Talk:Saturn V

Altitude when first stage is finished

The article says it's 36 miles, but also says it's 42 miles. Which is it?

After that's corrected, how about converted miles to km properly? 5 mi = 8 km --Uncle Ed (talk) 04:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

It's 200,000 feet (38 mi). I checked the flight manual and cited it directly. I also applied a great many {{Convert}} templates so the conversions would be standardized, but there are a good many more places to apply the template in the article. -- ke4roh (talk) 03:14, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The weakest link

This article's weakest link seems to be the history section. It really needs a rewrite; there's a lot of information mixed in together, seemingly on the mistaken assumption that von Braun expressly invented it for the lunar mission, which of course was not the case. I tried to make a stab by giving it a bit more logical structure, and by referring to the Saturn (rocket family) main article.

The history really seems to be better written there, so maybe the solution is to trim it here way back to just a summary. Also, just a bit more needs to be added to properly summarize how the Apollo program (and LOR selection) came about to give the Saturn V its mission. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:37, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

• The history section is worse than weak; it is way off base when it comes to the credits being given to von Braun's paperclip engineers. The technology did not "come from Germany" and did not "follow" from the V-2. The first U.S. liquid propellant rocket engine company, Reaction Motors, Inc., was incorporated in 1941, the 2nd, Aerojet, was incorporated in 1942--NOT after the war. None of the major early U.S. rocket engine manufacturers--Reaction Motors, Aerojet, and General Electric--copied the German engine design. None of them thought it was WORTH copying. Reaction Motors and Aerojet came up with their own engine designs without every having seen German engines and General Electric saw the V-2 engine and then decided to follow Reaction Motors designs instead. Rocketdyne tried to adapt the V-2 engine to the Navaho cruise missile booster only to give up on it and come up with a totally different tube-bundle design of their own, which turned into the engines for Atlas, Thor, and Jupiter. (NO, the Jupiter engine was NOT designed at Redstone arsenal by the Germans.) The Rocketdyne engines (not the German engine) was the predecessor of the engines for all the Saturns. This engine technology came from Navy (Viking and Vangauard) and Air Force (Navaho and Atlas) programs, not from Redstone Arsenal and the Army. The whole "out of Germany" fantasy on which this article is based is nonsense. Give the Marshall Spaceflight Center credit for managing the contracts for Saturn V development but drop this fantasy nonsense about the Saturn V being a "German" rocket. Get real!Magneticlifeform (talk) 07:22, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Magneticlifeform is correct. Deducing that the Saturn Rocketdyne configuration totally derives from the V-2 is analogous to deducing that the V-2 totally derives from Goddard's first rocket. Much extraneous effort went into reshaping crude Goddard ideas into a V-2. Goddard cannot gain total credit for the V-2's success. Analogously, much extraneous effort went into reshaping crude V-2 ideas into the Saturn Rocketdyne. V-2 scientists cannot gain total credit for the Saturn Rocketdyne's success.

Suppose the Saturn Rocketdyne had become an utter failure.... Would you have then blamed Goddard? V-2 scientists? Or the US? Answer: the US would have been blamed. Evidence: Apollo 13. Never did a single V-2 engineer ever publicly acknowledge either individual or team oversight with the original Saturn V design leading to mishaps associated with Apollo 13. The engineers failed to thoroughly redesign their own upgrades: no one ever ordered Beechcraft to switch to 65-volt thermostats when the command module's 28-volt DC bus was upgraded. If they had, we would not be discussing this today.

And let us never forget the tragedy associated with the Saturn IB's Apollo I (V-2 engineers deftly avoid responsibility because they are inexperienced with handling oxygen). Apparently, oxygen was not their only weakness.

Read on...

---

The origins of the Saturn V rocket begin in late 1957 to early 1958, when the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) began studying what a new non-military space agency would entail, as well as what its role might be, and assigned several committees to review the concept. On January 12, 1958, NACA organized a "Special Committee on Space Technology", headed by Guyford Stever. It was a special steering committee that was formed with the mandate to coordinate various branches of the federal government, private companies and universities within the United States with NACA's objectives so as to harness their expertise for the sake of developing a space program.

