank for engine start that specifically ensured that it didn't need ullage and that's a pump fed stage.

[OrbitalManeuvers]

Close encounter with Triton on the way to capture into Neptune orbit. Orbiter carries two atmospheric probes which got dropped (at 11km/sec) into the Neptunian soup. 

[AstroWolfie]

Looks like a great mod! I'll be using this when I get my PC.

[DeepSpaceKraken]

[Pappystein]

  On 1/22/2024 at 8:26 PM, Zorg said:

I'll need to double check on the staging, dont remember what sources I looked at for those configs. But pressure fed does not necessarily mean ullage is not required. Most pressure fed rocket stages for which I've found information show that they need ullage including the Apollo LM and CSM (seems like very small propulsion systems used on probes and satellites didn't).

I do remember I found some specific information about a (version of?) Agena that included a sump tank for engine start that specifically ensured that it didn't need ullage and that's a pump fed stage.

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The Agena in question are the GATV for NASA as well as Ascent Agena (which is a unique variant that does not have a designation and was the last 16(?) Agenas built in the late 1970s.)   SOME of the last two batches of Agena D also had the Sump tank  But it was a case by case basis...  For a "Standard" Stage, Agena B and latter Agena D, had a LOT of sub-variants.

 

Edited January 27, 2024 by Pappystein

[ltajax]

I managed to build a Jamestown replica with a bit of help from the BDB LEM engines and a few other borrowed BDB parts.

[Pappystein]

Article Time.

Todays article is the First part of my Agena article cycle.   This deals with Agena as produced up until its last order in the late 1970s.   It does not get to far into the hypthetical, proposed or otherwise "Agena" devices outside of delving into KH-9 a little bit.   I couldn't decide what the title should be so you have a few to choose from:

OH and I ran it through a few iterrative algorithims (diagnosing, not writing) and they asked the following:

  Quote

What were the two unrelated companies that started Agena, and what were they doing at the time? How did Agena end up killing Vega, its better competitor? What were the specific reasons behind the various organizations' fighting for their perceived piece of the space pie in the 1950s-1960s?

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Not bad,   Most of that is actually well explained in the article but it is a nice small paragraph summation of the article and its intended purposes

  Reveal hidden contents

Agena, the upper stage that killed its better competitor, so that its competitor’s big brother could live.

AKA: Agena, The Program that Brought Emotions to a Head in Several Space Based Governmental Organizations

AKA: Agena, The stage that was managed by big bullies who didn’t like new kids coming to play in the playground

AKA: Agena, a History of Playground Bullies in Space.

AKA: I am having fun with titles for this article!

Agena D with KH-8 Gambit (USAF Official Photo taken at National Museum of the United States Air Force)

 

Welcome to the next edition of Rocket History with Pappystein.   I am a bit more opinionated about Agena and the various organizations trying to get to space than on most things I talk about, so I will do my best to mark out my opinions as such clearly.   The Titles are the first opinion you get to contend with

Like my previous Titan Article, this subject is broken down into chapters.   A lot of previously “unreleased” data is in this article.   Specifically, on the origin of Agena, the three big Agenas and Agena E.   Wait! Stop the presses. Did you say Agena E?  Yup!  Thanks to team BDB’s efforts on the KH-9 Hexagon, plus the official history of the Agena, we now know there was supposed to be a new Agena that was canceled in or about 1967, the same exact day the “Agena D upgrade” was canceled.  Originally Agena E was supposed to be the power behind KH-9 when launching KH-9 off a Titan 33B.   Obviously, KH-9 got too big for Agena.

It is the discovery of the Agena E that spurred me to dig further into the background of Agena to give Agena a better spot in the histories I am writing… and to further roast the original bad boy upper stage because Agena killed the better upper stage, Vega!  Whoops! I said it… Yeah, that is my opinion.

With rare exceptions, I will not cover the US Army’s almost duplicate program,  Juno IVB, at the Redstone Arsenal except where it intersects with Vega.   There are two bullies in this article already.  We do not need five of them in this article, making the article an even bigger mess!

Unlike my previous articles, I am going to do my best to list my sources… even if I do not cite them properly.   This is because, unlike my last articles, I am defaming many organizations with my opinion.   And while it is my opinion, and I have a right to it, I want you, the reader, to be able to draw your own opinion instead of just relying on my rather jaundiced opinion.  EG Agena was an amazing upper stage / Agena can roast in hell it should be burnt with fire, depending on what sentence I am typing at the time!

