Some truly spectacular recently restored footage of the first Saturn V rocket, launched from the LC-39 Pad at Kennedy Space Center.

At the time, it was the largest launch vehicle to ever attempt a flight.

This mission was NASA's first to use "all-up" testing, a decision that goes back to late 1963. George Mueller, the head of the NASA Office of Manned Space Flight at that time, was a systems engineer who previously worked on military missile projects, recognized all-up testing was successfully used to rapidly develop the Air Force's Minuteman ICBM program, and thought it could be used to meet Apollo's schedule.

Previously, the way Wernher von Braun's team at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and the old NACA Langley Research Center engineers tested new rockets was by testing each stage incrementally. The Saturn V's test program departed from the conservative incremental approach previously used by the Marshall and Langley engineers.

It would be tested all at once, with all stages live and fully flight-worthy, including an Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM). This decision dramatically streamlined the program's test flight phase, eliminating four missions, but it required everything to work properly the first time.

Apollo program managers had misgivings about all-up testing but agreed to it with some reluctance since incremental component tests would inevitably push the lunar landing mission past the 1970 goal.

Well it worked, perfectly.

Kewl

Nothing has ever been as spectacular as a Saturn V launch.

Yup. The original 1st stage of the Sat V was designed with 4 engines. Then the team got the bad news that the payload had gained weight. So the team looked at the design and noticed a big blank spot in the center of the 4 engines and added a 5th.

QA by this time was much better than in Dr. Von Braun's early years, when he was playing with homemade rockets in Berlin and later at Penemuende. So George Mueller was quite correct in his approach - must have read Demming.

The Sat V had a perfect record, minus the capsule fire (not the rocket's fault) and Apollo 13 where everyone made it home alive, in spite of the CM issue.

Probably the height of man's engineering with the slide rule. Well, splitting the atom might rank higher, but it had many more Noble Laureates involved. (Einstein, Hahn, Fermi to name a few)

Read Dr. Space, the best of his biographies.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Nothing has ever been as spectacular as a Saturn V launch.

I count myself lucky to have lived near KSC for several years and go to see a number of launches. Even on Merritt Island, or on the mainland in Cocoa, they were impressive. But they weren't Saturn V's, and I would really have loved to been around for one of those.

Awesome footage, hits me right in the deepest American part of my heart. Thanks for posting, Sig2340.

Thank you for posting and sharing this David- my son has started to pick up some of my NASA infatuation. In fact, after we told him that he wasn't getting a Bearded Dragon for Christmas (the wife said "NO WAY" (LOL), he changed the ONE thing he wanted from that to this:



He loves learning his Science and his favorite school subject is Math... in 1st grade... and he HATES the "new" math- calls it stupid. He can divide and multiply double digits in his head...and they want him to count bumps...

He's going to eat this video up!!!
Thanks again!

Great video. I grew up in Houston, and I lived through much of the manned space flight programs. However, I've never been privileged to personally witness a launch. Visiting NASA was always great and all, but to witness an actual launch would have topped that many times over.

"Probably the height of man's engineering with the slide rule. Well, splitting the atom might rank higher, but it had many more Noble Laureates involved. (Einstein, Hahn, Fermi to name a few)"

Actually at Los Alamos in the lead up to Hiroshima much of the computational burden was done by one or more roomfuls of ladies hammering at the 100+ button/keys of Monroe or Smith Corona/Marchant mechanical calculators so as to reach the required precision that the wonderfully fast slide rule cannot achieve. These machines persisted in many less well funded shops well into the 1960's.

Then the IBM 7090 and then 360's really took over in many big shops such as at Clear Lake in Houston(NASA). Too, Seymour Cray's CDC machines were the fastest computationally in the late 60's and those became the favorites of the nuke labs subsequently.

Awesome! I was a kid back in the 60s, just loved the space program.

I have a question.

