The Saturn V was designed under the direction of Wernher von Braun, the co-designer of the fearsome V-2 rocket that nearly won the war for Germany.
The German V-2 rocket was the world’s first large-scale liquid-propellant rocket vehicle,the first long-range ballistic missile, and the ancestor of today’s large rockets and launch vehicles. Over 10,000 concentration camp prisoners died in their creation. The rockets were 76 feet tall, streaked through the skies faster than the speed of sound to targets over 200 miles away carrying over a ton of explosives. More than 3,000 V-2 rockets delivered explosives that demolished European cities in the months before the end of the war.
The V-2…was the world’s first long-range guidedballistic missile…powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine…The V-2rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line [edge of space, designated to be 60 miles above earth]…on 20 June 1944…
Beginning in September 1944, over 3,000 V-2s were launched by the Nazi Wehrmacht against Allied targets, first London and later Antwerp and Liège. According to a 2011 BBC documentary, the attacks from V-2s resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel…
The rockets travelled at supersonic speed, impacted without audible warning, and proved unstoppable…
[As Germany was losing the war and the Allied Forces advanced across Germany], von Braun and over 100 key V-2 personnel surrendered to the Americans [rather than be captured by the Russians], and many of the original V-2 team ended up working at the Redstone Arsenal [in Huntsville, Alabama]. The US also captured enough V-2 hardware to build approximately 80 of the missiles. The Soviets gained possession of the V-2 manufacturing facilities after the war, re-established V-2 production, and moved it to the Soviet Union.
It is patently obvious that von Braun’s Saturn rocket was America’s response to the Soviets’ seizure and subsequent development of the terrible V-2 rocket technology.
A three-stage, liquid-fueled rocket, te Saturn V was developed under the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon and was later used to launch Skylab, the first American space station [positioned only 250 miles above earth].
As of 2022, the Saturn V remains the only launch vehicle to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit [defined as 1,200 miles above earth], as well as the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful (highest total impulse) rocket ever brought to operational status…
But could it actually propel a lunar module to the moon, park it, and take off again back to earth?
For starters, how do rockets move in “space”? This has been defined by the Karman Line as a “quality” of thin or non-existent atmosphere rather than “a measurement” of distance from earth.
It’s a common misconception among the public that when a rocket lifts off, it somehow pushes against the launch pad, or the air around it, to gain altitude.This is based on common sense and everyday experience. Let’s say you wear skates on an ice rink and you want to move forward; you simply have to push on something solid, such as the side of the rink, in the other direction. But common sense is not a good guide in the case of a rocket; for instance, how would you explain that the rocket is still accelerating toward space when it’s high above the pad and moving through clouds? Indeed, how can it change direction in the vacuum of space?
The simple answer is that a rocket moves by pushing on the gas that flame out from its engines. Even though it seems impossible for a massive rocket to move by only venting gas, it’s the simple scientific truth, based on Newton’s third law of motion: for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, when one object exerts a force on a second object, that second object exerts a force on the first object that is equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction. So, when a rocket violently pushes gas out of its nozzles, that same gas, a plasma composed of a myriad of tiny atoms accelerated at very high speed, pushes in unison on the rocket, propelling it forward. In the case of one of the most powerful rockets ever built, NASA’s Saturn V rocket, which propelled Apollo astronauts toward the moon, the thrust of its engines at lift off was equivalent to 7.6m pounds of gas shooting out from behind the rocket every second.
OK. So let’s calculate the amount of fuel required to make a round trip to the moon.
- The 1st stage
- burned 521,000 gallons of fuel to produce
- 7.5 million pounds of thrust
- for 3 min
- to propel the spacecraft 42 miles / 67 km
- accelerating to 6,164 miles per hour.
- Note, at this stage the entire thrust system had the mass of earth available to assist in pushing off, like a race car’s tires against pavement.
- The 2nd stage
- burned 340,000 gallons of fuel to produce
- 1.1 million pounds of thrust in a vacuum
- for 6 minutes
- to propel the spacecraft 67 more miles to 109 miles / 175 km high – i.e. above the Karman Line into, technically, space because of the lack of air particles.
- accelerating to 15,647 mph.
- During Apollo 11, a typical lunar mission,the third stage
- burned 87,000 gallons fuel to produce
- 200,000 pounds of thrust
- for about 2.5 minutes
- to reach 118 miles / 190 km above earth
- and turn the spaceship at a right angle to the earth
- and accelerate it to 17,432 miles per hour.
Orbital velocity is the velocity needed to achieve balance between gravity’s pull on the satellite and the inertia of the satellite’s motion — the satellite’s tendency to keep going [in a straight line]. This is approximately 17,000 mph (27,359 kph) at an altitude of 150 miles (242 kilometers). Without gravity, the satellite’s inertia would carry it off into space. Even with gravity, if the intended satellite goes too fast, it will eventually fly away. On the other hand, if the satellite goes too slowly, gravity will pull it back to Earth.
