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WAEC Rockets Space Racer SAM-66 Sunbird II Pi Sprint Leviathan Space Racer II Arcturus Mk. 1 Roswell or Bust! Brinley Short March Discovery XW-1 Apollo-LES Sprint II Lone Star Mercury-Redstone Shenzhou Saturn 1B Saturn V Gemini-Titan II Juno I Chrysler Building More Information |
The Juno 1, which was a modification of the Jupiter C, itself an upgrade of the Redstone IRBM, which descended directly from the German V-2 terror weapon, saved America from shame. After the Soviets launched the first space satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, followed by Sputnik 2 on November 3 of the same year, the Free World was terrified by the display of Soviet power and intellectual superiority by the lofting of these two benign instruments. To retaliate, the Navy Vanguard rocket shot skyward, but only rose a meter before falling back to earth and exploding in the most graceless and humiliating manner. It was at this point that Wernher von Braun, who had had the capability of launching a satellite in his Juno 1 for over a year, was called in to send a simple scientific satellite into orbit, to show the Soviets that the Free World would establish a presence in space. In less than two months, von Braun had his rocket ready, topped by a satellite, Explorer 1, built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. On January 31, 1958, the Juno 1 hurled Explorer 1 skyward in a flawless launch. The satellite orbited for over a decade, and proved the existence of a radiation belt surrounding the Earth, named Van Allen after its discoverer. I have long been impressed by the aesthetics of the Juno 1 design, so it was with great pleasure when I realized, in March of 2003, that a model Juno 1 built around a BT-50 body tube would be rendered in 1/72 scale, which happens to be my favorite modeling scale for air and space subjects. About a month later, I finally got around to drawing up plans for a flying Juno 1 in 1/72 scale, with a core BT-50 tube. I started working on it slowly, but this was the end of my junior year of high school, and I had plenty of other things to divide my attention (such as running for Senior Class President...and failing). I visited the project again over the summer, but I didn't get very far, since I was much too occupied with reading ancient histories, lifeguarding, and wondering if I could shoot my new screenplay, Fences, that summer (the answer was no). Somehow, amidst all of that, I managed to get the booster section of the model completed. I just needed to make a nose cone, and then all would be ready. This nose cone delayed me nearly a year. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to build it from balsa or paper shrouds. I tried to plan some paper shrouds, but I got confused and frustrated, and eventually quit. Finally, at the end of the WAEC, I resolved to fly my few remaining original designs yet unflown. I bought from Apogee Components a balsa transition which looked about right on the webpage, and it ended up being perfect. I ordered it with some parts for my Chrysler Building model. For the next few weeks, I divided my time between Fences (released July 3, 2004), the Chrysler Building, and this model, the Juno 1. I was able to throw together some sort of upper stage and satellite (a BT-5 and a dowel did the trick). After adding a few details of balsa wood, I sanded down the model carefully, sealed the wooden pieces (although not adequately on the nose), and painted the model white. I added on top of this some black stripes, black on some of the fins, silver on the satellite, and the letters "UE," unique to that launch. I fired off my scratchbuilt Juno 1 on June 15, 2004, along with two other scale models (a Saturn V and Gemini-Titan II, neither of which were very successful). This flight was on a B6-4. The model boosted straight up, nice and stably, and came down into the wet grass beneath its parachute. It didn't sustain any damage at all. I launched it again on the 1st of July, also on a B6-4, although this flight was not stable, for an unknown reason. The Juno 1 looped all over the sky, and barely shot out its parachute before hitting the ground. This time, the model suffered a dent on the body tube and the loss of the lower part of one of the fins. The body tube damage is easy to hide; the fin wasn't hard to repair. I'm rather happy with this model, and it displays well with the others in my collection. Juno 1 Specifications
Subject: Juno 1 with
Explorer 1, January 31, 1958Scale: 1/72 Length: 27 cm Core Diameter: 2.4 cm (BT-50) Engine Mount: 18 mm Nose: Conical with scale satellite Recovery: Parachute Number of Flights: 2 Official WAEC Plans
Original plans
Juno 1 Images image: The rocket sits on the pad shortly before launch on January 31, 1958. (NASA) Juno 1 Flight Log
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herein copyright 2004-2008
by Willy Logan willy@wilhelm-aerospace.org |