I often hear that we couldn’t quickly go back to the moon because we lack a heavy lift engine capable of doing the job. I ask “What about the Saturn V?” and get told that we no longer know how to build one. Why can’t we go to the Smithsonian, get the one hanging there, and reverse engineer it?

What am I missing? Why could we get to the moon the first time in nine years from scratch, but we cannot do it again without three decades of effort? I’m suspicious that we as a nation, and NASA in particular, lack the drive and focus of the past.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
I have a question.

I often hear that we couldn’t quickly go back to the moon because we lack a heavy lift engine capable of doing the job. I ask “What about the Saturn V?” and get told that we no longer know how to build one. Why can’t we go to the Smithsonian, get the one hanging there, and reverse engineer it?

How often do you hear this and who is telling you this?

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
I have a question.

I often hear that we couldn’t quickly go back to the moon because we lack a heavy lift engine capable of doing the job. I ask “What about the Saturn V?” and get told that we no longer know how to build one. Why can’t we go to the Smithsonian, get the one hanging there, and reverse engineer it?

What am I missing? Why could we get to the moon the first time in nine years from scratch, but we cannot do it again without three decades of effort? I’m suspicious that we as a nation, and NASA in particular, lack the drive and focus of the past.

The plans and jigs/frames for manufacturing the Saturn V were willfully destroyed (they were afraid we would be tempted to build more). Imagine trying to build a Boeing 747 using only an existing airframe. It would be easier than starting from scratch, but it would be horribly expensive (much more so than if we had the tools, jigs, metal stamps, assembly line, ect).

We could do it, but it would be prohibitively expensive. . .

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
I have a question.

I often hear that we couldn’t quickly go back to the moon because we lack a heavy lift engine capable of doing the job. I ask “What about the Saturn V?” and get told that we no longer know how to build one. Why can’t we go to the Smithsonian, get the one hanging there, and reverse engineer it?

What am I missing? Why could we get to the moon the first time in nine years from scratch, but we cannot do it again without three decades of effort? I’m suspicious that we as a nation, and NASA in particular, lack the drive and focus of the past.

The plans and jigs/frames for manufacturing the Saturn V were willfully destroyed (they were afraid we would be tempted to build more). Imagine trying to build a Boeing 747 using only an existing airframe. It would be easier than starting from scratch, but it would be horribly expensive (much more so than if we had the tools, jigs, metal stamps, assembly line, ect).

We could do it, but it would be prohibitively expensive. . .

After some quick looking into it, there does seem to be some contention about what was or wasn't destroyed. However, since the technology wasn't continuously updated, it's basically been lost.

https://space.stackexchange.co...tion-plans-destroyed

The drift I get from that discussion is that although the plans for the rocket are indeed intact and stored, the specs call for parts that can't be sourced anymore, and probably couldn't have been for the last 50 years. The specs for a particular vacuum tube, as used as an example in the page linked, would only be known to the manufacturer of that vacuum tube at the time, and the specs that are stored would only call for the part number. That's a whole lot of data to backfill and update to modern specs. Let alone molds and jigs and all that, virtually all the manufacturing methods of the time have changed. We could reverse-engineer it, but like you say, the cost would be ridiculously prohibitive. At least as far as a government-run program.

At the INFINITY Science Center at Stennis Space Center, Bay St. Louis, MS

That is one impressive rocket.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:...I’m suspicious that we as a nation, and NASA in particular, lack the drive and focus of the past.

Snowflakes would never survive the heat or pressure required to build a system to get to the moon.

One must realize the "brains and drive" of 1960s "to the moon" were those who were honed and forged in the crucible of the drepression, WWII, and the momentum of staying in front of rising Communisum.

We no longer have those of such a generation, nor those who selfish put themselves last, in order to put what appears as an impossible goal first.

Instead, we had the "we for me" crowd, that is driven by selfishness, while proclaiming to be for the good of everyone.

Think about the true meaning of; "One for All, and All for One", and realize, the snowflake, as an individual, thinks everything and everyone's efforts is for them, as the individual.