I do want to be clear.  Any time an organization feels a different organization is treading upon them, there will be fractious behavior.  In the 1950s-1960s, Space was such a place where many organizations (US Governmental organizations) fought, sometimes excessively, for their perceived piece of the space pie.   You have the USAF-CIA-NRO, USAF alone, US Army, NACA-NASA, and let's not forget the US Navy!   Each thought THEY were destined to control space.

So primary sources:

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/WS117L_Records/115.PDF

The above is just one of several Weapon System 117L documents used from the NRO FOIA archives but it includes much of the early history of Agena.

Document history of Agena circa 1971 by NRO is a fun way to burn your eyes out reading poorly copied/stored documents on Agena.  But it has many good nuggets of fact for this series of documents.

Lockheed NASA documents on Lockheed Shuttle Agena proposal 1972 series: available via NASA NRTS server

Lockheed NASA documents on Lockheed Shuttle Agena proposal 1974 series: available via NASA NRTS server, the conclusion document is what drove the BDB SOT drop tanks for Agena currently in game.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search?q=Shuttle%20Agena

The above link gets you both sets of NASA documents listed above!

Several documents from TheSpaceReview.com including KH-9 histories as well as Corona/Samos etc histories are used in this document.   These are not primary sources so I won’t list them in detail.

Many documents from NASASpaceFlight.com’s L2 servers were used.   I do not list them because you need a membership to view them.     If you want in on the “secret sauce,” I highly recommend a lifetime membership!  

And while it is used in an ancillary role covering the development of better fuels:  IGNITION by John D Clark is an amazing book on Rocket fuel and everyone should have a copy!

 

Ok now that that pile of crap is out of the way lets dive into why you are reading this…. The History of Agena:

Next chapter release is scheduled for next week…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KIDDING!

To understand Agena, you need first to know where it came from.   You see, Agena was started by two unrelated companies doing two unrelated things, with two different contracting organizations also doing unrelated things.  The fact that these two companies’ ideas could be incorporated into a functional and workable system is a fantastic story.   I will not bore you with most of those details, however.  Suffice it to say Agena started in the mid-1950s… as a nuclear-armed missile.

Yes, a nuclear-armed missile.   You see, the USAF had just spent a bunch of money making their new B-58 Hustler Mach 2 “strategic” bomber.  It was a Curtis LeMay special.  Any of you who know the history of Strategic Air Command or the B-29 bombing campaign of Japan in WWII likely has come across that name.  General LeMay was known for being hardheaded yet full of innovative ideas.   He was better than average at math; he saw solutions to problems other people considered insurmountable, unavoidable, or impossible.  Liked by some and feared by many, LeMay is, in fact, the bulk of the genesis of Agena without even trying.  Seeing the writing on the wall as it were, LeMay wanted ways to make his new expensive B-58 Hustler able to safely nuke the enemy targets and then get the crew and craft home, or at least away from the blasts.    The USAF’s Wright Field Engineering and Testing division was the main organization handling the Rocket Pod for the B-58 (as well as most of the B-58 program.)  This fact will be important later.

The B-58 Hustler is an interesting aircraft.   Designed for speed, it did not have a bomb bay. Rather, it carried a large external “Pod.”  The Pod contained extra fuel and the Warhead that would be dropped over the target.  Later, as Nuclear warheads shrank in size, it became possible to equip the plane with the “two-component pod” or TCP, which was a saddle-shaped drop tank suspended below a much smaller diameter nuclear bomb.   Co-incidentally this also helped with leaking fuel in the warhead bay.   The “Rocket Pod” was developed as an alternative to the TCP.  It would have JP-4 jet fuel and what would later be called IRFNA-3 Nitric Acid as fuel and oxidizer and a range of about 50 to 150 nautical miles.   The goal here was to keep the aircraft out of the direct nuclear blast so the crew had a good chance to survive.  Bell Aircraft Corporation won the contest to build their liquid-fueled engine for this Nuclear missile.  Yes, you guessed it, the original XLR-81 that was famously used on the Agena.   The Rocket Pod never got anywhere other than the development of the XLR-81, major shortcomings in inertial guidance at the time, and the higher priority of the ICBM, which would lead to the Rocket Pod’s.   If the ICBM had not been pushed through, for lack of a better term, the Rocket Pod would have been completed and fully tested.   Because of these limitations, Wright Field has a well-designed Rocket engine with no use for it.

