The Saturn V (pronounced "Saturn Five") was an American
expendable man-rated rocket used by
NASA's
Apollo and
Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973. A
multistage liquid-fueled booster, NASA launched 13 Saturn Vs from the
Kennedy Space Center,
Florida with no loss of crew or payload. It remains the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever brought to operational status from a height, weight and
payload standpoint.
The largest production model of the
Saturn family of rockets, the Saturn V was designed under the direction of
Wernher von Braun and
Arthur Rudolph at the
Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Alabama, with
Boeing,
North American Aviation,
Douglas Aircraft Company, and
IBM as the lead contractors. Von Braun's design was based in part on his work on the
Aggregate series of rockets, especially the A-10, A-11, and A-12, in Germany during World War II.
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| The Apollo crew who never flew. Celebrating the bravery and sacrifice of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee of Apollo One. Freedom (from Earth) isn't free. |
Montage of all 13 Saturn V launches
2 comments:
This is my first time ever I see a photo of someone standing near the engines of a space rocket.
That's huuuuuuuuuuuuuge!
Space rockets look however so tiny when the Earth is in the background... Aren't we crazy to try and conquer space anyway?
I guess we are.
Of course we're crazy. Have you seen the news? :-)
My personal feeling is that everyone is at least a little crazy, it's just a matter of degree.
As the drill instructor at Great Lakes told my Dad and the other recruits training to beat Hitler and Tojo back in the day:
"Everyone's crazy except you and me, and I'm not too sure about you!"
It's the hormones. They're small but powerful, and easily unbalanced. That is the life, yes?
And heck yeah it's important we explore space, and live there some day. There are so-o many things that can go wrong with this beautiful but very exposed 8000 mile diameter of rock we live on, so much that can wipe us out.
The more planets we're on, the greater the odds our species will survive.
But when I look at the antics of Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen I must ask myself: should it? :-)
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