Revell's 1/96 Saturn V

[Andy the Yellow Belly]

Hi,

I've just bought a Revell 1/96 Saturn V for a bargain price. I was wondering, seeing how it is constructed, would anyone advise filling the sections made out of quite flimsy plastic card with something like expanding foam or anything like that, to make it more robust? Or is it fine as it is? Any advice welcome. Thanks in advance.

BTW, if you haven't tried the free spaceflight simulator Orbiter 2006, it's really very good indeed. I discovered it last week and am very impressed. I have no connection with it's author but you can download it here: http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

A.

[Randy Wise]

Hey Andy,

Once assembled, the booster bodies are quite sturdy. I have no concerns with the strength of the assembly. My only knock is the fact that once the styrene sheets are joined you have a "step" and the service tunnel is designed to fit over it, but you're still left with a noticable gap that you have to fight.

There is another alternative that I read on-line, but can't access the site this morning... use PVC pipe to replace the main booster bodies. Commercially available diameters will match the 1st, 2nd and 3rd stage shapes.

Randy

[Jay Chladek]

I wouldn't recommend using expanding foam in those stages. They are quite sturdy when rolled and assembled (like a real rocket stage) and my concern would be that they would bulge and distort if they got foamed internally. Once the tubes are glued to the top and bottom end caps, they should be fine.

[jbrundt]

I agree with Jay. Don't mess with the foam. It'll be messy and there's no way to control the rate of expansion. Once the styrene is rolled and the ends capped with the inter-stage sections you'll be surprised at how rigid it will be. Just like the real thing however, don't grab *too* firmly ;)

Jeff

[Randy Wise]

Hey Andy,

Try these...

http://ricksternbach.com/SatV/Saturn_V_Clinic.html

http://www.wowiewebdesign.com/saturnv/

The second link is the best one.

Randy

[Andy the Yellow Belly]

Thanks guys for all your welcome advice. Looks like I need to do quite a bit of reading of those excellent sites, consider the options and maybe try and source some tubing and stuff, here in the UK. Think I've got my work cut out (literally)! <_<

Regards,

Andy

[ckalina]

Yesterday I was at the Air & Space museum to meet someone, and I wandered around while waiting... and found a 1/34 model of the Saturn V, complete with tower, launch platform, etc.

Seemed worth mentioning.

1/34 seems like kind of a weird scale...

(They've got a lot of great and large space models at the NASM -- one of my favorites is the 1/15 shuttle stack donated by Rockwell...)

[Randy Wise]

Yesterday I was at the Air & Space museum to meet someone, and I wandered around while waiting... and found a 1/34 model of the Saturn V, complete with tower, launch platform, etc.

Yeah, this model was featured in FSM once. It actually flew. Don't ask me why the goofy scale. I think it had something do do with scale of the drawings that we used for the tower.

Randy

[Jay Chladek]

The NASM Saturn V never flew. Its builder, David Gianakos, originally built it to fly and stage in 1994 or so. But, he put so much work into the thing that it was appraised at a value of at least $90,000. Plus, he never could find a high powered motor with the best combinations he needed for a proper flight profile. So, he opted to donate it to NASM instead (and we are most thankful that he did that as it is indeed a work of art). The reason for the "odd" scale had to do with the availability of the proper diameter of phenolic tubes available at the time. Due to the stresses involved in flight, high powered rocketeers can't really make their own tube sizes as phenolic tubes are much stronger then typical cardboard tubes, like what most of us are familiar with in Estes rockets. They have to get the stuff off the shelf and there is quite a library of different diameters available. He also did all the work on the launch tower and the thing was even designed to vent "LOX" with the help of some CO2 gas generators built into the rocket stages. When you get something that big and complicated, the disaster factor can really go up when trying to fly it. And this Saturn V would have had a lot more rocket engines in it then a normal high powered rocket of equivalent size.