B-58 Bomber with the TCP (Two Component Pod) at the National Museum of the United States Airforce. (USAF official Photo).  

Some basic information on the B-58 Hustler bomb pods can be found at:
https://www.b-58.com/history_offensive.php

While I am certain the images on that website are from US Govt sources, I can not find images as good that are not on a copyrighted web page.

 

So we now have an unused but built and tested Bell Aircraft rocket engine.   Next:  How did Lockheed Space and Missile Corporation get involved?

 

Tomorrow   Chapter 2 Pied Piper!

[hugoraider]

  On 1/29/2024 at 12:12 AM, ltajax said:

I managed to build a Jamestown replica with a bit of help from the BDB LEM engines and a few other borrowed BDB parts.

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Nice! I love it! What did you use for engine mounts?

[Pappystein]

Here we go!

Chapter 2  Agena: Pied Piper... AKA the hardest chapter to write...  All the released documents are double exposed and super super blurry (no joke!) 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Chapter 2  Pied Piper, where poorly scanned blurry documents hold all the keys!

Quick note for clarity:  

Lockheed Space and Missile Company is abbreviated Lockheed MSC.   Most of the documents this article is based on have it abreviated this way and in the late 1950s that was how it was written (Lockheed Missile and Space Company)

 

About this same time, aka 1955-1957, RAND Corporation and Ramo Woodbridge Corporation were working with the USAF “Western Division” on what would become to the Atlas and Titan I ICBMs.   RAND and Ramo Woodbridge, both saw the potential of these new ICBMs and their smaller IRBM/MRBMs siblings, to get things into Space.   RAND Corporation based on their “ideal” diameter of 9ft sketched a 9ft diameter upper stage for satellite launch. 

 

This ingloriously named “9ft Upper Stage” would be powered by the new ABLE engine, the AJ10 of unknown version.  The fuel load would be JP4 and IRFNA-3 and it would be equipped with two vernier engines as engine gimballing on the AJ10 had not been proven or designed yet.   Shortly after this was sketched out by RAND and shared with Ramo Woodbridge, the idea was floated to the USAF.   The USAF asked Ramo Woodbridge to refine the idea while the RAND corporation moved on to other projects.   To be clear, until the letting of actual contracts, RAND was still involved with their 9ft Upper Stage but was taking a backseat role to Ramo Woodbridge.   Ramo Woodbridge spent some time discussing size restrictions of the Upper to lower stage.   At this point of development, not a lot was known about flying in vacuum conditions, so it was believed that every rocket had to have that ideal “.50 caliber bullet shape” that saw the X-1 break the sound barrier.   Of course, they were all wrong; we can clearly see that today, but back then, when all you had was a slide rule to do your advanced calculus equations, it could take weeks to solve a math problem…   Well, you get the idea.   Ramo Woodbridge settled on a stage with a maximum diameter of five feet instead of the nine feet of the originally proposed RAND upper stage.   This was chosen so the rocket’s aerodynamics would not be disturbed and to reduce the re-engineering for the upcoming Thor and Atlas Rockets, both of which had about a five-foot interconnect area with their warhead bus.

The RAND 9 foot Upper stage

 

Now, with the project in USAF hands, it was classified and named “Pied Piper.”  The upper stage was to be used for a series of 3 proposed space-based surveillance systems.    The stage, while narrower than originally envisioned, was still powered by a now UDMH/IRFNA-3 fueled AJ10 engine and still had two vernier engines for general attitude control.

Here is where the available FOIA documents get blurry… literally.  As far as I can see, Pied Piper was never offered to Lockheed MSC.    One of the various engineers from RAND, Robert Salter, working now for Lockheed Missile and Space Company, on mostly his own initiative, started looking into Satellite launch on 3rd party ICBMs after Lockheed MSC was down-selected for the alternate (Titan) ICBM program.   However, the competition of Pied Piper and Lockheed MSC’s involvement still had no solid connection.   While I have no facts in evidence to back this up, I believe that the CIA’s use of the Lockheed Skunk Works for the U-2 Dragonlady and A-12 Blackbird is what led to Lockheed MSC being approved for Pied Piper.  The company you know, etc.   An alternative interpretation of the data was the 1956 Earth Satellite program, which started later than Pied Piper and was an “introduction” of companies to the USAF satellite program Pied Piper.  

