> I posted some images in the Saturn Rocket History group on Facebook
It saddens me that Facebook has become this big, opaque data hole in the Internet. Even searching for that group name only returns one reference back to it.
All that accumulated recorded knowledge that exists only so long as Facebook determines that Groups have financial benefit. All that knowledge that can't be archived for the greater Internet.
Not to mention that, depending on how active the group is, after a few days / weeks / month the content will be impossible to find even through Facebook itself.
That... was a tough read, nay, more of a plod, it never came to a solid conclusion after a laborious build up, BAH!
And I'm a space/tech geek too, with an appreciation of the arcane, but it needs to be easy to read for those who may not have all the details the author clearly does.
My father worked on the A-12 (OXCART), several space probes, Mariner, Pioneer, etc., Project Gemini and Project Apollo.
He used to bring me green Anole Lizards that he'd find on the Pad at the Cape and he shot 8mm family movies most times he went down for a launch.
Sadly, no cameras allowed in the block house, so I never saw the inside and no home movies of the launches, because he was busy in the block house with the launch.
The Saturn 5 on the crawler slowly headed for the Pad was always my fave movie reel, but also the rain storm inside the assembly building when it's clear outside, that was a trip.
I watched a history of the Saturn V on Amazon last night. Unfortunately, frustratingly little of it was about the technical details of it, which is mostly what interests me. The only good bit was an explanation of the pogoing problem, the rest was just the usual stuff seen on every "failure is not an option" Apollo documentary.
Reminds me of the locomotive buffs who are interested in every detail of markings on the locomotives, their routes, schedules, and paint colors. Whereas there's very little about the engineering evolution of those locomotives. Sigh.
For example, I'm interested in the transition between trial-and-error seat of the pants engineering and mathematically based engineering.
I took several courses in computational fluid dynamics while in graduate school from a professor who had begun his academic career in the late 50s. He had worked for the Army on ICBM re-entry vehicle dynamics, worked for JPL planning space missions, etc. In class he sometimes spoke about this transition. As I remember it, we were discussing the issues surrounding the design of the injector plate for the Saturn V F-1 engines. These famously took more than 1000 iterations before the designers arrived at a combination of baffles that damped standing waves within the combustion chamber. The professor, who had helped with this work, said something like (forgive me, this is as close as I can remember what he said), "You have to understand, we didn't try this 1000 times because we wanted to try it 1000 times. We had the mathematics to try to explore the workings of this combustion chamber. But we didn't have the computing power to experiment with our mathematical models! Now I can take advantage of many powerful, commercial solvers and have them run many times, tweaking initial conditions, and evaluate the results with statistics. Then, all we could do was sit around and do some very crude math and come up with another baffle configuration and try again until it worked. Because it HAD to work."
> For example, I'm interested in the transition between trial-and-error seat of the pants engineering and mathematically based engineering.
It is difficult to know how best to document this kind of thing, the people who know about it probably don't want to write books or create their own websites.
My grandfather was responsible for part of the engineering side of the early British radar equipment, Wikipedia only really describes the scientific experiments that led up to it. I have plenty of stuff that I could add that he told me when teaching me electronics when I was a kid, but I would expect it to get deleted if I can't point at an external source.
Thesis covers an earlier time frame than you want (up to 1800), but is this the kind of analysis you are after?
Would pull in development of precision machining, and various improvements in steel making I imagine. The paper below has a time line and details of 'start ups' involved in UK.
In twentieth century various people tried to adapt the steam turbine to rail use with varying success. Marine turbines dominated ship engines then for larger ships.
I think a carefully worded question on a UK railway forum might yield some results. I can just about remember steam locomotives clinging on in the early 60s (my mother hated them - put your washing out and watch the soot land...)
'Apollo: Race To The Moon', Murray and Cox, is a great popular history that describes a pretty broad swath of the engineering (and management) efforts behind Apollo, including several nice sections on the Saturn V and the F-1 engine in particular.
People who tend to have such interests I guess don't end up making or producing documentaries. I've found oral histories the best, when some old people have been interviewed with the interviewer getting out of the way so to speak. Don't have the list here so might misremember the names but Robert Brulle, Stanley Hooker and Doron Aurbach for example have interesting life stories.
