One Giant Leap For Mankind, Just A Pootle Round The Garden For A Martian

[general melchett]

Well, I was sent packing to an all-chaps school so had no idea what these strange blokes who wore skirts and practiced the black art of 'domestic science' were all about (and I'm not referring to our cousins north of the border). The two lady teachers didn't count as they were fearsome and to be avoided at all costs, think matron, only much worse. Mind you, when the penny dropped, I more than made up for lost time...

[Martian]

3 hours ago, general melchett said:

Well, I was sent packing to an all-chaps school so had no idea what these strange blokes who wore skirts and practiced the black art of 'domestic science' were all about (and I'm not referring to our cousins north of the border). 

So should we be calling you General Sir Anthony, Cecil, Hogmanay "Toast Rack" Melchett now?

 

Curious of Mars 👽

[TheBaron]

13 hours ago, general melchett said:

Mind you, when the penny dropped, I more than made up for lost time...

It only used to cost a penny back then.

[Martian]

42 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

It only used to cost a penny back then.

Its been a fair old while since you were on the streets then Baroness!

 

Martian 👽

[general melchett]

Quote

It only used to cost a penny back then.

 

Allowing for inflation, seasonal adjustment, cost of a decent curry for two, including a pint and Pimms, that's £1,743.93p in today's money....a bargain by any standard.

 

[Martian]

Today I began today's bench session by getting one of the jobs I have been putting off for a while out of the way.. Normally I like building airframe structures so maybe I had just got fed up of poking about in a tiny space. Whatever the reason, I was not looking forward to tis task. Still, I girded my loins, flexed my tentacles and got the job finished. I could carry the structure into the nose of the capsule but tests reveal that there is absolutely no chance of seeing in there when the instrument panel is in place. I shall begin populating the equipment racks next and add the guides for the wiring loom that is on the starboard wall of the capsule, opposite the entrance hatch.

 

Thanks for looking👽

 

 

 

 

[KevinK]

On 2/10/2021 at 11:55 AM, Pete in Lincs said:

Yep, good old suck it and see. Of course a British capsule would be littered with old fag packets, with notations in pencil all over the inside.

(The pencil was lick it and see)

 

There's always Spike Milligan's version:

 

[starseeker]

Beautiful builds! Wow! Your Mercury escape tower looks better than the one in the kit. I'm just building my Redstone and Atlas versions now and freely admit that putting the escape towers together was a horrible experience.  

As for your Atlas locator pins not fitting into their corresponding holes, I had the same problem. Ended up using a pin vice to enlarge the holes so that the pins would fit. That you backed up the joint with styrene can only be a good thing. That plastic is thin and there won't be much strength in the joint otherwise. I backed up both the Redstone and the Atlas, fearing the joints would crack if handled too freely. Or just sanded. As for the Atlas, those "panel lines" seem engraved just way out of scale. I read someone who filled the panel lines with stretched sprue and rescribed them much more lightly, which is what I plan to do. Except I'm an utter disaster with stretched sprue, so I'll use Plastruct .010 strip or rod.  Either fits perfectly. I'm not even sure panel lines are appropriate for the Atlas at this scale. Just different shades of Bare Metal butted together should look perfect. If you can buy any Bare Metal that isn't wrinkled so badly that you can salvage pieces large enough to fit any of those panels. 

 

Your WIPs are an absolute joy to see! Thank you! 

[Martian]

6 minutes ago, starseeker said:

Beautiful builds! Wow! Your Mercury escape tower looks better than the one in the kit. I'm just building my Redstone and Atlas versions now and freely admit that putting the escape towers together was a horrible experience.  

As for your Atlas locator pins not fitting into their corresponding holes, I had the same problem. Ended up using a pin vice to enlarge the holes so that the pins would fit. That you backed up the joint with styrene can only be a good thing. That plastic is thin and there won't be much strength in the joint otherwise. I backed up both the Redstone and the Atlas, fearing the joints would crack if handled too freely. Or just sanded. As for the Atlas, those "panel lines" seem engraved just way out of scale. I read someone who filled the panel lines with stretched sprue and rescribed them much more lightly, which is what I plan to do. Except I'm an utter disaster with stretched sprue, so I'll use Plastruct .010 strip or rod.  Either fits perfectly. I'm not even sure panel lines are appropriate for the Atlas at this scale. Just different shades of Bare Metal butted together should look perfect. If you can buy any Bare Metal that isn't wrinkled so badly that you can salvage pieces large enough to fit any of those panels. 

 

Your WIPs are an absolute joy to see! Thank you! 

Thanks Starseeker. My Mercury Atlas will be getting an Alclad finish.