In late March, 1958, a NACA report entitled "Suggestions for a Space Program" included recommendations to develop a 3-stage rocket for achieving spaceflight. It was to be fueled with hydrogen fluorine and achieve a thrust of 4,450,000 newtons (1,000,000 lb_f).

"Suggestions for a Space Program" ideas were not impractical, as companies such as Reaction Motors and Aerojet had already begun design of rocket engines as early as the late 1930s, with help from the United States Army, intended for use on aircraft. Also, the V-2 rocket had already reached space more than 15 years earlier, on October 3, 1942, as had the United States WAC Corporal on May 22, 1946.

Both US programs that eventually would later lead to the construction of the SM-64 Navaho and the PGM-11 Redstone had already been initiated in those years immediately following World War II in response to the spacefaring V-2 rocket. Later programs leading to rockets such as the SM-65 Atlas, PGM-19 Jupiter, UGM-27 Polaris, PGM-17 Thor, Vanguard (rocket) and Viking (rocket) would follow in the late 1950s, concurrent with the formation of the "Stever Committee."

By the early 1950s all of the major branches of the US military were actively developing long-range missiles, most with the help of Germans from the V-2 project and based on its technology. These included the US Navy's Viking and US Army's Corporal, Jupiter and Redstone designs. The US Air Force's Atlas and Titan, however, used more technology developed in the US.

In-fighting between the various branches had been constant, with the United States Department of Defense (DoD) often called upon to decide which projects to fund for development. Things were supposed to be settled by the 26 November 1956 "Wilson Memorandum," which stripped the Army of offensive missiles with a range of 200 miles (320 km) or greater, and forced their Jupiter missiles to be turned over to the Air Force. From that point on the Air Force would be the primary missile developer, especially for dual-use missiles that could also be used for space launchers.

Some time in late 1956 or early 1957 the Department of Defense released a requirement for a heavy-lift vehicle to orbit a new class of communications and other satellites. The requirements, drawn up by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), called for a vehicle capable of putting 9,000 to 18,000 kilograms into orbit, or accelerating 2,700 to 5,400 kg to escape velocity. In April 1957, Wernher von Braun directed Heinz-Hermann Koelle, chief of the Future Projects design branch, to study dedicated space launcher designs that could be built as quickly as possible. Koelle evaluated a variety of designs for missile-derived launchers that could place a maximum of about 1,400 kg in orbit, but might be expanded to as much as 4,500 kg with new high-energy upper stages. In any event, these upper stages would not be available until 1961 or 62 at the earliest, and the launchers would still not meet the DoD requirements for heavy loads.

In order to fill the need for loads of 10,000 kg or greater, the ABMA calculated that a booster (first stage) with a thrust of about 1,500,000 lbf (6,700 kN) thrust would be needed, far greater than any existing or planned missile. For this role they proposed using a number of existing missiles clustered together to produce a single larger booster; using existing designs they looked at concepts named "Super-Atlas," "Super-Titan," and "Super-Jupiter." Super-Jupiter received the most attention because it used hardware developed by ABMA; the Titan and Atlas were Air Force designs that were suffering from lengthy delays in development.

Two approaches to building the Super-Jupiter were considered. The first used multiple engines to reach the 1,500,000 lbf (6,700 kN) mark; the second used a single much larger engine. Both approaches had their own advantages and disadvantages. Building a smaller engine for clustered use would be a relatively low-risk path from existing systems, but required duplication of systems and made the possibility of one engine failure much higher (paradoxically, adding engines generally reduces reliability). A single larger engine would be more reliable in theory, and would offer higher performance because it eliminated duplication of "dead weight" like fuel plumbing and hydraulics for steering the engines. On the downside, an engine of this size had never been built before and development would be expensive and risky. The Air Force had recently expressed an interest in such an engine, which would develop into the famed F-1, but at the time they were aiming for 1,000,000 lbf (4,400 kN) and the engines would not be ready until the mid-1960s. The engine-cluster appeared to be the only way to meet the requirements on time and budget.