Now, in 1956, the USAF let a white (as in public) contract for an “Earth Satellite.” This program started as a limited budget pie in the sky contract, like every itteration of NASA's NOVA program.  That is to say, no complete hardware was going to be built.  The USAF was looking for ideas with simple engineering behind them to have a way to judge what kind of talent pool they might have to issue a future contract to.  Almost every aviation contractor in the United States was invited to participate, except Martin Company and Consolidated Vultee (aka Convair AKA General Dynamics) because of Atlas and Titan were already showing the USAF the respective engineering prowess, or lack thereof.   Lockheed MSC chose to participate in this contract and, because of the work done on their own initiative, had a decided edge over the competition since the launcher that was chosen was the Atlas C standard ICBM.   Convair stated the Atlas C could only lift 3500 lbs as required by USAF standards.   Lockheed MSC/Salter, doing their own calculations based on data Salter had from RAND, concluded that these throw weights quoted were hugely conservative and the basic Atlas C could carry 15,000lbs safely, with a nose area re-enforcement strap.   The Atlas reinforcement strap that Salter was talking about was a simple metal band about 6 inches tall wrapped around the nose giving a "doubler plate" at around the 5 foot diameter.   This is exactly what NASA and Convair decided to do for Mercury-Atlas!   Salter and Lockheed MSC began their Earth satellite by assuming a 10,000-lb payload on Atlas so the Atlas had a strength reserve.

Now, here is where that FOIA blurriness really comes to the forefront.   Lockheed MSC submitted a Pied Piper two-stage plan to the USAF.  Pied Piper Pioneer was a 3,500lb mass satellite, including 2^nd stage, and Pied Piper Advance would be a 7800lb vehicle.   Remember, Lockheed MSC was competing for the 3,500lb Earth Satellite program… yet they are submitting a proposal under Pied Piper, taking advantage of design changes to the Atlas that have not even been investigated at Convair!   While many declassified documents cite communications between the various companies and USAF branches, no clear document invites Lockheed MSC to compete in Pied Piper or even a public program acknowledgment of said program.   Pied Piper was a Grey program at this juncture (a few parts public and many parts considered secret or above.)  

Pied Piper Basic / Pied Piper Pioneer, the genesis of the Agena A

Oh, and the Pied Piper Pioneer is basically an Agena A with an AJ10 main engine and two supplemental verniers for attitude control.    Pied Piper Advanced?  Yep, an Agena B with the Pioneer’s AJ10 engine arrangement!

And Pied Piper Advanced.   While it is hard to see on Pied Piper Pioneer, you can clearly see the two auxiliary rockets for vernier control (pitch, roll, and yaw.)

 

 

 

Tomorrow or Wednesday, Chapter 3  Bringing B-58 and Pied Piper together!

 

Agena Part 1:

 

[Blufor878]

A Saturn III makes an evening trip to my upgraded Skylab core, with a present in tow (courtesy of @Don0303's GRAPEFRUIT).










Disclaimer: Launch shots (first 3 pictures) were actually from my first attempt. I realized the version of CBM I used wasn't compatible, so I had to start over.
 

[Blufor878]

Decided to work on Skylab Block II a bit more. First, a visit from Soyuz!

Also, JARVIS gives us MORE POWER!!!

Edited January 31, 2024 by Blufor878

[AdrianDogmeat]

  On 1/31/2024 at 12:47 AM, Blufor878 said:

A Saturn III makes an evening trip to my upgraded Skylab core, with a present in tow (courtesy of @Don0303's GRAPEFRUIT).










Disclaimer: Launch shots (first 3 pictures) were actually from my first attempt. I realized the version of CBM I used wasn't compatible, so I had to start over.
 

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Wait what I also have a rocket named Saturn III

Coincidence??

[Blufor878]

  On 1/31/2024 at 10:30 PM, AdrianDogmeat said:

Wait what I also have a rocket named Saturn III

Coincidence??

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Possibly, mine are derived from the Saturn C3 proposals from back in the day. Just thought the idea of a 3-engine Saturn derivative was pretty neat. What about yours?

[kspbutitscursed]

interesting

  On 2/1/2024 at 6:31 AM, Blufor878 said:

Possibly, mine are derived from the Saturn C3 proposals from back in the day. Just thought the idea of a 3-engine Saturn derivative was pretty neat. What about yours?

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[DaveyJ576]

  On 2/1/2024 at 6:31 AM, Blufor878 said:

Possibly, mine are derived from the Saturn C3 proposals from back in the day. Just thought the idea of a 3-engine Saturn derivative was pretty neat. What about yours?

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See my post on page 1187 for a rundown on my “Saturn III”.