USS Titania (AKA-13) USS Titania (AKA-13) USS "Titania" (AK-55/AKA-13) was an named after Titania, one of the moons of the planet Uranus. She served as a commissioned ship for 13 years, beginning in 1942. "Titania" was laid down as "Harry Culbreath" under Maritime Commission contract (MC hull 132) on 25 October 1941 at Kearny, N.J., by the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Co.; renamed "Titania" and designated AK-55 on 16 February 1942; launched on 28 February 1942; sponsored by Mrs. Bennett Champ Clark; acquired by the United States Navy on 27 March 1942; and commissioned on 27 May 1942, Lieutenant Commander Dale E. Collins
Solar System model Solar System model Solar System models, especially mechanical models, called "orreries", that illustrate the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons in the Solar System have been built for centuries. While they often showed relative sizes, these models were usually not built to scale. The enormous ratio of interplanetary distances to planetary diameters makes constructing a scale model of the Solar System a challenging task. As one example of the difficulty, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is almost 12,000 times the diameter of the Earth. If the smaller planets are to be easily visible to