 

Martian 👽

[Martian]

I made a start on detailing the seat and fitting out the equipment racks today. I think that most of what I have added so far are batteries, I will have to check with the Haynes publication. I am not too happy with the faces of the batteries, they look fine to the naked eye and even to my magnifying spectacles but rubbish in the pictures. I may strip them out and redo them.

 

I have been working on adding the control levers that appear on the seats and begun fabricating the seat harnesses. These have to be made from scratch and initially I was a bit disheartened that there is nothing suitable available after market. I then got real and asked myself what did I do before all this after market stuff was available? The answer is, of course< that I would have made the harnesses from scratch. So, it was out wine bottle foil and tomorrow I shall be setting to with 5 amp fuse wire. I will have a look in my box of spare etch to see if there is anything that might help. It is appropriate here that we pay tribute to Mrs Martian who has valiantly provided wine bottle foil for my spares box. She of course forgets to mention that the bottles of wine came from my collection of expensive wines!

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Martian 👽

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

Nice to see you going back to your roots for the controls. Nothing wrong with basic modelling.

Nicely done structure in the nose too.

[TheBaron]

On 16/02/2021 at 20:41, Martian said:

I shall be setting to with 5 amp fuse wire.

One of the unsung heroes of the modelling world imho Martian.

I meant the wire -
-- but you'll do as well! 😁

On 14/02/2021 at 18:52, Martian said:

My Mercury Atlas will be getting an Alclad finish.

That only used to cost a penny back then too...

[Martian]

Over the past few days, I have been working on detailing the cabin rear bulkhead. I have added a camera and may try and squeeze another in if I can find room for it. The main focus of the work has been to fit connections to the battery boxes and get them plumbed in. I used 12lb fishing line for this. Threading the line was far more difficult than might appear for a handful of of bits of line but we got there in the end. There was of course much more wiring inside the Mercury capsule but we are getting to the point where it is getting ever harder to squeeze evermore detail into such a confined space and have to settle for something representative. Still we are building up our skills for the larger scale Gemini later on in this project.

 

Thanks for looking 👽

 

 

 

 

[LorenSharp]

Excellent work with the plumbing on the Mercury, Martian.. I dare say by the time you get to the Gemini you'll be a Steely-eyed Missile Man for sure. or Bleary-eyed Your mileage or orbits may vary.

[Martian]

Only two pictures today but what a struggle getting there! Tired of struggling to fir ever smaller detail into the limited confines of the Mercury capsule, I thought I would take some time out for a leisurely build of the escape tower nad motor. I thought! From the box it is almost impossible to build the tower. The nosecone sits too low to fit the rebates in the tower legs and eevn then the rebates are not on the same level as each other. the solution here was to lengthen the nose of the capsule by about 2mm so that it was approximately on the right level with the rebates. The parts for the diagonal braces for the tower as supplied in the kit were either the wrong length, broken or so covered in flash that it was easier to replace them from plastic rod. In some cases all three. the cables running to the bottom of the legs looked quite good at first glance but upon trying to clean them up, it became clear that, once again replacement was the easier option. Accordingly, the cables were cut away and connection points added to the legs from Albion Alloys tubing.

 

All that sorted, thoughts turned to the rocket motor itself. Its like just a glorified tube right? Surely Revell can get that right? Nope, the rocket body bears only a superficial resemblance to a cylinder and once again the detail is very woolly. What to do? Scratch build a replacement obviously but upon going through my box of plastic stock, i discovered that I had every diameter of tubing but the one I needed. In normal times I would have just gone down the model shop and purchased some of Evergreen's finest. However at the moment that is not an option. There was nothing for it other than to carve away as much of the detail as possible and fit the kit parts in the lathe and reshape the kit part as far as I dared. Next up was to replace the lost detail from assorted lengths of plastic strip. At least that bit went smoothly. I cut the shock cone from its support and replaced this from more slide fit tubing. I still have to make some better locating pine for the rocket nozzles, the kit just supplies some rounded pimples. I will most likely end up pinning these into place with more brass. I will add the cables to the tower after the model has been painted as it is going to be far easier to fit the tower to the capsule. That is all for tomorrow though as I have had enough for today. When I have sorted that out I suppose I had better take a look at the retro rocket pack. Surely that cant pose to many problems........

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Martian 👽

 

 

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

Excellent problem solving as always, Martian.

[LorenSharp]

Just when I think Martian couldn't  make this any better, he goes and does a better. I'm running out of like to give manWell done!

[The Spadgent]

Look on the bright side. You had a lathe. 
That tower looks “ Bostin’ ” 👏👏

Almost made me forget how good the inner module was.     Almost.

