The Saturn V in perspective

[BUTCH1]

I'll add to this, by sharing what I learned at KSC...

"Feel the space race come alive as you stand under the largest rocket ever made--the mighty Saturn V. This monumental 363-foot rocket [its diameter is 33 feet] was America's lunar transportation for 27 brave astronauts who traveled to the moon and back." During the 1st (of 3 stages)... "the five F-1 engines propelled the spacecraft to a speed of 5,000 MPH and consumed fuel at a rate of 15 tons per second. Approximately 2.5 minutes after launch, the engines cut off and the stage was jettisoned into the Atlantic Ocean.

What's neat is they used the fuel as a coolant (it circulated in tubes inside the combustion-chamber to deal with the insane temps) AND as a hydraulic fluid used to gimball the outer 4 engines. The pump ALONE generated 55 thousand HP to feed that much fuel/oxidizer into the manifolds. After doing it's job it was then dumped into the lower part of the nozzle to keep it from melting. The guy who designed the F1 was quite blunt, "it's all going to come down to pump design and material selection", they got it right!.

 

[herm0016]

KSC is better than disney, cheaper too.

you must go. i will go back next time i'm in the area. i could spend hours standing under that and the shuttle.

 

[Xstatic1]

Last pic I'm posting at KSC...

The orange External Tank (ET) and white Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs)

 

[IronWing]

Why liquid fuel for SLS? The ICBM fleet uses solid fuel with a very low failure rate.

 

[SlowSpyder]

This video is a few years old, so I assume a lot of people have seen it, but if you haven't it's very good:

 

[Darwin333]

Why liquid fuel for SLS? The ICBM fleet uses solid fuel with a very low failure rate.

Pretty sure it produces considerably more thrust and I know for a fact that liquid fueled engines can be throttled while solids once you ignite them they going max till they burn out.

 

[John Connor]

That's a nice model he has there in that vid.

 

[John Connor]

How long does it take to fuel a rocket? I'm sure we are talking about swimming pool quantity of fuel here.

 

[herm0016]

how long? not sure... an Olympic pool is about 660 k gallons and a fully fueled Saturn 5 is 861k gallons when including both stages.

 

[Paratus]

Why liquid fuel for SLS? The ICBM fleet uses solid fuel with a very low failure rate.

Liquid propellants allow the engines to be throttled to hit specific orbits. The shuttle derived H2 - LOX engines also have higher Isp than solids. Liquid upper stages can be restarted to boost you out of LEO and up towards geosynchronous orbit or lunar orbit.

Solids have one flight profile and that's it. They do have really good thrust to weight ratios which is why several launchers use them as boosters.

 

[Brovane]

Very Cool Video Tribute to the Saturn-V, lots of old footage.

A short funny video, about Astronaut's John Young's heart rate at lift-off of the Saturn-V for the Apollo-16 mission. This was Young's 4th space flight and this was Duke's first and only spaceflight.

 

[Brovane]

Why liquid fuel for SLS? The ICBM fleet uses solid fuel with a very low failure rate.

Congress mandated by law that the SLS would make maximum use of Space Shuttle flight hardware. So that meant that the SLS will use RS-25 engines and solid-fueled boosters. Isn't it wonderful when Congress make's rocket design decisions?