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Saturn C-8
The Saturn C-8 was the largest member of the Saturn series of rockets to be designed. It was a potential alternative to the Nova rocket, should NASA have chosen a direct ascent method of lunar exploration for the Apollo program. The first stage was an increased-diameter version of the S-IC. The second stage was an increased-diameter version of the S-II. Both of these stages had eight engines, as opposed to the standard five. The third stage was a stretched S-IVB stage, which retained its original diameter and engine. NASA announced on September 7, 1961, that the government-owned Michoud Ordnance Plant near New Orleans, Louisiana, would be the site for fabrication and assembly of the Saturn first stages as well as larger vehicles in the Saturn program. Finalists were two government-owned plants in St. Louis and New Orleans. The height of the factory roof at Michoud meant that a launch vehicle with eight F-1 engines (Saturn C-8, Nova class) could not be built; four or five ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saturn (rocket)
The Saturn family of American rockets was developed by a team of mostly German rocket engineers and scientists led by Wernher von Braun to launch heavy payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. The Saturn family used liquid hydrogen as fuel in the upper stages. Originally proposed as a military satellite launcher, they were adopted as the launch vehicles for the Apollo Moon program. Three versions were built and flown: the medium-lift Saturn I, the heavy-lift Saturn IB, and the super heavy-lift Saturn V. The Saturn name was proposed by von Braun in October 1958 as a logical successor to the Jupiter series as well as the Roman god's powerful position. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy identified the Saturn I SA-5 launch as being the point where US lift capability would surpass the Soviets, after having been behind since Sputnik. He last mentioned this in a speech given at Brooks AFB in San Antonio on the day before he was assassinated. To date, the Saturn V is the only launch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lunar Orbit Rendezvous
Lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) is a process for landing humans on the Moon and returning them to Earth. It was utilized for the Apollo program missions in the 1960s and 1970s. In a LOR mission, a main spacecraft and a smaller lunar lander travel to lunar orbit. The lunar lander then independently descends to the surface of the Moon, while the main spacecraft remains in lunar orbit. After completion of the mission there, the lander returns to lunar orbit to rendezvous and re-dock with the main spacecraft, then is discarded after transfer of crew and payload. Only the main spacecraft returns to Earth. Lunar orbit rendezvous was first proposed in 1919 by Ukrainian engineer Yuri Kondratyuk, as the most economical way of sending a human on a round-trip journey to the Moon. The most famous example involved Project Apollo's command and service module (CSM) and lunar module (LM), where they were both sent to a translunar flight in a single rocket stack. However, variants where the landers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
F-1 Engine
The F-1, commonly known as Rocketdyne F1, was a rocket engine developed by Rocketdyne. This engine uses a gas-generator cycle developed in the United States in the late 1950s and was used in the Saturn V rocket in the 1960s and early 1970s. Five F-1 engines were used in the S-IC first stage of each Saturn V, which served as the main launch vehicle of the Apollo program. The F-1 remains the most powerful single combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever developed. History Rocketdyne developed the F-1 and the E-1 to meet a 1955 U.S. Air Force requirement for a very large rocket engine. The E-1, although successfully tested in static firing, was quickly seen as a technological dead-end, and was abandoned for the larger, more powerful F-1. The Air Force eventually halted development of the F-1 because of a lack of requirement for such a large engine. However, the recently created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) appreciated the usefulness of an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Orleans
New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nueva Orleans) is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 according to the 2020 U.S. census, it is the [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michoud Ordnance Plant
The Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) is an manufacturing complex owned by NASA in New Orleans East, a district within New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States. Organizationally it is part of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and is currently a multi-tenant complex to allow commercial and government contractors, as well as government agencies, to use the site. MAF is one of the largest manufacturing plants in the world with 43 environmentally controlled acres——under one roof, and it employs more than 4,200 people. From September 1961 to the end of the Apollo program in December 1972 the site was utilized by Chrysler Corporation to build the first stages of the Saturn I and Saturn IB, later joined by Boeing Corporation to build the first stage of the Saturn V rockets. From September 5, 1973, to September 20, 2010, the factory was used for the construction of the Space Shuttle's external fuel tanks by Martin Marietta Corporation. In 2012, the parts of the fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S-II
The S-II (pronounced "S-two") was the second stage of the Saturn V rocket. It was built by North American Aviation. Using LH2, liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) it had five J-2 (rocket engine), J-2 engines in a quincunx pattern. The second stage accelerated the Saturn V through the upper atmosphere with of thrust. History The beginning of the S-II came in December 1959 when a committee recommended the design and construction of a high-thrust, liquid hydrogen fueled engine. The contract for this engine was given to Rocketdyne and it would be later called the J-2 (rocket engine), J-2. At the same time the S-II stage design began to take shape. Initially it was to have four J-2 engines and be in length and in diameter. In 1961 the Marshall Space Flight Center began the process to find the contractor to build the stage. Out of the 30 aerospace companies invited to a conference where the initial requirements were laid out, only seven submitted proposals a month later. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S-IC
The S-IC (pronounced S-one-C) was the first stage of the American Saturn V rocket. The S-IC stage was manufactured by the Boeing Company. Like the first stages of most rockets, most of its mass of more than at launch was propellant, in this case RP-1 rocket fuel and liquid oxygen (LOX) oxidizer. It was tall and in diameter, and provided of thrust to get the rocket through the first of ascent. The stage had five F-1 engines in a quincunx arrangement. The center engine was fixed in position, while the four outer engines could be hydraulically gimballed to control the rocket. Manufacturing The Boeing Co. was awarded the contract to manufacture the S-IC on December 15, 1961. By this time the general design of the stage had been decided on by the engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The main place of manufacture was the Michoud Assembly Facility, New Orleans. Wind tunnel testing took place in Seattle and the machining of the tools needed to build the stages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exploration Of The Moon
The physical exploration of the Moon began when ''Luna 2'', a space probe launched by the Soviet Union, made an impact on the surface of the Moon on September 14, 1959. Prior to that the only available means of exploration had been observation from Earth. The invention of the optical telescope brought about the first leap in the quality of lunar observations. Galileo Galilei is generally credited as the first person to use a telescope for astronomical purposes; having made his own telescope in 1609, the mountains and craters on the lunar surface were among his first observations using it. NASA's Apollo program was the only program to successfully land humans on the Moon, which it did six times. The first landing took place in 1969, when Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong placed scientific instruments and returned lunar samples to Earth. The first unmanned landing on the far side of the Moon was made by the Chinese spacecraft Chang'e 4 in early 2019, whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), to give the U.S. space development effort a distinctly civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. NASA has since led most American space exploration, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968-1972 Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. NASA supports the International Space Station and oversees the development of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the crewed lunar Artemis program, Commercial Crew spacecraft, and the planned Lunar Gateway space station. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program, which provides oversight of launch operations and countdow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nova (rocket)
Nova was a series of NASA rocket designs that were proposed both before and after the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo program. Nova was NASA's first large launcher proposed in 1958, for missions similar to what Saturn V was subsequently used for. The Nova and Saturn V designs closely mirrored each other in basic concept, power, size, and function. Differences were minor but practical, and the Saturn was ultimately selected for the Apollo program, largely because it would reuse existing facilities to a greater extent and could make it to the pad somewhat earlier. During a series of post-Apollo studies in the late 1960s, considerations for a crewed mission to Mars revealed the need for boosters much larger than Apollo's, and a new series of designs with as many as eight Rocketdyne F-1 engines were developed under the Nova name (along with the Saturn MLV). The image of the Nova C8 is commonly used as a representative of the entire Nova series, and many references to Nova refer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
