Saturn 5 Blueprints Safely in Storage

space.com ^ | 13 March 2000 | By Michael Paine

[Dead Dog]

I really question the nay sayers when it comes to restarting Saturn V production. I mean come-on...out of production washers? They are all probably Mil, NAS, or AN crap anyway...if not the manufactures used their own proprietary stuff..that has approved substitutions.

I like the idea of using the F-1 powerd first stage with a SSME powered second and third. This old bird was build modular, and hell for stout. IIRC, the F-1s were over engineered to the point of having a 13 flight life..if they could have been returned.

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[Johnny_Cipher]

Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are working on designs for a new giant launch vehicle called Magnum.

Built out of old Ferrari parts, obviously. Will the launch platform be in Hawaii?

[Poohbah]

I really question the nay sayers when it comes to restarting Saturn V production. I mean come-on...out of production washers?

Yes.

Out-of-production LOTS of things.

To give you an idea how bad this can get, an officer on a battleship (IIRC, it was the New Jersey) in the 1980s contacted the manufacturer of the emergency diesel, by looking at the nameplate, finding the company, and tracing the subsequent fictitious-name records.

The company told him "We never built diesels."

They are all probably Mil, NAS, or AN crap anyway...if not the manufactures used their own proprietary stuff..that has approved substitutions.

Congratulations. It's a configuration change, and must be tested all the way through--EACH time. You can't make a wholesale changeout like that.

[Dead Dog]

To The Moon Bump.

[Criminal Number 18F]

This story is four years old. I didn't notice at first, although I thought it was strange they were reacting to a 1996 book. The giveaway was quoting Geoff Hughes, from Rotary Rocket, a long defunct company. d.o.l. Criminal Number 18F

[RightWhale]

What? Assemble that pile again? Got to be kidding.

[Frank_Discussion]

WoaoaoaaoaoHH!!! Stop the gosh-darned presses!! We still have the Saturn V prints!? This isn't hugh, it isn't even merely HUGE, It's:

GIGANTIC!!!

I'm with you - substitutes/retools to get the parts we would need is not be that hard. Spending the money to scrub the requirements to get the hardware converted from 1960's tech to 2003 tech would be nigh-insignificant in comparison to ground-up development. It was a watershed of new ideas and was a system built to do a lot, reclaiming it's capability would be outstanding.

Ahh!! Man, I'll all in a tizzy about this!

[FreedomCalls]

Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are working on designs for a new giant launch vehicle called Magnum. It ... could launch 80 tons (81,280 kilograms) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). This compares with around 20 tons (20,320 kilograms) for the piloted space shuttle... Its lift capacity, however, would be less than the 100 tons (101,600 kilograms) that the Saturn 5 and Energia could manage.

So in spite of starting from scratch, they still can't manage even to come close to equally Saturn 5's lift capability from 40 years ago. Too many years of Dan Goldin (A FOB) must have really wreaked havoc on NASA.

[Frank_Discussion]

Whaddaya mean, "pile"? The Saturn V's may have been beasts, but they were GOOD beasts. Dropping their production lines off the cliff, as it were, in favor of Shuttle was monumentally stupid.

[demlosers]

I would be too stupid to destroy the Saturn 5 designs. They don't have to rebuild it. Just incorporate the best of Saturn 5 designs in future heavy lift vehicles.

[Voltage]

One problem would be finding the needed vacuum tubes...maybe someone has an old console TV that could be raided?

[snopercod]

Here at the house I have a photo album documenting the dismantlement of the LUT (Launch Umbilical Tower) which sat atop ML-1 (the Mobile Launcher that sent Apollo 11 to the moon).

While going through an abandoned trailer at the cape, I found the album in a trash barrel.

I also have the complete set of progress photos which document the conversion of ML-1 to MLP-3, used to launch the shuttles. Negatives, too.

I attemped to turn those all over to NASA, but they wouldn't accept them. So I simply took them home for safekeeping.

[RightWhale]

they still can't manage even to come close to equally Saturn 5's lift capability

They could do even better if they had a mission requirement to lift so much. But there is no mission except Space Shuttle launches. Maybe Bush's new project guidelines will require some serious tonnage in orbit and on the moon. Then we'll see stuff.

[PAR35]

Poobah is right. It isn't just that the parts aren't made anymore. In many cases the factory that made the part (or make the equipment that made the part) isn't even there anymore. Companies have merged, spun off, gone bankrupt, and laid off trained employees.

[Dead Dog]

Don't get me wrong, I know it would be a huge expense, but to throw in AN hardware as an issue is a red herring.

All of that stuff is qual tested, most all of the systems have modern (lighter) equivelents. And to say EVERYTHING would need new qual tests isn't quite true. I would guess 90% of off the shelf substitutions could be qualified by similarity analysis to whatever standard the new system was tested to...probably the same Mil-Spec. ALL of this stuff is and was done by SCD.

It would be a major program, but I doubt it would be worse than starting over from scratch.

[RightWhale]

Did I say pile? Sorry, meant to say stack Yeah, that's the ticket.

Let's see if we can upgrade some F-1 motors while we're at it. The Russians might like to help with that.

[Professional Engineer]

One problem would be finding the needed vacuum tubes...maybe someone has an old console TV that could be raided?

Just a couple of months ago, I gutted an old console TV. I wanted the cabinet, so chucked the guts.

Durn, If I'd only known.

[Poohbah]

All of that stuff is qual tested, most all of the systems have modern (lighter) equivelents.

Did you just say "lighter?"

Uh-oh. Weight and balance issues. Even MORE testing.

And to say EVERYTHING would need new qual tests isn't quite true.

If you're intending to man-rate the sucker, it will.

[Dead Dog]

Really, The F-1s are all we need. To be overly allturistic, it's just a friggin tube loaded in column (with a bunch of vibration and sonic loads).

Some of the old timers at NASA said you felt it more than heard it. LOTS OF BASS!!