The Army team at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) under the direction of Wernher von Braun studied a number of designs that clustered existing missile airframes and optionally added new engines. The design series included the "Super-Titan," "Super-Atlas" and "Super-Jupiter." The latter quickly became their focus, as it consisted of technology developed at ABMA, while the Atlas and Titan were Air Force designs suffering from extended development problems. The Super-Jupiter design was based almost entirely on existing equipment, using a cluster of Redstone and Jupiter missiles to form a lower stage powered by a new engine, with an upper stage adapted from the Titan. Their proposal was much simpler and lower-risk than the Air Force proposal, which required the development of a new hydrogen-burning upper stage. Like the Air Force team, ABMA also outlined their vision of a manned lunar mission as Project Horizon, using fifteen of these rockets to build a large vehicle in Earth orbit.

The newly formed ARPA, who was put in charge of development of the launcher, sided with the ABMA design. Their only concern was that the new engines might be a risk, suggesting that more moderate upgrades of existing engines be used instead. ABMA quickly adapted the design to use eight engines developed from the Jupiter's S-3D as the H-1, as opposed to four of the proposed E-1 of the original design. ARPA was satisfied, and started funding development of both the booster at ABMA and the new H-1 engines at Rocketdyne. Contracts were tendered in October 1958 and work proceeded quickly; the first test-firing of the H-1 occurred in December and a mock-up of the booster had already been completed. Originally known as Super-Jupiter, the design became the Juno V during development, and on February 3 an ARPA memorandum officially renamed the project Saturn.

In December 1957, ABMA delivered Proposal: A National Integrated Missile and Space Vehicle Development Program to the DoD, detailing their clustered approach. They proposed a booster consisting of a Jupiter missile airframe surrounded by eight Redstones acting as tankage, a thrust plate at the bottom, and four Rocketdyne E-1 engines of 360 to 380,000 lbf (1,700 kN). The ABMA team also left the design open to future expansion with a single 1,500,000 lbf (6,700 kN) engine, which would require relatively minor changes to the design. The upper stage was the lengthened Titan, with the Centaur on top. The result was a very tall and skinny rocket, quite different from the Saturn that eventually emerged.

The Air Force had gained valuable experience working with liquid hydrogen on the Lockheed CL-400 Suntan spy plane project and felt confident in their ability to use this volatile fuel for rockets. They had already accepted Krafft Ehricke's arguments that hydrogen was the only practical fuel for upper stages, and started the Centaur project based on the strength of these arguments. Titan C was a hydrogen-burning intermediate stage that would normally sit between the Titan lower and Centaur upper, or could be used without the Centaur for low-Earth orbit missiles like Dyna-Soar. However, as hydrogen is much less dense than "traditional" fuels then in use, essentially kerosene, the upper stage would have to be fairly large in order to hold enough fuel. As the Atlas and Titan were both built at 120" diameters it would make sense to build Titan C at this diameter as well, but this would result in an unwieldy tall and skinny rocket with dubious strength and stability. Instead, Titan C proposed building the new stage at a larger 160" diameter, meaning it would be an entirely new rocket.

In comparison, the Super-Juno design was based on off-the-shelf components, with the exception of the E-1 engines. Although it too relied on the Centaur for high-altitude missions, the rocket was usable for low-Earth orbit without Centaur, which offered some flexibility in case Centaur ran into problems. ARPA agreed that the Juno proposal was more likely to meet the timeframes required, although they felt that there was no strong reason to use the E-1, and recommended a lower-risk approach here as well. ABMA responded with a new design, the Juno V (as a continuation of the Juno I and Juno II series of rockets, while Juno III and IV were unbuilt Atlas- and Titan-derived concepts), which replaced the four E-1 engines with eight H-1s.

NASA was established by law on July 29, 1958. One day later, the 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from Johnston Atoll in the south Pacific as part of Operation Hardtack I. Two years later, NASA opened the Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, and the ABMA development team led by von Braun was transferred to NASA. Soon, the newly-formed NASA would express their interest in the Saturn design as part of their long-term strategy. Not over 60 days prior to NASA's formation, on 9 June 1959, Herb York, Director of Department of Defense Research and Engineering, had announced his intentions to terminate the Saturn program. York felt that the DoD should not be funding a booster whose only concrete role was to support a civilian space program. A meeting was arrange to "save" the program, which resulted in the Saturn program, and all of ABMA with it, being transferred to NASA.

In a face-to-face meeting with Herb York at the Pentagon, von Braun made it clear he would go to NASA only if development of the Saturn was allowed to continue. Presiding from July 1960 to February 1970, von Braun became the center's first Director.

