Project Mir station complex / UR-500 family

[Urwumpe]

OK I see the mounting bracket now... I wasn't aware that such small engines could have a cooling loop for the nozzle, it begins to make more sense.

The Soviets developed a number of production methods, that make it easier to produce regeneratively cooled nozzles and reduce the extra costs for those. Thus, they can afford to use regeneratively cooled nozzles even in places, where their western counterparts of that time already needed to use ablative or radiatively cooled nozzles.

 

[N_Molson]

Here's the bracket (probably a bit big), the cooling loop and the pivot axis...

 

[N_Molson]

I'm not sure what this pipeline does, but it was present on the pictures, it seems to connect the top and the bottom of the combustion chamber...

 

[N_Molson]

One of the verniers mounted into the stage structure, I don't have a closeup picture or drawing of that, so takes a bit of guessing :

In orange you have the actuators, around the rotation axis. The problem now are the cooling loop pipes, the only way to have this animated is to "plug" them through the actuators (axis of rotation). It isn't very realistic but there's no other way to animate it, maybe we'll have deformable ducts in Orbiter 2050 ?

 

[N_Molson]

@Urwumpe that's a way I can do it, any suggestion ?

 

[Urwumpe]

Sure - or you make an invisible joint into the lines.

 

[N_Molson]

It is no small rotation : the documents you pointed me to clearly say "an angle of 45°". I think it means +- 22.5°, but in terms on animation, its a big transform, hard to have it look it right.

 

[Urwumpe]

It is no small rotation : the documents you pointed me to clearly say "an angle of 45°". I think it means +- 22.5°, but in terms on animation, its a big transform, hard to have it look it right.

Well, you could connect the two parts of he pipe with another pipe section, so the necessary angle is halved. +/- 11.25° isn't that much and could easily be done without getting into complex madness like skeleton animation.

 

[N_Molson]

So let's say I can find a mathemagical way to deal with that... Where do those 2 lines (one for flow in, one for flow out I guess) are supposed to go ? To a pump system certainly but do these verniers have a small one each, or do they share pumps by pairs, or is everything "centralized" in the big main engine and then distributed to the verniers ?

 

[Urwumpe]

So let's say I can find a mathemagical way to deal with that... Where do those 2 lines (one for flow in, one for flow out I guess) are supposed to go ? To a pump system certainly but do these verniers have a small one each, or do they share pumps by pairs, or is everything "centralized" in the big main engine and then distributed to the verniers ?

Its actually two separate engines joined together. The verniers have their own turbopumps.

 

[N_Molson]

I think I got it, the whole cooling loop seems to be shared by the 4 engines (or rather chambers), so it goes all around the stage. The pump is mounted on one of the chambers (the one on the foreground seems a bit different).

 

[N_Molson]

Stills things to fix (including the joint/articulation), but I'd say we're on the right path :

 

[N_Molson]

The vernier mounted with the cooling loop, that is arranged in a "4 branches star".

The "orange cover" doesn't look that bad, should be ok with a good texture.

 

[N_Molson]

Here's the full setup of the 3rd stage engines :

Still have to do the joints, and add the details I can get from the few pictures we have.

 

[N_Molson]

@Urwumpe : what do you think those grey boxes are ? Batteries ? It seems that the grey sheet is some kind of thermal insulation, which would make sense ?

 

[Urwumpe]

Hard to tell without looking below the insulation.

My guess: Batteries, electronics, rate gyroscopes. Its likely no pressure bottles, because of the cable bundles visible.

 

[N_Molson]

Yes so those are likely some kind of vacuum-proof containers where they put all the sensitive electrics/electronics, which can include batteries.

What seems weird to me is that only half of the upper tank is covered with insulation. Maybe they are currently laying the insulation sheets when the picture was taken and this is "WIP" ? In my sense you want to have a somewhat even temperature inside the tank, else you start having conduction/convection inside.

 

[N_Molson]

Some progress on Stage 3, starting to add details :

 

[MaxBuzz]

simplified 3d model of the Proton rocket

 

[N_Molson]

They do have nice textures, I give them that, but our model will have many more détails ?

I mostly have to add some of the electrical wires we can see on the pictures.