 

John. 👨‍🚀

[Martian]

Less waffle and more pictures today as things have gone pretty smoothly. I began by attaching the nozzles to the escape tower rocket motor and adding a small strake that is prominent on the side of the rocket. I did go with the brass pinning for the nozzles as I want to be able to transport the model to clubs and shows when we are allowed them again.

 

I then took a look at the retro-rocket pack and discovered that Revell would have the modeller cement the nozzles onto the side of the end of the pack rather than on the motors themselves. No big deal, just plug the original locating holes and re-drill some on the ends of the motors. These have been left off of the model for now as there are some quite complicated decals to apply to the model before they can be fitted.

 

And with that, the model is now ready for paint.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Martian 👽

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheBaron]

You are Go for paint!

Very handsome detailing inside & out Martian.

[KevinK]

On 2/27/2021 at 3:44 AM, Martian said:

I then took a look at the retro-rocket pack and discovered that Revell would have the modeller cement the nozzles onto the side of the end of the pack rather than on the motors themselves. No big deal, just plug the original locating holes and re-drill some on the ends of the motors.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here, Martin. There are actually six motors in the Mercury retrorocket pack: the three moulded-in "lumps" are representations of the actual retrorockets themselves, and the three small nozzles are actually posigrade rockets which were used to provide positive separation of the Mercury from the Atlas.

 

This photo shows the pack before the protective covers on the three big retro motors were installed for flight. The covers were basically a stubby cylinder with a blow-out circular top; early project documentation showed a flattened cone but the flight vehicles used a cylinder. Revell's kit represents the 'as flown' vehicle quite well, although it could do with a little cleanup/reshaping. The reason that the retro motors were covered was to prevent auto-ignition when the (immediately adjacent) smaller posigrade motors were fired at booster sep.

 

 

There's a walkaround of the pack here: http://www.primeportal.net/space/miles_lumbard/mercury_retro_pack/

 

 

 

Bear in mind that - although this walkaround is real hardware at the Smithsonian - the pack obviously wasn't actually flown and neither the retrograde nor posigrade motors are actually installed, nor are dummies mounted in their place. Since the retros would be hidden inside their protective covers anyway, they won't be missed, but the absence of the posigrades is noticeable. The mounting holes can be seen, though, when you know where to look.

 

Kevin

 

Edited March 2, 2021 by KevinK
Further thoughts

[Martian]

Thanks Kevin, I get it now. Believe it or not, even though I am a Martian, I am one of those aliens who are perfectly happy to use space travel but have absolutely no idea how it works! I just call Space Start when the Haunebu breaks down.

 

What's with those oblong things on the side of the retro rockets? and the rolled up thingy? See, I said I had no idea what I was doing!

 

Ignorant of Mars 👽

[KevinK]

1 hour ago, Martian said:

What's with those oblong things on the side of the retro rockets? and the rolled up thingy? See, I said I had no idea what I was doing!

 

Very good question! They don't appear in any photos of the hardware which actually flew during the first five manned Mercury flights, because they weren't there!

 

I've just researched it a bit online - I'm away from my primary references at the moment. The photos are of spacecraft 15B, which would have been the next one to fly after Cooper's 34 hr mission. It was planned that Alan Shepard would have flown it as "Freedom 7 II".

 

15B was configured the same way as Cooper's "Faith 7", equipped for the "Manned One-Day Mission". As this was much longer than the first five flights, more consumable supplies were needed. There was - as you know only too well - no room inside the cabin for more batteries and oxygen, they were mounted aft, attached to the retro pack. So what you are seeing is squarish battery packs and oxygen bottles wrapped in insulation.

 

When you build your Gemini, you will see what this idea evolved into. From these rudimentary Mercury modifications came Gemini's "Retro" and "Service" Modules.

 

Kevin

[KevinK]

Just a bit more info:

 

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/mercury-capsule-15b-freedom-7-ii/nasm_A19680241000

 

This links to the Smithsonian's data on its exhibit: as they say, it's the only complete, unflown Mercury, so it shows some of the bits which were jettisoned on the flown vehicles, and unscorched paint.

 

The spacecraft wasn't flown because it was realised that there was something of a diminishing return in flying another Mercury when it would take effort away from the fast-developing Gemini program. Undoubtedly the right decision.

[Martian]

The Martian Space Programme took another tentative step forward today. Having got my Hunley submarine model more or less where I want it to be for the moment, I decided that it was time to crack on with some of the models that are awaiting paint. This being the case of affairs, out came the Mr Surfacer black and white rattle cans and in a flurry of tentacles, the Mercury and Gemini builds got their coats of primer. I shall leave the assorted parts at least twenty four hours to cure properly before I start squirting actual colours at the models. The Delfin and Holland submarines also got their undercoats as well.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Martian 👽