Maynard's space station (was Re: Felxibility of Apollo design )

From: Kieran A. Carroll (kac_at_dynacon.ca)
Date: 12/16/04 

Date: 16 Dec 2004 10:29:56 -0800

I originally wrote:

> I have in front of me right now, a drawing that Owen left me, of
> the "Radial Module All-Rigid Space Station" that one of the
> draftsmen did for him in 1962; designed to be launched on a Saturn V,
> using a ciyple of "6-man ferry-logistics vehicles" docked to it,
> basically an Apollo CSM. Owen also prepared (and patented) a design
> for a trans-Mars space station based on this design (I think that
> one was planning on using a NERVA upper stage to push it out to Mars
> and back again)---this was actually released by one of the
> commercial model companies as a plastic kid's model in the 1960s,
> as "NASA's Space Station."

Just for the fun of it, I looked up "Maynard" and "NASA" in a US
Patent Office search web site, and found the patent in question: US
patent number 3300162,
O. E. Maynard et al., Jan. 24 1967 (filed Jan. 20, 1964). "Al." in
this case are
William Taub (who did the 1962 blueprint that I have), David Brown
(interestingly, like Owen he's one of the "NASA Canadians" who went to
NASA from Avro after the cancellation of the Arrow project), and
Robert M. Mason. You can view the 9 pages of this patent on the USPO
web site via the following link:

http://patimg2.uspto.gov/.piw?docid=US003300162&PageNum=1&&IDKey=B42E0FB4FC4B&HomeUrl=http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1%2526Sect2=HITOFF%2526p=1%2526u=%25252Fnetahtml%25252Fsearch-bool.html%2526r=1%2526f=G%2526l=50%2526d=PALL%2526S1=3300162.WKU.%2526OS=PN/3300162%2526RS=PN/3300162

(I'm not sure how to get printed copies; I've managed this before, but
I recall it's been made deliberately tedious, I guess to encourage you
to buy patent printing services from one of the many companies that
make a living from doing that...).

The drawings in this patent are pretty close to the ones in Willam
Taub's blueprint (the blueprint also shows how to stack this for
launch on a Saturn V).
The Pilgrim Explorer model kit retains many of the concepts and
details from these earlier drawings, but has numerous differences as
well---the main one being the NERVA engine at the bottom, its
associated "fuel" tanks, and the "backbone" connecting these to the
"space station" itself. (In the spirit of the ealier discussion on
modularity, I guess we'd call that something like the Interplanetary
Propulsion Module", or IPM :-) Taub's blueprint includes accomodation
for a pair of CSMs in the space station launch configuration, one
right-side up (in the Apollo sense) located aft of the main space
station on the launch vehicle, the other upside-down located ahead of
the space station.

- Kieran A. Carroll

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