Missiles
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 11:01 pm
OK, this may be stretching it a bit, but it does have something to do with ships, and it shows another use for CAD.
The ship I am modeling had the Talos anti-air and anti-surface missile system. It was a very early cruise missile, and the first fully developed ramjet. It was bleeding edge stuff back in the late 1940s and 1950s. Pretty antiquated by today's standards. Still, a conventional Talos round carried about twice the punch of the largest battleship rounds and had a range of about 40 nautical miles against surface ships. Also, it couldn't miss a target as large and slow moving as a ship - one shot and one ship sunk. It also could carry a nuclear warhead, in case someone wants to question what it could do to a battleship. It had a range of 130 nautical miles against air targets, but the longest distance actual intercept was 98 nautical miles.
Along the way while I was modeling the ship I became interested in the missile as a modeling project in itself - I need two on the ship model. I eventually created a web page for the Talos missile, and that evolved into a history of the development of the missile. I used the DesignCAD program to create the models and generate the images to illustrate the missile history. Discovering the history of the missile and creating the models has been a lot of fun.
The XPM missile was the first fully operational prototype surface to air missile. It's first intercept was in 1951. It has only a superficial resemblance to the Talos missile that was deployed.
One of the things I was interested in was the structure of the propellant grain in the boosters. I am working on the history of the development of these rockets. They were ten times larger than any solid fuel rocket that had been built at that time. A lot of what was learned from Talos went into the design of Minuteman and the space shuttle boosters.
The prototype booster image shows the "perforated" grain style that had been developed by 1949. It had lots of flame channels running lengthwise through the propellant grain. The propellant was a mixture of nitrocellulose (gun cotton) and nitroglycerine. This design turned out to have several inherent problems.
The Mk 11 booster had a new "star" pattern propellant, and used two different types of propellant. Both were mixtures of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine - 2800 pounds of class B explosive that burned for 5.2 seconds. It propelled the 3300 pound missile to Mach 1 in about two seconds and reached about Mach 2.2 and eight miles in five seconds! This was the production form of the booster. The "star" grain pattern in one form or another was used in nearly all subsequent large booster rockets.
I'm still gathering information for the booster history, but what I have so far is posted here:
http://www.okieboat.com/Booster%20History.html
I also posted an image of the CAD model of the missile. The missile cruised at Mach 2.7 at up to 80,000 feet.
I just wanted to show how a project can get out of hand and lead off on some odd tangents. This is part of the reason it is taking so long to finish the ship!
Phil
The ship I am modeling had the Talos anti-air and anti-surface missile system. It was a very early cruise missile, and the first fully developed ramjet. It was bleeding edge stuff back in the late 1940s and 1950s. Pretty antiquated by today's standards. Still, a conventional Talos round carried about twice the punch of the largest battleship rounds and had a range of about 40 nautical miles against surface ships. Also, it couldn't miss a target as large and slow moving as a ship - one shot and one ship sunk. It also could carry a nuclear warhead, in case someone wants to question what it could do to a battleship. It had a range of 130 nautical miles against air targets, but the longest distance actual intercept was 98 nautical miles.
Along the way while I was modeling the ship I became interested in the missile as a modeling project in itself - I need two on the ship model. I eventually created a web page for the Talos missile, and that evolved into a history of the development of the missile. I used the DesignCAD program to create the models and generate the images to illustrate the missile history. Discovering the history of the missile and creating the models has been a lot of fun.
The XPM missile was the first fully operational prototype surface to air missile. It's first intercept was in 1951. It has only a superficial resemblance to the Talos missile that was deployed.
One of the things I was interested in was the structure of the propellant grain in the boosters. I am working on the history of the development of these rockets. They were ten times larger than any solid fuel rocket that had been built at that time. A lot of what was learned from Talos went into the design of Minuteman and the space shuttle boosters.
The prototype booster image shows the "perforated" grain style that had been developed by 1949. It had lots of flame channels running lengthwise through the propellant grain. The propellant was a mixture of nitrocellulose (gun cotton) and nitroglycerine. This design turned out to have several inherent problems.
The Mk 11 booster had a new "star" pattern propellant, and used two different types of propellant. Both were mixtures of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine - 2800 pounds of class B explosive that burned for 5.2 seconds. It propelled the 3300 pound missile to Mach 1 in about two seconds and reached about Mach 2.2 and eight miles in five seconds! This was the production form of the booster. The "star" grain pattern in one form or another was used in nearly all subsequent large booster rockets.
I'm still gathering information for the booster history, but what I have so far is posted here:
http://www.okieboat.com/Booster%20History.html
I also posted an image of the CAD model of the missile. The missile cruised at Mach 2.7 at up to 80,000 feet.
I just wanted to show how a project can get out of hand and lead off on some odd tangents. This is part of the reason it is taking so long to finish the ship!
Phil