In 1959, the Saturn Vehicle Evaluation Committee assembled to recommend specific directions that NASA could take with the Saturn program. The committee was chaired by a long-time NASA engineer, Abe Silverstein, with the expressed intent of selecting upper stages for the Saturn after a disagreement broke out between the Air Force and Army over its development. The Saturn proposal had always included such a stage for orbital insertion, the Centaur, a hydrogen-burning stage derived from the Atlas ICBM.

For the intermediate stages the designers has somewhat more flexibility. The Silverstein Committee members outlined a number of possible solutions grouped into different classes, including the low-risk solution von Braun was developing with existing ICBM airframes, as well as versions using entirely new upper stages developed to take full advantage of the booster stage. The class "A" designs were the low-risk solutions; von Braun's current design became the A-1, consisting of the Jupiter/Redstone clustered lower stage, the Titan I as the intermediate, and the Centaur upper. The A-2 replaced the intermediate with another cluster made up from Thor missiles. The single B-1 design replaced the intermediate with an all-new 220" LOX/RP-1 design using four of the H-1 engines that the lower stage also used, along with a new four-engine third stage derived from Centaur but in a 220" diameter. The C designs used hydrogen-burning uppers only; C-1 would consist of the existing Saturn booster, a new Douglas Aircraft 220" S-IV stage powered by four upgraded versions of the Centaur engines with 15,000 lbf (67 kN) to 20,000 lbf (89 kN) thrust per engine, and a modified Centaur using the same engines as a third stage. The C-1 would become the C-2 upon insertion of a new S-III stage with two new 150,000 lbf (670 kN) to 200,000 lbf (890 kN) thrust engines, keeping the S-IV and Centaur on top. The C-3 was a similar adaptation, inserting the S-II stage with four of the same 150-200,000 lbf thrust engines, keeping the S-III and S-IV stages of the C-2, but eliminating the Centaur.

Examining the results strongly suggested that the C models were the only ones worth proceeding with, as they offered much higher performance than any other combination and offered great flexibility by allowing the stages to be mixed-and-matched for any particular launch need. Additionally, the Titan-derived intermediate had little growth potential, its weight already being near the maximum the Saturn booster could lift. If more performance was called for in the future, a new middle stage would be needed anyway. The same analysis eliminated the 160" stage; designed for the smaller Titan, the Saturn booster would be wasting much of its potential performance lifting this lighter load.

Thus the decision came down not to performance, which was clearly settled, but development risk. The Saturn had always been designed to be as low-risk as possible, the only really new components being a minor upgrade to the engine for the lower stage and the Centaur as the upper. Developing entirely new hydrogen-burning stages for the entire "stack" would increase the risk that a failure of any one of the components could disrupt the entire program. But as the Committee members noted: "If these propellants are to be accepted for the difficult top-stage applications, there seems to be no valid engineering reasons for not accepting the use of high-energy propellants for the less difficult application to intermediate stages." von Braun was won over; development of the current design would continue as a back-up, but the future of the Saturn was based on hydrogen and was tailored solely to NASA's requirements.

On the last day of 1959, Keith Glennan, Administrator of NASA, approved the Silverstein recommendations. Chances of meeting the schedule improved with two Eisenhower administration decisions in January 1960. The Saturn project received a DX rating, which designated a program of highest national priority, which gave program managers privileged status in securing scarce materials. More important, the administration agreed to NASA's request for additional funds. The Saturn FY 1961 budget was increased from $140 million to $230 million. On 15 March 1960 President Eisenhower officially announced the transfer of the Army's Development Operations Division to NASA. The total development cost of $850 million during the years 1958-1963 covered 30 research and development flights, some carrying manned and unmanned space payloads. Specific uses were forecast for each of the military services, including navigation satellites for the Navy; reconnaissance, communications, and meteorological satellites for the Army and Air Force; support for Air Force manned missions; and surface-to-surface logistics supply for the Army at distances up to 6400 km.

