jayutah (sorry I got name wrong before), the LM "plans" thing is getting old.
I don't care. You tipped your hand. You think it's suspiciously convenient that the LM "plans" are not available, suggesting your intent to read something nefarious into their absence alone. I'm not at all convinced you expect to get anything from reading them. I am, however, convinced that you want to attribute some desired reason to your inability to Google them.
Really just need the plans...
I asked you what you intended to glean from the materials you think will be provided, that wasn't provided in the materials you say you've already seen.
OK, I would like to know the materials and fabrication of the main structure for starters, do you know that?
Yes. The materials are various aluminum alloys. The design geometry includes milled solid billets, chem-milled skin-and-stringer subassemblies, and sheet stock. The joinery was mostly inert-gas welding.
Primary structure begins with two bulkheads machined from solid aluminum billets. These were set fore and aft. These were connected with two ventral beams of cold-rolled aluminum. They were joined at the top with a solid overhead of machined aluminum alloy.
Two laterally-parallel structures provided structural support for the cockpit, which was cantilevered from the forward main bulkhead. These formed the recognizable nose of the structure. The forward hatch passes between these milled structures at the bottom.
Secondary structures included prefabricated struts made of machined steel and aluminum alloys, used to attach the aft equipment bay and the ventral fuel assemblies.
The pressure-bearing vessel was the skin-and-stringer panels, chem-milled into the proper shape and welded to the primary and secondary structures.
The exterior fasteners look puzzling to me, Poor tolerances?
No, sufficient tolerances. The outer skin is not the structure. The skin sheets simply needed to be held in place against their own inertia. They were neither load-bearing nor pressure-bearing. Their role was to provide proper optical response for heat transfer management, and as the first line of defense for micrometeoroids.
Last edited by JayUtah; 14-April-2008 at 11:08 PM.
Reason: Finish a sentence I forgot to finish.
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