Saturn V

The amazing rocket that boosted the Apollo capsules moonward!

The Saturn V Rocket, designed by Wernher von Braun’s team at Huntsville, Alabama’s Marshall Space Flight Center, is the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever brought to operational status... though NASA's new Ares series will be comparable.

NASA launched thirteen multistage liquid-fuel expendable Saturn V rockets in the Apollo and Skylab space programs between 1967 and 1973.

On the launch pad, each with an Apollo spacecraft on top stood more than 36 stories high and weighed about 6 million pounds.

The “Saturn 5” was composed of three stages, and five Rocketdyne F-1 rocket engines that together yielded nearly 8 million pounds of thrust, burning highly-refined kerosene, with liquid oxygen used as the oxidizer.

The SI-C first stage, and the largest, was built by Boeing, and weighed over 5 million pounds when fully fueled.

The S-II second stage was built by North American Aviation, and connected to the SI-C by an interstage ring, which separated after the second-stage engines began firing. The second stage was powered by five Rocketdyne J-2 engines, propelled by liquid hydrogen.

The S-IVB third stage was built by the Douglas Aircraft Company. In the Apollo configuration, this third stage carried the command ship and lunar lander, as well as the IBM-designed Instrument Unit, the brains of the Saturn V rocket. The IU contained the rocket's primary systems, including inertial guidance, radio communications for telemetry, tracking and command, power, and emergency detection of vehicle malfunctions.

I want my MTV!

A single restartable J-2 engine powered the Apollo spacecraft into Earth orbit, then a second burn later on would kick the spacecraft into the trans-lunar injection burn to put it on course for the Moon.

Together, all three stages reached 363 feet. Three Saturn V rockets survive, but only the one at Johnson Space Center in Houston (restored in 2004) is made up entirely of rocket stages intended for flight. Three planned moon flights, Apollo 18, 19 and 20, were cancelled.

Me... looking extremely tiny beside the
Saturn V rocket at JSC! (Summer 1999)

(S)pace Yourself

The Command Module is the blue area, which held the front docking probe, internal controls, food & water, parachutes, plus the yaw, roll and pitch jets all around the inhabitants. Seated left to right: lunar module pilot, command module pilot, commander.

This cone-shaped "CM" contained 15 miles of wiring and over 2 million different parts. It was 12 feet tall and 12 feet, 10 inches at it’s base. It weighed 12,392 pounds and was constructed of aluminum alloy, stainless steel and titanium. The crew panel included 24 instruments, 566 switches, 40 event indicators and 71 lights.

The green area is the Service Module, which held fuel dells, liquid oxygen and hydrogen tanks, reaction control jets, fuel inlet, and toward the back is the high-gain antenna. The purple area is the SM engine and nozzle extension skirt.

All together, they make up the "Apollo Command/Service Module."

The Lunar Module was a two-stage spacecraft, standing 23 feet tall. The upper “ascent” stage contained living quarters, controls, communications and the attitude guidance, navigation and radar systems used for maneuvers.

The brain of the “LM” was housed in a state-of-the-art computer with 36,864-word fixed and 2,048-erasable memory. Basically, the 2009 posts alone of my blog are already bigger than what their computer could store!

The lower “descent” stage had propellant used to get the craft down to the Moon surface. Triangular bays supported batteries, water tanks and helium used to pressurize the propulsion system. When EVAs were completed, the descent stage provided the platform for launch off the Moon.

The external skin of both was paper-thin aluminum, the lower stage covered by multiple layers of gold Mylar insulation. You could easily poke a pencil through the side of the spacecraft. Designed only to operate outside Earth’s atmosphere, the LM had no heat shield and was incapable of safely entering Earth’s atmosphere.

If you're interested in seeing more detail, the NASA History Division has some fascinating project diagrams and the Encyclopedia Astronautica has an exhaustive history of development for all the Apollo hardware.

God of Moon Landings

Greek literature describes Apollo as God of the Sun, partially replacing the Titan Helios as a deity of light and radiance. In his horse-drawn chariot, Apollo pulled the Sun in its course across the sky each day, though he also found time to inspire cults at 10 Oracular shrines, not the least of which was the Oracle at Delphi.

