Gemini - Drawings and Sketches

Gemini-Titan

I have spent many years doing research (and continue to do so) on Gemini which has resulted in many drawings and sketches to be done along the way.  Some of the details have been shared, as well as those of my good friend Mike Mackowski, in other publications besides the St. Louis Gateway IPMS Crazed Plastic Publication or Space in Miniature Publications that Mike Mackowski and I put together.  David Weeks included many of the updated information we provided into his excellent large format Drawings. The detailed drawings can also be found in:

• Peter Always "Rockets of the World."  His book is hard to come by I've been told. 

• David Weeks "Series of large format Gemini Drawings." This is a sample page out of several pages. His set of  1/48 scale drawings, 24"x36" (61x91cm),  can be purchased from Realspace Models for $25 dollars. These drawings includes detailed drawing of Gemini Titan, Atlas Agena, Agena Docking Target and ATDA. Go to this site: www.realspacemodels.com.

• Eagles Talon line of "Gemini Kits and Instructions."  This is a sample page out of fourteen pages. The 1/48 Scale Kit is no longer available. This entire drawing (and others) in the instructions came from my research. 

• Space In Miniature Book on Gemini - SIM#2 that Mike Mackowski and I collaborated on can be found here: www.spaceinminiature.com.

Gemini-Titan Development

This will help to show the Gemini-Titan two pager from Crazed Plastic #22 with the details on how this short article was researched, sketched and then finalized. It is not as easy as sitting down and just doing a quick sketch.

I did sit down and do a couple of quick sketches to figure out the arrangement and details that we would be looking for.  This gave me a list that I could go thru and check off as I got the information needed. Remember, I was doing this in the beginning of 1984 and computers were new but did not have the helpful applications that we have today. No real Internet to do the research.  Most of my time was spent going down to the Washington University Library to go thru the NASA documents and also the McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Research and Development Library in my spare time (which wasn't much at the time).  Drawings and sketches were done by hand.

The basic arrangement was  put together and was only given two pages to show everything on my list.  There are some items that did not make it though.  My list indicated that I needed to get good references for the basic dimensions.

Now armed with the basic dimensions, I can get a ballpark idea of the extra details that are needed.  This is where the photos presented in the Jane's Year Book 1966 and 1967 came in useful.  The next three black and white photocopies, and quite bad ones at that, were great for some start to those details. 

Even though these are black and white shots, they still show quite a bit of detail on the arrangements of the panels, conduits, connections, etc.

This next drawing actually came later, about 1991 and wasn't part of my resources at the time.  Had it been, it would have been easier to glean details off of it. 

This document, NASA-S-66-100 JAN was much more informative and gave me a good addition to details on the Titan.  This was a major influence on my sketches. 

Now I draw rough idea sketches with as much information that I can put on the page.  This shows the thinking process and also gives me an idea on how to arrange the details for a better presentation. 

The next step is to generate clean copies of the drawings without text and see how the arrangement goes.  Not everything that was sketched was used and will show up later in different forms. 

I would add zip-atone to these originals in order to depict the different colors of the Titan.  I also had to type up the article and all the description text.  I used the secretary's typewriter after hours, since computers weren't really great at that time for word processing like they are today. The text was copied and reduced to the required font size that the St. Louis Gateway IPMS publication 'Crazed Plastic' could use.  All the text and notations took quite a while to cut by hand and paste to the Blue-Line paper.

Think about cutting all this text into tiny slivers of paper, keeping them in order and not losing any pieces. Using UHU paper glue was the fun part and not trying to glue the strips to your fingers was the fun part. Pre-planning was the big part so that you had everything that you needed for the publication in one sitting.  Once done you have an article like the two pages presented at the beginning of this post.

The different parts of the Gemini Series in Crazed Plastic were later compiled and put into a collaboration of myself and Mike Mackowski called 'Space In Miniature' or SIM Booklet.  To this end, I revisited the article and did a mark-up of what could be done to update it.  Some items made it in and others were left out.  These bits-n-pieces lay dormant for many years.  Many have asked detailed questions in the different modeling groups and we have been adding in more information that I now want to have in a follow-on publication. 

It would take many more drawings to present all this detail, but worth it. More resources were needed to be consulted.  A quick visit back to Jane's Year Book gave me some closeups that were needed.

More rough sketches followed with examples of surface detail.  I personally like the sketches.  They have character.

