SATURN V F-1 Engines
Fifty two years ago, on April 16, 1965, the full power of the Saturn V was felt for the first time in a test stand firing of the cluster of five F-1 first stage (S-IC) engines at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center located in Huntsville, Alabama. The five F-1 engines burned for 6.5 seconds and produced 7.5 million pounds-force (33.4 MN) of thrust. This test firing occurred two months ahead of schedule and created the loudest noise ever heard in Alabama. The mighty roar of the Saturn V’s first stage firing was heard tens of miles away.
This test was a critical milestone on the way to achieving President Kennedy’s goal of landing an American on the Moon and returning him safely by the end of the decade. The Saturn V was the brainchild of Dr. Wernher von Braun and would be the vehicle that America would literally ride to the stars. Without the Saturn V, the NASA moon landings were impossible. The Soviets’ equivalent of the Saturn V was the N1, with an unwieldy cluster of 30 engines in the first stage. All four N1 test flights were failures (1969–1972).
Each F-1 engine built by Rocketdyne was a monster, coming in at 19 feet (5.8 m) high, 12.3 feet (3.7 m) wide and weighing 18,500 pounds (8,400 kg). The engines burnt a fuel-oxidizer mixture consisting of RP-1 (kerosene) and liquid oxygen (LOX). The five-engine cluster combined for a total thrust of over 7.5 million pounds-force (33.4 MN). In fact, the Apollo 15 Saturn V generated over 7.8 million pounds-force (34.7 MN) of thrust. For comparison, this total energy output equals over 85 Hoover dams. The F-1 engine remains the most powerful liquid fuel rocket engine ever developed.
A total of 13 Saturn V missions flew from 1967-1973 and all were successful – a powerful testament to the excellent team that Dr. von Braun had assembled in Huntsville, Alabama, which is now known as the Rocket City.
Dr. von Braun provided more details on the success of the Saturn V, stating that “the Saturn V was not overdesigned in the sense that everything was made needlessly strong and heavy. But great care was devoted to identifying the real environment in which each part was to work – and ‘environment’ included accelerations, vibrations, stresses, fatigue loads, pressures, temperatures, humidity, corrosion, and test cycles prior to launch. Test programs were then conducted against somewhat more severe conditions than were expected. A methodology was created to assess each part with a demonstrated reliability figure, such as 0.9999998. Total rocket reliability would then be the product of all these parts reliabilities and had to remain above the figure of 0.990, or 99 percent. Redundant parts were used whenever necessary to attain this reliability goal.”
QUICK FACTS:
The Saturn V rocket, is an engineering marvel, perhaps unrivaled in human history. The rocket dwarfed everything that came before, and nothing built after has surpassed it.
1. The Saturn V was the brainchild of Dr. Wernher von Braun
A German, von Braun worked for the Nazis during World War II creating the V2 rockets fired on London. He later surrendered and came to the United States following the war, designing the Saturn V for NASA.
2. The Saturn V stands 363 feet tall
That's about 60 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty.
3. At around 6.5 million pounds fully fueled, the Saturn V required a massive crawler-transporter to carry it to the launch pad
Max speed: one mile per hour.
4. The Saturn V consisted of three stages, with each stage being discarded as its fuel was spent
Atop these sat the rocket’s “cargo,” which for the Apollo missions included the service, command, and lunar modules for landing on the moon.
5. The five massive Rocketdyne F-1 engines in the rocket’s first stage produced over 7,500,000 pounds of thrust
That's the equivalent to the power of 30 Boeing 747 jumbo jets!
6. And to produce said thrust, the Saturn V’s first stage burned fuel at the astonishing rate of 13 metric tons per second
Yes. Per second.
7. All that power was used to accelerate the giant spacecraft to speeds in excess of 25,000 mph
That’s about 15x faster than a rifle bullet.
8. The Saturn V was launched 13 times
Twelve for Apollo and once to place the Skylab space station in orbit. Not once were any crew or cargo lost during flight.
9. The Saturn V remains the only spacecraft capable of taking human beings to another celestial body
10. It also remains the largest and most powerful rocket ever built with a load capacity (to low earth orbit) of 260,000 pounds
In comparison the Space Shuttle could only carry 63,500 pounds.
11. Only 65 years separated the Wright brother’s first flight and Apollo 11’s landing on the moon
It truly was one giant leap.
12. The last Saturn V was launched in 1973
Since then human space travel has been confined to simply orbiting the earth.
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