Martin 410 - a one-night stand between an iron, a donut, the TKS, and an RL-10?

[DDE]

This weirdo scored 6.9 while the Apollo CSM we know and love scored 6.6, and it took pressure of NASA’s two Korolev-class heavyweights, Max Faget and James Webb, to lobby for the iconic design.

This thing was weird (and still is, in our age of capsule resurgence) for a bunch of reasons. The RV is flattened and asymmetrical to work as a full-on lifting body with a flap system for controlled descent, while a classic LES mast is retained.

However, while it’s not shrunken significantly compared with the final CM, it features something that’s more familiar from the Soyuz - a dedicated non-returning habitat (“mission module”) for double the volume and an easier surface egress, seeing as it was designed with Direct Ascent as one of the two options. Like the Soyuz, I can’t see an entry hatch directly on the RV.

Plus, since the capsule is a lifting body and the heat shield is on one flank, the habitat could easily be co-located with the service module, eliminating one of Soyuz’s huge problems, which would be exacerbated for an American design given the stubborn dislike of fairings on manned ships. The layout evokes the TKS and certain variants of Blue Gemini/MOL/KH-9, were it not for the unconventional heat shield location.

Finally, the engine design is optimistically a hydrolox package using the predecessor of the RL-10. The tank layout is also strikingly similar to a design from the wrong side of the Curtain: the donut hydrogen tank is near-identical to the donut kerosene tank from L3’s Block D, and would have possibly acquired a similar skew down the line to guide the propellant towards the intake. The different propellant pairs do make themselves noticed, however, as the corresponding oxidizer tank on Block D is a whole lot bigger in relative terms.

Spoiler

@kerbiloid, I know you love all things TKS.

[YNM]

I think this must be some odd carry-over from the winged Mercury + USAF's MOL.

Not sure where they got the idea for a donut, but it's the USAF...

[DDE]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

I think this must be some odd carry-over from the winged Mercury + USAF's MOL.

Not sure where they got the idea for a donut, but it's the USAF...

Lifting body is NASA’s M-1 configuration. And I think a) it’s a bit too early for the MOL and b) (D)ARPA/USAF wouldn’t fly on a ship built for a rival space agency.

[wumpus]

Note that the astronauts in the control seats are facing completely different ways from the astronaut in "engineering".  According to "Packing for Mars" by Mary Roach, translating coordinates to change 'up and down' in space is one of the more effective ways of inducing space sickness ("sorry Ender.  You may think 'the gate is down' but it doesn't help when half your team is puking their guts out").

[DDE]

52 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Note that the astronauts in the control seats are facing completely different ways from the astronaut in "engineering".  According to "Packing for Mars" by Mary Roach, translating coordinates to change 'up and down' in space is one of the more effective ways of inducing space sickness ("sorry Ender.  You may think 'the gate is down' but it doesn't help when half your team is puking their guts out").

Except that baseline Apollo did the same, just 90° in the opposite direction. Every spacecraft does, except Mercury and the Shuttle.

[RedKraken]

Very interesting!

Here is some design goals, volumes, mass estimates and extra diagrams for the craft :

http://www.astronautix.com/a/apollomartin410.html

[mikegarrison]

On 1/30/2019 at 6:33 AM, wumpus said:

Note that the astronauts in the control seats are facing completely different ways from the astronaut in "engineering".  According to "Packing for Mars" by Mary Roach, translating coordinates to change 'up and down' in space is one of the more effective ways of inducing space sickness ("sorry Ender.  You may think 'the gate is down' but it doesn't help when half your team is puking their guts out").

ISS has no single up/down orientation. And people live there for months.

[kerbiloid]

They can imagine that they are inside a tower (and they are), and the cabin is a _{rotund on its top} penthouse, with a pair of lounge chairs where they take a sun bath.

Spoiler

To reinforce the impression, they should wear sunglasses in cabin.

Spoiler

To make them do this, the cabin windows should have no solar filters.

 

 

Edited February 1, 2019 by kerbiloid

[wumpus]

16 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

ISS has no single up/down orientation. And people live there for months.

Unfortunately, I only had "Packing for Mars" as a library book.  I'll have to look up where she got her space sickness data from.  I'm pretty sure plenty of it was from astronaut interviews, but I might be misinterpreting it.  I distinctly remember realizing that the famous "the gate is down" quote might be problematic for plenty of cadets (especially since I'm pretty sure they mostly lived in gravity).