In my list of things to do were the engine details that were lacking in the initial article. Some more sketches follow. To start off, I will need to know the dimensions of the Stage 1 engines. I really like to do some Parametric Perspective Calculations once in a while.  This gives me an idea of the position of the details as well as the measurements.  If you know the size or dimension of one object, then the parametrics will help to figure out the rest.  In this day and age, there are programs that could do that.  But in the early 1990's it still had to be done by hand. 

The measurements were taken and put into a detailed drawing.  I don't think that this exists anywhere else.

The relationship to the cone was calculated out and details added for reference. There is more details here than what is in the cleaned up drawings.

A cleaned up drawing was put together.  All of mine were done to 1/24 scale.

At one time I considered doing resin castings of the engines and other details of the Gemini and Titan mix. Vacume-form for the Bulkheads and the Cones.  But technology has surpassed that with the advent of the 3-D Printers that we have today. 

Stage 2 Engines needed the same treatment.  I start first with the rough sketch, then process it to a clean copy. 

I then used my graph paper to draw a formal presentation of the Stage 2 engine.

Again, this is converted to a clean copy that I did in 1/24 scale.  There seems to be a pattern here.

This last clean drawing shows the Stage 2 Engine in respect to the Stage 1 top Bulkhead and on top is also the drawing of the Stage 2 Bulkhead.  I should have produced drawings of the entire stack in 1/24th scale. It would be rather large, but doable.  I may still do it. 

Along with the engines would be the design of the cones or the bottom of the tanks that feed the engines the fuel that they need. Stage 1 Cone Roughs at first, then the cleaned up drawings. 

The cleaned up cone for the Stage 1 with outline of the engines.

Next step is to do the same with Stage 2 Cone. 

The cleaned up Stage 2 cone.  Not much to look at. Maybe an isometric would show better what this represents.

The top Bulkheads are next. I will have to do more research into the differences between Stage 1 and Stage 2 Bulkheads.  Presented is the Stage 2 Bulkhead with the attachment ring for the Gemini Spacecraft. 

Since the time that I started this project, I was able to get a partial copy of the Gemini Propulsion Handbook, number AGC S 0100-38 CC87540-01602, by Aerojet General Corporation, dated December 1963.  This provided a wealth of information that wasn't available before.  It makes my drawings a moot point in some regards.  

First Stage Engine.

Stage 1 Engine Assemblies are great for a breakdown of components. 

Second Stage Engines next. 

Also important are the Engine Frames.  These may need a breakout in the near future. 

I also came across a bitmap image of a pseudo-internal image of the Booster.  More on this later. 

In my communications, I came across someone else doing the same thing that I started, Robert W. Blaske. He has his own website/blog on the topic, and some real progress in building a 1/24th scale Titan Booster.  I was able to confirm some of my measurements with his and found a good consensus between our drawings. 

I have also been following a new member, Ian Robinson in Kansas in his super detailed Spacecraft and Boosters.

Most of my energies changed in 1991 with the loss of a major job.  With this loss I had less energy and resources to take on this project.  

Gemini Re-entry and Recovery Article

This article was published in CP-24 on January 1985 on Accurizing Revell's Gemini Spacecraft - Part Six. This time around my initial sketches are getting a little more detailed as to how the article should appear. As you can see I was doing the preparation of the article on December 18, 1984, less than one month from publication date. Scary!

I love to use the brown sketch pad to form my ideas.  This is much better than just a pure-white pad. There are many different ways that this article could have gone and this initial sketch came pretty close to what I imagined.  Some of the detail drawing didn't make it, while others like below did.  I formed some sketches of what the separation of the components of the spacecraft would appear in space.  In reading some of the Mission Reports the astronauts described what they saw and felt when this happened.  The quick sketches I did actually ended up in the article. The first one is the separation of the Horizon Sensors and the Retrograde Adaptor.

The next sketch was of the re-entry itself.  It is hard to sketch the heat and plasma flow, but I think that the quick sketch did the job. 

The next step is to show the recovery of the spacecraft after a successful parachute to the ocean's surface.  The initial-sketch is back to my usual collection of details.  Some of these details did not make it into the article while others did.  I usually gather everything together and then find where they may fit into the article.  Remember, I had less than a month to do this. 

The Recovery Float Collar was another item that no one else had details on, so I did some quick research and came up with my initial cleaned up drawings (all done by hand on a home-made drafting board).

The article was finalized just before publication. [show final pic of stagnation point on heat shield and of float collar, and other details. ]