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The Space Age had barely begun when Soviet engineers started planning ways to destroy enemy satellites. Some Western analysts have speculated that a design for an anti-satellite weapon system was started at Korolev’s OKB-1 bureau as early as 1956…
Polyot-1
Credit: © Dietrich Haeseler
Credit: © Dietrich Haeseler
By Dave
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After Scott Carpenter’s science heavy Mercury-Atlas 7 flight, Nasa’s next mission would concentrate on the technical and engineering aspects of space travel. Mercury Atlas 8 became the third manned orbital flight of the Mercury program. The pilot selected was Walter M. Schirra, Jr., but most people called him Wally…
Mission Logo
Wally Schirra
Sigma 7
Lift-off
Splash Down
Recovery
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“The S-II stage was a nightmare the minute it was conceived, and it only got worse from there. During the course of its creation, it would grind up people and careers the way the transcontinental railway devoured laborers. Though the methods and materials used to build the S-II were reasonably well known, nobody had ever tried to apply them on such a titanic scale. Originally, it was to be somewhere around 8 stores tall with a diameter of 22 feet, but the width ballooned from there to 27 feet before the contract was even signed, then to 30, and finally to 33 feet. And all the while as the size of thing increased, NASA was trimming the allowable weight.” Harrison Storms of NAA.
Test firing of S-II Stage in Mississippi
Saturn V S-II Second Stage
Saturn S-II Assembly Bldg at Seal Beach.
S-II during stacking operations in the VAB
S-II Inboard Profile in 1963
S-II Cut-away with callouts
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The structural efficiency of the S-II stage, in terms of the weight and pressures taken by its extra-thin walls, was comparable only to the capacity of one of nature’s most refined examples of structural efficiency, the egg.
Saturn S-II Stage Diagram
Saturn S-II Stage Exploded View
Saturn S-II Cut-Away Drawing