Ironically, the original Saturn C vehicles imagined in the Silverstein Committee report were never built. As soon as the Saturn became a NASA-tuned design of high performance, the DoD became less interested in it for their own needs. Development of the Titan continued for these roles, and as a result the flexibility offered by the variety of Saturn C-model intermediate stages simply wasn't needed, and were eventually abandoned. The only tiny portion of the original Saturn C design that eventually would survive was the S-IV, the smallest of the new upper stages. It was originally intended that this would be equipped with four upgraded Centaur engines, but to further lower risk it was decided to used the existing engines and increase their number from four to six. A new engine, the famed J-2, was already in the pipeline that could replace these anyway. Even the original S-IV design, the 220" with six engines, was used only for a short period until a larger diameter 260" version was created for the Saturn Block II models, and then finally replaced with the J-2 powered S-IVB of the Saturn IB. Centaur was never used on Saturn.

Launches in the early 1960s would focus on low-Earth orbit using existing ICBM's as launchers, technology development for the lunar program would be based on Saturn, and the actual "direct assent" lunar mission would use the massive Nova rocket, then under design at NASA. The challenge that President John F. Kennedy put to NASA in May 1961 to put an astronaut on the Moon by the end of the decade put a sudden new urgency on the Saturn program. That year saw a flurry of activity as different means of reaching the Moon were evaluated.

Both the Nova and Saturn rockets were evaluated for the mission, which shared a similar design and could share some parts. However, it was judged that the Saturn would be easier to get into production, since many of the components were designed to be air-transportable. Nova would require new factories for all the major stages, and there were serious concerns that they could not be completed in time. Saturn required only one new factory, for the largest of the proposed lower stages, and was selected primarily for that reason.

Upon abandoning the low-risk class "A" designs, von Braun's preference was for two Saturn C-3's conducting an Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR). The debate between various approaches came to a head in 1961. Instead of the C-3 and either direct ascent or earth orbit rendezvous, the working group instead selected the C-5 and Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). After studying what would be required to modify either booster to the new requirement of about 200,000 lb in low earth orbit (LEO), it seemed that the Saturn C-5 rather than the C-3 would be the best solution. The C-2 model would also be built as a testbed system, launching subassemblies into orbit for flight testing before the C-5 would be ready. Further, LOR had a mass requirement about mid-way between the Saturn C-3 and Nova 8L.

The Saturn C-5, (later given the name Saturn V), the most powerful of the Silverstein Committee's configurations, was selected as the most suitable design. At the time the mission mode had not been selected, so they chose the most powerful booster design in order to ensure that there would be ample power. This proved to be a wise decision; although the Lunar orbit rendezvous was eventually selected and reduced the launch weight requirements, as the weight of the spacecraft crept upwards the extra launch capability of the C-5 proved very useful.

At this point, however, all three stages existed only on paper, and it was realized that it was very likely that the actual lunar spacecraft would be developed and ready for testing long before the booster. NASA therefore decided to also continue development of the C-1 (later Saturn I) as a test vehicle, since its lower stage was based on existing technology (Redstone and Jupiter tankage) and its upper stage was already in development. This would provide valuable testing for the S-IV as well as a launch platform for capsules and other components in low earth orbit.

Kelvin Case (talk) 04:07, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Missing blueprints fringe theory

I removed the last paragraph from the Technology section on two grounds:

A popular urban myth has [sic] the blueprints for the Saturn V have either been lost or purposely destroyed. The blueprints and other plans still exist on microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight Center.

• The space.com article is now a dead link (even the Wayback link fails);
• I question whether this violates the balance requirements of WP:FRINGE. How widespread is this supposedly popular myth? Are we giving it undue weight by mentioning it? JustinTime55 (talk) 21:14, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The Wayback link still refuses to make the citation appear, which makes me think it is also a dead link. Is there some trick to how Wayback works that I'm missing? JustinTime55 (talk) 16:02, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The {{wayback}} template was not fully completed. It was specified as:

source: {{wayback|url=http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_five_000313.html}}

result: Archive copy at the Wayback Machine

It should have specified an an available datestamp of the archive:

source: {{wayback|url=http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_five_000313.html|date=20100818173517}}

result: Archived August 18, 2010 at the Wayback Machine

In any event, I fixed it by avoiding that template completely, and instead using the archive-related parameters on {{cite web}}. TJRC (talk) 17:56, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Cancellation of Saturn V second run

When was the second production run supposed to start? When was it cancelled? I presume the run was proposed for resurrection by Saturn V supporters in the seventies and eighties? I would like to learn more about that. Thanks, Rich Peterson198.189.194.129 (talk) 20:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)