S-IVB topped the third stage to reignite the engine for a second burn
- with 87,000 gallons fuel to achieve enough thrust
- to escape earth orbit and place Apollo 11 into a translunar orbit [for] the command and service module, or CSM, Columbia…with the LM [lunar module, Eagle].
The “translunar orbit” refers to the entire round trip orbiting the moon to bring the space ship back to earth.
The Earth, if we think about it from a position hovering somewhere above the North Pole, rotates from west to east…The Moon does the same thing. It rotates west to east and travels around the Earth in the same direction…In both cases, the eastern edge of the body, the edge towards which all that momentum goes, is called the leading edge. The opposite side away from which all that momentum goes is called the trailing edge. (it’s the spin and the direction of travel that matters here.) This becomes important when you do a gravity assist, also called a fly by…the Apollo spacecraft…is affected by all the bodies near it…that’s exerting a gravitational pull…If it flies past close enough and stays flying fast enough that it can’t be captured by the body to start orbiting it, that spacecraft will slingshot around. The spacecraft will get a boost of momentum and change in direction… But the side of the body matters. If the spacecraft flies past the trailing edge, it will get a bigger boost of momentum because it’s going with the direction of travel. If it flies past the leading edge, it will…lose some speed because it’s flying against the direction of the body’s travel…Every mission [was] launched [from earth] towards the east, taking advantage of the Earth’s rotation to need a little less fuel to get into orbit. From there, the next big mission event was the translunar injection or TLI burn. This changed Apollo’s orbit from a nearly circular one to an elliptical one with the apogee, the furthest point, somewhere near where the Moon would be in three days time — mission planners had to account for travel time over some 250,000 miles…passing by the leading edge would…act like a gravitational brake almost, changing the spacecraft’s path to an ellipse that would bring it straight back to Earth without any input from the crew…every mission flew this same basic shape. They all entered the Moon’s orbit from the leading edge side, never the trailing edge side. Apollos 11 and 12…adjusted to get into orbit and land…Main source, and also the book to check for more info: “How Apollo Flew to the Moon” by W. David Woods.
Once in space – i.e. in earth’s thin upper atmosphere, the velocity attained by the last boost was supposedly not hindered by any particles, so the spaceship was able to coast for 75 hours without additional engine assist during the 250,000 miles to the moon.
This sounds great on paper, but does it really work in reality?
the Van Allen Probes transformed our understanding of the particle radiation environment close to Earth during their seven-year mission [2012-2021], notably showing how quickly it swings from tepid to extreme…
There is no mention of the Van Allen Belts which “form a nearly impenetrable barrier” from 400 to to 36,000 miles above Earth’s surface. Besides the danger of charged particles, plasma is a form of matter that requires force to plow through.
Plasma (from Ancient Greek πλάσμα (plásma) ‘moldable substance’)[1] is one of the four fundamental states of matter. It is the most abundant form of ordinary matter in the universe, being mostly associated with stars, including the Sun…
So plowing through the Van Allen Belts be like flying into the sun?
Let’s say that engines 1-3 drove the astronauts, lunar module and high tech equipment through the Van Allen Belts going and coming, twelves times no less in the six claimed manned moon missions.
How is it possible that no damage occurred while coasting through a round trip of 500,000 miles which we – now – know is filled with asteroids?
Quite a feat compared to the Columbia space shuttle blown to smithereens when one piece of foam came loose.
Then there is gravity to consider.
Earth exerts an gravitational effect…that is 80 times stronger than the moon’s. If the moon’s 1/80th force off gravity could slow down the spaceship once it reached the moon, wouldn’t Earth’s much stronger gravity also have slowed down and dragged back the spaceship once it was just coasting?
the Apollo Service Module Propulsion System (SPS), a liquid-fuel rocket engine used on Apollo spacecraft…to steer the spacecraft toward the Moon, place it into lunar orbit, and propel it back toward Earth.
Using storable propellants, the SPS produced a thrust of 21,900 pounds…up to 12.5 minutes, as required.
Interesting that the amount of fuel carried by the SPS is not given.
Compare the SPS to the size of engines 1-3 and SIV-B in the Saturn rocket which, combined, used over 1,000,000 pounds of liquid fuel to produce over 9 million pounds of thrust just to escape Earth’s gravity.
Is the SPS engine big enough to carry enough fuel to
- brake against the moon’s gravitation pull
- push off against the moon’s gravity
- and brake against earth’s gravity on return?
Wow. Talk about the little engine that could!
Or should we consider the possibility that the Saturn Rocket was the next generation V-2 Rocket for delivering ICBMs? It makes complete sense. The obvious improvements made to elevate
- Germany’s highly successful bomb-delivery system its ground based where is was vulnerable to takeover by the Allied enemies, or
- America’s highly successful atomic bomb delivered by planes in airspace which limited the size of the weapons dropped to the time and speed of the getaway plane.
Kingdom Come 