I must thank everyone who replied with wonderful references. I had no idea I'd get such great responses! I look forward to many pleasant sessions perusing this material.
Although Dornberger was not an engineer, the book does go through many technical difficulties and how they were resolved. The V2 is, of course, a direct ancestor of the Saturn V, and the solutions to those difficulties are present in the SV as well.
I can imagine him trying to explain his excitement about finding this to his wife, then her patting him on the head and her saying "that's nice honey". Underscoring the amount of effort involved in such a seemingly trivial things that nerds enjoy digging into.
Hah! Last week I was doing some research on a typeface I had found. I was getting visibly excited while looking at my screen. My partner looks up and asks what's got me worked up. I spent about 30 seconds explaining what I found and why I was nerd happy. The response? Cool [https://bit.ly/2sHXrH8]. Goes back to the book.
I’m confused by this comment. Do you know this is specifically know that John Duncan has a wife and that this is how she’d react? Or does this mean something else?
It looks like a metal ruler glued or welded to the surface of the rocket. After all that build up in his story, I wish he explained what it was, and a bit more about what it does, even if it seems obvious to him.
It is referred to as an 'alignment mark', the print on it being in reverse because the instruments used to check said alignment might have an odd number of mirrors which would cause the image to be non-reversed. I'd say the purpose of the strip to be to align the stage either in relation to the other stages or to the launching platform.
I'm into space stuff, and I could just feel his excitement in his words. It's always nice to see people really enjoying their hobby I think. If you have any level of OCD then this sort of article would appeal to you.
[+] [-] dingaling|7 years ago|reply
It saddens me that Facebook has become this big, opaque data hole in the Internet. Even searching for that group name only returns one reference back to it.
All that accumulated recorded knowledge that exists only so long as Facebook determines that Groups have financial benefit. All that knowledge that can't be archived for the greater Internet.
[+] [-] cma|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SmellyGeekBoy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mister_X|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] howard941|7 years ago|reply
The most beautiful airplane ever built.
[+] [-] WalterBright|7 years ago|reply
Reminds me of the locomotive buffs who are interested in every detail of markings on the locomotives, their routes, schedules, and paint colors. Whereas there's very little about the engineering evolution of those locomotives. Sigh.
For example, I'm interested in the transition between trial-and-error seat of the pants engineering and mathematically based engineering.
[+] [-] engi_nerd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjsw|7 years ago|reply
It is difficult to know how best to document this kind of thing, the people who know about it probably don't want to write books or create their own websites.
My grandfather was responsible for part of the engineering side of the early British radar equipment, Wikipedia only really describes the scientific experiments that led up to it. I have plenty of stuff that I could add that he told me when teaching me electronics when I was a kid, but I would expect it to get deleted if I can't point at an external source.
[+] [-] keithpeter|7 years ago|reply
Thesis covers an earlier time frame than you want (up to 1800), but is this the kind of analysis you are after?
Would pull in development of precision machining, and various improvements in steel making I imagine. The paper below has a time line and details of 'start ups' involved in UK.
https://www.iris.sssup.it/retrieve/handle/11382/304403/988/G...
In twentieth century various people tried to adapt the steam turbine to rail use with varying success. Marine turbines dominated ship engines then for larger ships.
I think a carefully worded question on a UK railway forum might yield some results. I can just about remember steam locomotives clinging on in the early 60s (my mother hated them - put your washing out and watch the soot land...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine_locomotive
Has a time line of the companies involved in some of that.
[+] [-] tniemi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cremp|7 years ago|reply
Makes for a very long, but interesting read for those who are NASA and history buffs.
[+] [-] pjmorris|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gravityloss|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nernst|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|7 years ago|reply
Technical as all get-out.
[+] [-] WalterBright|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluedino|7 years ago|reply
Are there documentary crews at SpaceX right now?
[+] [-] WalterBright|7 years ago|reply
https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Rocket-Weapon-Walter-Dornberger/...
Although Dornberger was not an engineer, the book does go through many technical difficulties and how they were resolved. The V2 is, of course, a direct ancestor of the Saturn V, and the solutions to those difficulties are present in the SV as well.
[+] [-] dmix|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analogmemory|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xevb3k|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mysterypie|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yetanfou|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xt00|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jaruzel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iammiles|7 years ago|reply