It is 180 degrees out of phase of the mindset 60 years ago.

But it was a marvelous and exiting time, to see it all happen as it occurred.

There was a time, when I truly believed, "we" could accomplish anything as a nation.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
I have a question.

I often hear that we couldn’t quickly go back to the moon because we lack a heavy lift engine capable of doing the job. I ask “What about the Saturn V?” and get told that we no longer know how to build one. Why can’t we go to the Smithsonian, get the one hanging there, and reverse engineer it?

What am I missing? Why could we get to the moon the first time in nine years from scratch, but we cannot do it again without three decades of effort? I’m suspicious that we as a nation, and NASA in particular, lack the drive and focus of the past.

Arguable, we cannot build a Model T again. The technology is outdated and has been discarded. The SR-71 Blackbird was designed on slide rules. Would we want to use them again?
Given, if funding was available we could produce new moon rockets. At the same time the private sector seems more innovative. NASA for example had never launched and then soft landed a first stage.

To sum up, I’m basically hearing that we *could* build the Saturn V if we wanted to, but we’d have to revamp the specs to conform to modern techniques and processes. The real reason we haven’t is because the demand isn’t there; indeed, we didn’t go to the moon again 40 years ago, and still see no reason to do so, so no need for a Saturn V type stack.

It’s analogous to saying we could build battleships, but we don’t because carriers are more useful. We can’t build battleships today because we don’t want to and don’t need them. They’re a relic.

If and when we ever need a Saturn V type lift, we can build it, but it will be something modern, like the Ares V.

This seems to be the jist of it from what I can tell.

I'm a relic.

And I am still as gobsmacked today, as I was when it was happening, when I think of the folks figuring all that Buck Rogers shit out with no one else's "ideas, brain power, examples or work to work off of", but that they were making it happen, right then, right there, right now, and a lot of it was a one and only shot at proving the concept and the "cyphering" it all out with slipsticks, pencils and paper and for a few, the precious time using a computer to verify what they had already figured out.

And all the while hoping the Rooskies would not drop the "big one" on our head before we finished.

So, pardon me, while I bask in the shadow of some of the baddest MF'ers that ever wore white shirts, skinny ties, patent leather shoes, pocket protectors, ugly as fuck glasses, and flatops you could land an F-11 Tiger on.

Yeah, I was impressed with all of it, and still am.

Remarkable follow on that SpaceX and others are doing, but they sit on the shoulders of greater people.

Those who dared go where others never have, with no expectation of success, will always get the lion's share of respect from me, than those who ride their coattails.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
To sum up, I’m basically hearing that we *could* build the Saturn V if we wanted to, but we’d have to revamp the specs to conform to modern techniques and processes. The real reason we haven’t is because the demand isn’t there; indeed, we didn’t go to the moon again 40 years ago, and still see no reason to do so, so no need for a Saturn V type stack.

It’s analogous to saying we could build battleships, but we don’t because carriers are more useful. We can’t build battleships today because we don’t want to and don’t need them. They’re a relic.

If and when we ever need a Saturn V type lift, we can build it, but it will be something modern, like the Ares V.

This seems to be the jist of it from what I can tell.

Kind of, yeah. As was said earlier, a lot of the tooling is gone. But there is no reason to recreate it as we can build them better today. But no real demand to do so.

But with the battleships, even if we wanted to build one, I don't think the equipment to roll plate of a battleship thickness still exists in a readily serviceable condition. No longer much demand for steel plate that thick.

And in keeping with what Sigmonkey is saying, go visit the Battleship Texas. See how they crammed sailors into every nook and cranny inside that ship. People volunteered to go to war in that thing. And were glad to do it. But today, if you housed prisoners like that you'd likely be slapped with an injunction from a federal judge for "cruel and unusual punishment". And back in her day, a battleship was a luxury liner compared to life on a cruiser or destroyer.