Now David has built other excellent scale replicas that have flown. He did a large scale Mercury Redstone (donated to the Kansas Cosmosphere, but it isn't on display at this time) and a 1/34 scale Saturn 1B which did fly successfully (which I believe was donated to the Alabama Space and Rocket Center). Like the Saturn V, all the stages were live, including the escape tower (powered by a single Estes C5-3 motor).

[Randy Wise]

The NASM Saturn V never flew. Its builder, David Gianakos, originally built it to fly and stage in 1994 or so.

Thanks for that Jay. After reading your post I now recall he had designs on making it fly, but it never did. But you're so right - an awesome model none the less.

My memory is so bad at times I wonder how I get home after work if not for this string on my finger.

Randy

[NebLWeffah]

David also built a Soviet N-1 to accompany the Saturns. This was highlighted in a FSM article too although I can't remember the issue.

[Jay Chladek]

Yes, the N-1 model was also his (not designed to fly as it was an NASM commission). He also most recently built a model of the Navaho cruise missile for NASM as well and that one appeared in FSM three issues ago. At this rate, I don't know how he finds the time to fly high powered stuff anymore. :D

[Diamond9]

Hi mate, I wouldn't go for the foam fill either as the tubing that you need is readily available over here at B and Q, and other DIY places. The other problem that you have to consider is that when you paint your model you are never going to match the colours on the pre-painted parts, and if you paint the pre-painted parts you'll lose the detail on them. but there is an answer. If you use clear acrylic tube (styrene cement will bond to that no problem), then prime and paint it in you chosen manor (I'm using Halfords acrylic primer and Halfords Appliance White, straight from the can), and then buy a set of decals from this place

http://www.spacemodelsystems.com/decals.html

these are the decals for the launch vehicle

http://www.spacemodelsystems.com/satv96.jpg

these are the decals for the actual spacecraft

http://www.spacemodelsystems.com/a96.jpg

Voila, job sorted!!!!!!!

I love it when a plan comes together

Mark

[jbrundt]

The NASM Saturn V never flew. Its builder, David Gianakos, originally built it to fly and stage in 1994 or so. But, he put so much work into the thing that it was appraised at a value of at least $90,000. Plus, he never could find a high powered motor with the best combinations he needed for a proper flight profile. So, he opted to donate it to NASM instead (and we are most thankful that he did that as it is indeed a work of art). The reason for the "odd" scale had to do with the availability of the proper diameter of phenolic tubes available at the time. Due to the stresses involved in flight, high powered rocketeers can't really make their own tube sizes as phenolic tubes are much stronger then typical cardboard tubes, like what most of us are familiar with in Estes rockets. They have to get the stuff off the shelf and there is quite a library of different diameters available. He also did all the work on the launch tower and the thing was even designed to vent "LOX" with the help of some CO2 gas generators built into the rocket stages. When you get something that big and complicated, the disaster factor can really go up when trying to fly it. And this Saturn V would have had a lot more rocket engines in it then a normal high powered rocket of equivalent size.

Now David has built other excellent scale replicas that have flown. He did a large scale Mercury Redstone (donated to the Kansas Cosmosphere, but it isn't on display at this time) and a 1/34 scale Saturn 1B which did fly successfully (which I believe was donated to the Alabama Space and Rocket Center). Like the Saturn V, all the stages were live, including the escape tower (powered by a single Estes C5-3 motor).

I've built and flown a 1/50 scale saturn 1b.

You can see it here:

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hal...1/saturn1b.html

or read the article I wrote for extreme rocketry magazine on it:

http://www.extremerocketry.com/downloads/issue16_mar2002.pdf

Jeff

[Phil Ciborowski]

All i know is that the next time i build the kit i will be using the PVC replacements..

the sheet plastic is a neat idea, but the gaps are annoying to look at and unless you want to really work on them, almost impossible to fill...

plus some of the fit in the diecut holes was questionable.

the good thing about them is that they keep the finished weight of the model down, and they seem to be very strong when capped with the plastic ends. Expanding foam may actually cause more of a problem than anything else.