The son of Zeus and Leto, and twin brother of Artemis, Apollo was also the god of prophecy, music, dance, poetry, plague, medicinal healing, archery and intellectual inquiry. Wouldn't the Greeks have been awed if they knew that one day, their idealized hero would be the god of manned moon missions!

So while Kennedy was giving his rousing speeches, a few thousand engineers, scientists, builders and astronauts were trying to make the goals of Project Apollo a reality:
1. To land explorers on the Moon and return them safely to Earth.
2. To establish the technology to meet all national interests in space.
3. To achieve for the United States preeminence in space.
4. To carry out a program of scientific exploration of the moon.
5. To develop man's capability to work in the lunar environment.

Project Apollo spanned the years 1961 to 1975, and to this day, it stands alone in achieving manned missions beyond low Earth orbit (LEO); it is also the lone space program in the history of our planet to have set landers on the surface of Earth’s satellite, and provide the life-support for 12 Earthlings to survive and work in the lunar environment.

Just the process of "attempting" to launch moon missions led to technological leaps in rocketry, avionics, computers, telecommunications and "life support" in lifeless environments. It would not be an over-statement to say that the collective work of innumerable people across the civil, electrical and mechanical engineering fields made Project Apollo one of the greatest feats of humankind.

We left our planet. Members of the human race stepped onto another orbiting world. It was astoundingly miraculous then, and it's still pretty damned mind-blowing now, despite how blasé people have become with a "been there, done that" mind-set, in an age where the average cellular telephone contains more technology than the Apollo capsules.

But At The Time... SIZE MATTERED
This rendering is to scale, and shows the relative sizes of NASA crafts, from the first three spaceflight programs. The first astronauts joked that you didn't so much "ride" in the tiny Mercury capsules as you "wore" them; there was only one seat, and not much room to maneuver! The Gemini capsules were an improvement – room for two seats in the command module, but still rather claustrophobic.


A major goal of Apollo was to allow room for three astronauts per mission; added to the mix was an additional service module behind the command seats, and later of course, as pictured above, the lunar module. Some interesting facts about all the components tomorrow!

July 1969 - 2009

For the month of July, the Pillownaut blog will celebrate the Apollo program! In preparation for the 40th Anniversary of the first lunar landing, I’ll count up through each Apollo mission... and I thought it fitting that we begin with: the goal, the plan, the vision.

While John F. Kennedy did not found the space program, about three years into its inception, he delivered a critical speech that would galvanize the nation, pointing every set of American eyes toward the lunar surface. I find this speech so fascinating, given how many open questions were still such mysteries to scientists and fledgling astronauts. The financial amounts must have sounded insane in that era. And was there really a time when we didn’t have thousands of TV and weather and comm. satellites up there??

May 25, 1961
Washington DC

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations -- explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there…

Secondly, an additional 23 million dollars to accelerate development of the NOVA nuclear rocket. This gives promise of some day providing a means for exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the end of the solar system itself.

Third, 50 million dollars will make the most of our present leadership, by accelerating the use of space satellites for world-wide communications.

Fourth, 75 million dollars -- of which 53 million dollars is for the Weather Bureau -- will help give us a satellite system for world-wide observation.

It is a most important decision that we make as a nation. But all of you have seen the significance of space and the adventures in space, and no one can predict with certainty what the ultimate meaning will be of mastery of space. I believe we should go to the moon.

... This is not merely a race. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men fully share."


Read and/or listen to the entire oration at the JFK Library.

Not long after, mathematician and composer Tom Lehrer would release his infamous Wernher Von Braun criticism song, which he introduced on his album by saying, "What was it that put America at the forefront? What was it that will make it possible to spend 20 billion dollars of your money to put some CLOWN on the MOON? Good old American know-how, that’s what."

Clearly, space exploration and the price tag that comes with it drew scathing disapproval then, as it often still does now – and I’ve always thought it sad that President Kennedy did not live to see the final victory, but I’m still betting Mr. Lehrer (and all the other naysayers) were glued to their television sets in 1969, watching Apollo 11 along with the rest of the world.