Mercury Escape Tower Rocket

[Paul Howard]

Wow, interesting! What's really interesting is "achieving" a scale reproduction of the same stability under tractor-thrust, then instability when tractor-thrust ceases just like the full size version.

As far as the actual results go, both the full-size version and your scale reproduction themselves seem to "not buy into base drag being applicable" once thrust has ended!

 

[Daddyisabar]

Some say it is an ancient Chinese secret, other's say it is nothing but dark side necromancy. I look to the scientific method and to the local rocket scientists to provide a safe, comforting and verified answer.

 

[lakeroadster]

Some say it is an ancient Chinese secret, other's say it is nothing but dark side necromancy. I look to the scientific method and to the local rocket scientists to provide a safe, comforting and verified answer.

Some folks like 3 fins, some folks like 4.

But it's all a crap shoot on a rocket with no fins at all.

 

[Gus]

Some folks like 3 fins, some folks like 4.

But it's all a crap shoot on a rocket with no fins at all.

I still think the real issue was your model's overall weight and weight distribution. I'd never seen the video you shared of the original Mercury Beach abort but be aware that the basic design never changed. What eventually flew so successfully, completely stable, on all the subsequent Beach Aborts and Little Joe tests was the same tractor design with no directional propulsion like on Orion (Apollo had a single non-moveable directional motor but only to tilt the entire structure out over the ocean). But I am sure the weight distribution on the later models was very different from the original Beach Abort.

My Apollo Pad Abort model is essentially the same design, albeit with a wider base. But my model is extremely light at the back end, parachute and motors at the top. The Mercury Beach Abort is more difficult because of the smaller base drag, lesser motor thrust (3 versus 4 motors on the Apollo version) and the much smaller size of the Escape Rocket (big enough on the Apollo version to contain the parachutes).

I still believe a successful model of this is doable but only with overall weight reduction and parachutes on top. But none of this is to dis' what you have done. It's a great model and I have absolutely enjoyed following along. Your design and building skills are truly impressive.

Steve

 

[Daddyisabar]

Some folks like 3 fins, some folks like 4.

But it's all a crap shoot on a rocket with no fins at all.

We don't need no stinking fins!

Aye mate, I like me fins on top!

 

[lakeroadster]

Great video...

 

[lakeroadster]

Gus

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[Blast it Tom!]

I wonder what year that was? And then that child not knowing he'd soon be looking through teary eyes at a flag-draped coffin...

 

[lakeroadster]

I wonder what year that was? And then that child not knowing he'd soon be looking through teary eyes at a flag-draped coffin...

It's hard to say. Grissom had a plethora of mid-year vette's.​

Astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom strapped into a centrifuge during a simulated space flight, 1959

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Who Made Who? Astronauts and Their Corvettes​

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"The Corvette connection continued throughout the 1960s and '70s. Shepard and fellow astronaut Gus Grissom famously raced increasingly powerful Corvettes until Grissom's death in the Apollo 1 program."

My Other Ride Is a Spaceship​

Then Jim Rathmann, the owner of a Chevrolet/Cadillac dealership in Melbourne, Florida, took things further. A former Indianapolis 500 winner, Rathmann was as savvy at business as he was behind the wheel. In coordination with GM, he offered the Mercury astronauts a top-of-the-line car at a very reasonable lease—$1 per year. After the lease was up, the spacemen could buy the car outright, should they want, also at an astoundingly favorable price. Rathmann found he had no trouble selling a Corvette formerly owned by an astronaut.​

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Four of the Mercury Seven took Rathmann up on the offer: Al Shepard, of course; Gus Grissom, Gordon Cooper, and Deke Slayton.​

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Cooper, Shepard, and Grissom raced their Corvettes along the flat beaches around Cape Canaveral. Shepard regularly won, at least at first. Eventually Grissom began to win, telling a fuming Shepard, “I guess you’ve lost your touch.”​

Gus also had a 1967 Corvette convertible

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Date of Apollo 1 fire: January 27, 1967

 

[Blast it Tom!]

I wonder who owns some of those cars today. I've seen stuff signed by astronauts going for big, big money at auction, so I can't imagine what a prisitine 'vette with documented providence would go for!

Here's one story...

 

[lakeroadster]

I wonder who owns some of those cars today. I've seen stuff signed by astronauts going for big, big money at auction, so I can't imagine what a prisitine 'vette with documented providence would go for!

Here's one story...

They're typically full off restorations where every trace of history that had been touched by the original owner... is gone.​