What Exactly Are Boilerplate Spacecraft? 

Cheers, and thanks so much for your kind words! #TeamSpaceGeek

Randall Mars Well I used to think I was a space nerd ..eh apparently I still am

Boiler plate, can also refer to the metal to make boilers. I think the term here refers to rough copies made out of crude metal.

Learned something today . I always thought it was an old term from Steam Locomotives , the Boiler Plate had all the Gauges and Controls on it . Made sense to me . Thanks for the info .

Yes that's exactly what I am saying. Heavy plate steel in the 1890's was called boiler plate because it was usually used for making boilers. But they still called it that even when it was used for something else. Like someone today might say they used telephone poles to build a bridge. But the way it became an expression was in the use of steel printing blocks in the newspaper industry. I just googled the expression and here is how What.com defined it: "A boilerplate can be compared to a certain kind of template, which can be thought of as a fill-in-the-blanks boilerplate. Some typical boilerplates include: mission statements, safety warnings, commonly used installation procedures, copyright statements, and responsibility disclaimers."

Wow, two of my favorite RU-vidrs in the same video ! =)

William Campbell Couldn't have said it better myself! I've been studying Apollo era NASA since the sixties, yet Amy is constantly bringing up details and footage that is new to me.

That's a hard one since, well, not sure how much program there is to talk about? I do want to dig into the decision to go back to blunt capsules as an Apollo parallel. That might be the way I bring up Orion, and might answer some of your questions!

That's exactly what I had in mind

well there was a orion project ... the one with nukes and so on....

Vintage Space what about the nuclear Orion project?

Perhaps a comparison between Apollo and Orion? I have always wondered how advanced Orion truly is compared to a program 50 years old...

Agreed. And there's the added bonus that these sorts of engineering and procedural details tend to draw far less attention from the conspiracy nuts. Heck, things like Mercury, Gemini, the Deep Space Network, etcetera, all seem to be largely off their radar.

Yes. One thing I would like to see is if there is any archival footage of the "bomb-tests" to sort out the combustion instability issues with the F-1 as well as the LM ascent stage engine.

Their website says it's BP-1101A, used in floatation testing.

I've already got it. It's among the boilerplate followup videos I've got planned!

I'd love to, but it's not as easy as just calling him up and doing something. He'd have to want to work with me, and for that to happen he'd have to know I exist!

I really like this idea. I've been looking into scratch building a Saturn V and/or LEM. Would be awesome to see how Adam and Amy approach something like that.

Snowball Simpson full scale?

Oh god, no. I'm shooting for 1/64 so I can have it in the office.

Sabercy, there is this wonderful thing called "punctuation".

Yes: I've always wanted to know how seaworthy the CM was if it ever had to be used as... a lifeboat.

There was a good bit of re-entry maneuverability built into the Gemini and Apollo capsules that would allow them to be "piloted off course" if need be. I don't know if this was ever needed to avoid bad weather, or to correct a bad de-orbit burn, but the ability DID exist. The maneuvering possibility was there thanks to one Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom, engineer, original Mercury Astronaut, and frustrated test pilot who disliked being "Spam in a can". He had a lot of engineering input into the design of the Gemini...to the point where it was often referred to as "The Gus-Mobile" by his peers. The center of gravity and center of pressure of both Gemini and Apollo were arranged such that rolling the spacecraft with small thrusters would cause aerodynamic forces to turn the craft left or right by small amounts...and pitching would add or subtract lift, allowing the craft to steepen its descent or "go long" by small amounts. As the re-entry took nearly half an orbit, these small amounts would add up to around a hundred miles on the ground.

Exactly as I described just above...Gemini and Apollo capsules were somewhat maneuverable.

I thought the nickname "Gus-mobile" came because Gus was the only one small enough to fit comfortably in the Gemini capsule :-)

The Man With The Hex 13 also had to change its recovery location because of a storm, but this was done with its final course correction burn.

Yes, little Joe 2! This video was the first time I've heard of it. More please.

I built an Estes Little Joe 2 model rocket kit as a kid in the 1960's. Good memories. The Little Joe 1 was used in the Mercury program.

I was also interested in this. What other types of rockets got used for testing purposes rather than main named missions?

Apart from LJ and LJ2, were there any other small test rockets for crew modules? Gemini doesn't appear to have gone through this test stage (because they assumed it would behave the same as a Mercury capsule?) and if there were any Soviet/Russian equivalents, I can't find any reference to them. Space Shuttles arguably had their ALT flights, as their closest equivalent. And Orion, Crew Dragon and Starliner? All seem to be scheduled for full size booster tests, no miniatures like Little Joe. ISRO's CARE test was also launched on a full size rocket. Is the financial saving of a mini booster not really worth it, now that computer modelling can cover so much more than in it could in the '60s? Will there never be another LJ equivalent?

Are you related to Joan?