Walk of Fame
- Mischa
- LUT model
Once upon a time, the daring astronauts, admired by the press, fellow countrymen and, of course, by me, walked here.
Service arm #9 access platform at Level 320
The access platform for the Command Module Access Arm turns out to be the most complex construction so far, which has several reasons. The main reason: It was designed and built later - the early Saturn flights were unmanned, so the upper swing arm still had time to mature. So it was changed and carved, which ultimately led to often bizarre detail solutions. The path to fame is paved with narrow places and stumbling blocks, the most obvious being the support for the resting position of the arm, which lies across the path and wrestles a certain athletic talent from the moon riders in space suits and the whole stuff, that you usually drag to the moon.
And there we are with the cardboard theme. The resting position of the CM access arm. As you know, it folded back and lay down along side 4 to protect the sensitive White Room from the conflagration. Only. But. However. There is something cruel in our way. Namely the access platform. More precisely, its handrails. The ingenious NASA engineers finally came up with a highly original solution: the swing arm simply folds the handrails when retracted, so that they lie almost horizontally on the platform, with the swing arm enthroned majestically above it. What then obviously worked perfectly in practice, however, presents your cardboard designer with a difficult task. How do you break this mechanism down to a cardboard model in 1/96? Well, it works, but requires a certain *cough* dexterity from future cardboard acrobats. You wanted movable swing arms, that's the price you have to pay now *ggg*
That's not all. In the middle of constructing I stumbled across a discrepancy of 10". The reference height of the swing arm was 3797.5" according to the plan. The same reference for the platform at 315' - 7" 1/2. Which is exactly 10" less. Now you can't just quickly raise the platform 10" because all inclinations change completely. So which plan is right?
There was only one way to find out:
Service arm #9 access platform at Level 320
Yo. Put Saturn V next to it. So the Saturn plans were created by David Weeks and the rocket was pulled up without any surface details. Unfortunately David's plans are also discrepant, there is a gap of 1"-1/16 between the coordinate system of Saturn and the Apollo vehicle. Since this is within a tolerable range in 1/96 (0.3mm) I have stretched the service module by just this amount, Apollo-afficionados may forgive me. Anyway, the 10" puzzle has been solved successfully (3797.5" correct), the plans of the platform have been knitted around and adjusted with countless photos to its degree of reality (another complication, namely the later added and therefore undocumented platform for the emergency cabin - at the top right picture - I don't even mention), but as a result of the efforts here the first rendering of the complete (though still unfinished) trilogy:
Service arm access platforms
Happy Easter!
