Finished: Project II/20

1:110 Moon rocket

Well, this was a proper building project. We decided that we'd only use our little free time in the evenings, because if the project assistants 1 and 2 were awake, the result would be pure circus. Any assembling would take place only after the girls had fallen asleep, not a moment earlier.

Boeing S-IC

The first stage ate roughly two evenings at a very calm pace of building and chatting. Actual time used was about three hours, roughly guessing. Essentially this massive construct was built in two more or less equally huge lower and upper parts that were then joined together in the end.

When the stage's core was built we got to build and attach the outer shell's panels. The incomplete build was very patchworky, thanks to especially those vertically running tubes were installed in the very end.

5x Rocketdyne F-1

The quintet of F-1 engines were massive. These too could be turned and adjusted a bit, as if you were expected to simulate the wobbling of the engine nozzles you have all seen in the Saturn V launch videos. Or maybe I was just more prone to silliness than most others. *cough*

North American Aviation S-II

Assembling the second stage started pretty much the same way as the first one. No wonder, the diameter was the same as the big sibling's. The top end was a bit more compact and quite a fun thing to build.

Lighter both in weight and greeblies the S-II was a quicker subassembly to build, because the outer shell's components were pretty much built out of four identical pieces and those were then laid in place. Plus the whole damn thing was somewhat shorter in general. This bugger got built from start to finish in one very tired evening.

In the photos above the red hook pairs were there for the attachment of the next stage. Coupling and decoupling the stages was surprisingly fun.

5x Rocketdyne J-2

At the base of the engine array, edge-wise, were the dark grey counterparts for the hooks on the top of the first stage. These were pretty handily hidden and as I said, they worked very nicely. As one would expect.

Obviously the assembled stages were to be attached together for storaging purposes. The size of this complex was getting more and more baffling, even if we already knew that the final construct was going to be 100cm tall, but still...

Douglas Aircraft Company S-IVB

This third stage of the rocket we built super quickly and while we were at it, we continued to the emergency tower and the remaining things. After the previous monstrosities these bit was like a soda can, but thanks to a rocket engine, it was automatically much cooler.

1x Rocketdyne J-2

This final stage only got one engine installed into its bottom, the same model and series as the five engines that propelled the second stage.

Lining up the chunks

Combined together all the three stages looked pretty impressive. All that was left now was the lightest subassembly, the cargo that was to be delivered into orbit.

Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age

North American Aviation C/SM

After all we'd seen the Command and Service Module was amusingly easy to build. But so it was in the real life as well, much less imposing than the whole rocket. There were enough details to recognize the piece and one couldn't expect much more greebling in this scale.

A diorama version of the command module was built where it had landed on water. The attention-grabbing orange floating ring was a fun detail.

Grumman LM

The relatively few-piece landing/ascending module pair was immediately recognizeable. Got to tip the hat to the designer(s). The Lunar Module could be packed up and hidden inside the cone of the rocket, between the payload fairings.

At this point I had not thought of connecting these two key components of a Moon landing together. Pah!

The Lunar Module was also a part of a minidiorama on a tiny piece of Moon. A reality-bending set of four astronauts was sent along, with a flag for the country of origin.