Saturn V Rocket and Gantry

thingiverse

UPDATE: Check out the SATURN V - COLBY CRANE by ChristineZ_42 at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4222791 for an incredibly detailed replacement for the gantry crane!! The Saturn V, pronounced as "Saturn five," was a highly reliable and powerful American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA between 1966 and 1973. The three-stage liquid-fueled launch vehicle was carefully developed to support the Apollo program's mission for human exploration of the Moon, and later used to launch Skylab, the first American space station in orbit around Earth. The Saturn V successfully launched 13 times from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida without losing a single crew or payload on board. The Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever operational and still holds multiple records for launching the heaviest payloads into low Earth orbit (LEO) of 118,000 kilograms (260,000 lb). The largest production model of the Saturn family of rockets, the Saturn V was designed under the direction of renowned engineers Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with Boeing, North American Aviation, Douglas Aircraft Company, and IBM as lead contractors. Von Braun's design was inspired by his work on the Aggregate series of rockets, especially the A-10, A-11, and A-12, during World War II. To date, the Saturn V remains the only launch vehicle capable of transporting human beings beyond low Earth orbit. In total, 24 astronauts were launched to the Moon between December 1968 and December 1972, with three of them traveling twice in that four-year period. Thanks to Wikipedia for providing a detailed description of this iconic rocket. Here is my 1/60th scale model of the Saturn V rocket and its mobile launch platform, which I created for a client. The design and drawing began in March 2014, and assembly was completed in December 2015. The Saturn V at this scale stands over 6 ft tall, while the gantry reaches an impressive height of over 7.5 ft! This model features moving gantry arms and a crane, as well as separable stages. It also includes a Lunar lander with folding legs. Designing and drawing this model required over 1200 hours of work, and printing it took an estimated 2000 hours. The model uses various colors in PLA, including True Red (10 pounds), True Yellow (2 pounds), True White (8 pounds), True Black (4 pounds), Warm Grey (4 pounds), Cool Grey (16 pounds), Army Green (2 pounds), and Ocean Blue (a few ounces). This remarkable model was built using 99% of two Rep2's, with a Z18 making up the remaining 1%. The other 1% was created using Solidscape MAX2 and an Objet500 Connex.