Why are there no Saturn 5 rocket plans?
April 27, 2008 11:31 PM   Subscribe

Why was NASA made to destroy all copies of the Saturn 5 rocket plans before funding of the space shuttle was approved?
posted by micklaw to Technology (7 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nasa says they weren't. However there does appear to have been a recent space.com story saying that they were lost.
posted by rdr at 11:47 PM on April 27, 2008


NASA says this isn't true. (This story was the first result for googling "saturn v rocket plans".)

Paul Shawcross, from NASA's Office of Inspector General, came to the agency's defense in comments published on CCNet -- a scholarly electronic newsletter covering the threat of asteroids and comets. Shawcross said the Saturn 5 blueprints are held at the Marshall Space Flight Center on microfilm.

"There is no point in even contemplating trying to rebuild the Saturn 5 ... The real problem is the hundreds of thousands of parts that are simply not manufactured any more."

"The Federal Archives in East Point, Georgia, also has 2,900 cubic feet of Saturn documents," he said. "Rocketdyne has in its archives dozens of volumes from its Knowledge Retention Program. This effort was initiated in the late '60s to document every facet of F 1 and J 2 engine production to assist in any future restart."
[...]
In years past, rumors have abounded that in the 1970s the White House or Congress had the Saturn 5 plans destroyed "to prevent the technology from falling into the wrong hands".

That seems doubtful -- it would be a formidable terrorist group that decided to build a Saturn 5 to wreak havoc on the world, or build a lunar base. Also, by the1970s, the Soviets apparently had given up on the race to the moon.

posted by LobsterMitten at 11:49 PM on April 27, 2008


And from the sci.space FAQ from 1993: same answer.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:56 PM on April 27, 2008


The real problem is the hundreds of thousands of parts that are simply not manufactured any more.

To shoot down the next OH WE'RE SO STUPID thing before it happens, this doesn't mean that we've lost the ability to build the Saturn V in any way. We could easily do so.

All it means is that building an exact replica of a Saturn V would not be cost-effective to throw mass into orbit. It would be cheaper to just design a new rocket using current electronics and other tech, that doesn't involve building a 1960s-tech transistor factory and that doesn't involve building factories to make exact replicas of obscure 1950s and 60s aerospace fasteners and so on.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:24 AM on April 28, 2008


the damn thing cost nearly a trillion dollars. I'd prefer to see Osama holed up in Pakistan for the rest of his life trying to get the thing made. We'd never hear from him again.
posted by Ironmouth at 7:49 AM on April 28, 2008


There is a whole one at Kennedy Space Center they can crib from ya know.
posted by Freedomboy at 9:53 AM on April 28, 2008


We wouldn't want to even try to revamp and update the design.

The Shuttle is scheduled to stop flying in 2010. NASA is working on a replacement, and it's going to look a bit like an update to the Apollo system, since it's going to go back to using conical reentry capsules. The system is called Orion.

HOWEVER, the main booster for it will use solid fuel for its first stage. It won't be an update of the Saturn V.
posted by Class Goat at 11:22 AM on April 28, 2008


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