This article is more Aerospace Facts than Aviation Trivia, but I thought it would be interesting for you anyway. |
The early Space Program of the 1960's and 70's was a testament of what America can accomplish when pushed. To win the space race to the moon, America needed to catch up with and beat the Soviets at their own game. This was the competitive Push that rallied us to do the impossible, to invent new technologies and materials needed to land American astronauts on the Moon - First - and plant the Stars and Stripes on it's surface. All this had to be done within a relatively short time period. What we achieved was nothing short of miraculous! This miracle was the Apollo/Saturn 5 vehicle, the "Moon Rocket." The design and manufacturing of this machine, as well as the other (Mercury and Gemini) vehicles, took approximately 400,000 people and 10 years to develop. The Saturn 5 was the largest and most powerful liquid fuel rocket ever! It had to be, in order to transport 3 astronauts to and from a target 240,000 miles from Earth, not to mention a temporary stay and "walking" on the lunar surface to set up scientific experiments. It would take a machine with almost inconceivable power to boost a payload of 125 tons to a speed of 25,000 mph just to break away from Earth's gravity. The fully fueled Saturn 5 weighed in at 6.75 million pounds! Now to put that into perspective, a loaded 18 wheel tractor-trailer rig weighs roughly 80,000 pounds. Now imagine a stack of 84 of these truck rigs just to equal the weight of one Saturn 5! The power it took to launch the Saturn/Apollo vehicle was even more astounding: five rocket engines (on the first stage) that generated a total thrust of 7.5 million pounds! The Space Shuttle's engines don't even come close, and remember the Saturn's design goes back to the late 1950's and early 60‘s! The first stage Rocketdyne F-1 engines were the all time gas guzzler's - burning 3500 tons of fuel (a half-million gallons) in 2.5 minutes, that's 15 tons per second! And you thought your Suburban was thirsty. The big F-1's were so powerful that the first tests had a few problems, but the engineers persevered. And the perseverance paid off - the Saturn 5 achieved a perfect operational record. The Soviet's Moon Rocket was of course unsuccessful, mainly because they could not build an engine equal to the F-1. Their big booster's kept exploding. A "cluster" of 32 smaller first stage engines, which was an extremely complex design, was necessary and this complexity was it's ultimate doom. On one attempted launch, the Soviet "Moon" rocket exploded just after lift-off and took the life of more than 100 people! The "Race" to the Moon was an extremely risky endeavor and not many people remember the ultimate price that was paid by both American and Russian crews. We "needed" the Soviet's all along to get there. It was, in a sense, a collective effort to accomplish this monumental feat. The Plaque on the Grumman built "Lunar Lander" states: "For All Mankind." But it was the American Flag on the Moon FIRST. Keep-em-flying, Brad |