J vehicle Diorama
The J-vehicle diorama, as displayed at the classified CIA museum. This display is constructed on a scale of 1" = 30', and shows a wide number of features. These include the two massive launch pads 1,840 feet (500 meters) apart. Beside the pad complexes are propellant storage and pumping facilities. A 455-foot (139 meter) high rotatable service or gantry tower is at each pad. The very tall towers surrounding the pads are lighting arrestors that were approximately 400 feet (180 meters) tall. The launch vehicle (and, according to the CIA, its spacecraft) shown on one of these launch pads is approximately 345 feet (105 meters) high, with the additional notation that launch escape towers are not depicted for either rocket. According to space analyst Charles Vick, this indicates that these might be representations of the 1M1 training vehicle-meaning perhaps that US intelligence rarely saw an actual flight article on the pad prior to late1968/early 1969.
Of additional special interest are the scale models in the left-hand corner of the diorama--including the 555 foot tall (169 meters) Washington Monument as well as the 365 foot high (112 meters) Apollo Saturn V launch vehicle. Such easily recognizable US-centric objects were often added to provide a visual sense of the model's relative size.
The model was constructed in early 1969 by the National Photographic Interpretation Center's three-dimensional model shop, and is representative of several hundred constructed from the early 1960s until the shop closed in 1996. These three-dimensional models were needed to aid interpretation and analysis of overhead imagery, and to more easily visualize the resulting intelligence.
The diorama is about 6 feet square, and covers approximately 1 square mile of the actual Tyuratam Cosmodrome.
PICTURE CREDIT: Courtesy Scott Koch, DIRG/US Central Intelligence Agency
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