Any fan of NASA, space, or scifi has inevitably asked: What *Is* the Saturn 5 Rocket? We’ve all seen the videos, watched Apollo 13, but at the end of the day: How did it all happen? Smarter Every Day asks and answers this question, which we’ll get into for this Sci-Friday. Take a look:
It’s worth mentioning that this 58-minute video is the TIP OF THE ICEBERG when it comes to the Apollo rocket program. For example:
- It burned more fuel in 1 second than Lindbergh used to cross the Atlantic
- It went from paper design to flight in 6 years
- It launched the Skylab space station
- NASA’s iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), at the Kennedy Space Center, was specifically built to assemble the HUGE Saturn V rockets.
- During development, the rocket was called the C-5. This refers to the 5 large F-1 first stage engines. The F-1 is still the world’s largest liquid fuelled rocket engine.
- At 110.6 metres (363 feet) tall, the Saturn V is the tallest rocket ever built. That is taller than a 36 story building!
- Fully loaded with rocket propellant, the Saturn V weighed nearly 3 million kilograms (6.5 million pounds)! The same as 400 elephants! How crazy is that?!
- The first two stages fell back to Earth and burnt up or landed in the ocean. The third stage stayed in space or crashed into the Moon! Five of these third stages are still in space orbiting the Sun near Earth.
- The first stage used a rocket fuel known as RP-1. The second and third stages used supercooled liquid hydrogen as the rocket fuel. All three stages used liquid oxygen to burn the fuel.
- The powerful first stage generated 7.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff! Even the Space Shuttle could only generate a maximum of 6.8 million during launch.
Want to know more?
- Here’s the Rocketdyne F-1 Rocket Engine User Manual from Rocketdyne
- Apollo/Saturn V Space Vehicle Selected Structural Element Review Report, AS-503
Thanks to Wikipedia and Spaceopedia.com for this background info on the Saturn 5 program. I hope you enjoyed this moment of scifi and space tech nerdery! Please feel welcomed to dive down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Have a great weekend! 🙂
