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Saturn V Fallen on Hard Times
n9fzx writes "The best remaining artifact of the Apollo Program, Huntsville's Saturn V, is 'pocked with pits and cracks, and patches of mold and mildew', having survived for forty years outdoors. Alabama's U.S. Space and Rocket Center is trying to raise a measly $5 million in order to preserve the beast, with $1.5 million in the kitty so far. Paypal, anyone?"
It should have been used! I assume this is a complete rocket and not a replica, and when the Saturn V's were in service probably could have been launched. It is too bad it was allowed to wither away. I assume that it was abandoned along with the other remaining Saturn V rockets when the moon program was suddenly terminated and the focus shifted to the low-orbit space shuttle.
... with a giant condom!
*ducks*
And with rent at the University getting steeper, it's probably in better condition than where I live. Not to mention, cheaper. When can I move in?
We used to drive past that rocket whenever we would travel to visit family down in New Orleans.
It looks big in person... looked even bigger as a kid... truly an impressive sight.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Hell, I could build my own themepark on the moon! With hookers, and blackjack! Forget the blackjack.
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
According to this post, only about $40 million would need to be raised to service the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the best and most productive scientific instruments ever made. The Saturn 5 out at Huntsville is just a big hunk of metal laying on the ground, completely nonfunctional, and sure, maybe it gets even more pockmarked as the years go by, but it's not like it's going to suddenly vanish or anything. And anyway, unless something has happened, there's another one on display at Kennedy Space Center (I saw that one in the early 80's). I'd say put the $5 million toward servicing the Hubble and actually accomplish some useful exploration, rather than just polishing up a relic of glory days gone by.
If Stephen Baxter could use the Saturn V for a one way trip to Titan, I see no reason why we can't use it for Mars instead! Baxter has even done the research :-)
And just for the record, yes the book does drag, but it also has a great story of a dilapidated American space program doing something heroic which I found a tale worth reading.
Oh wait, that doesn't make sense at all.
Too bad I don't have an extra $1.5M lying around somewhere. Maybe I could talk to Capital One about raising my credit limit? ;)
Anyway, it was truly a remarkable construction. Everything about the Saturn V was huge. From the buildings involved in construction to the enormous crawler built to haul the damn thing. We're talking an absolutely massive scale... In fact, according to the history channel's show Modern Marvels, the only human-produced sound louder than a Saturn V at lift-off is the detonation of an atomic bomb.
It is a historical irony that space exploration takes second place to mass destruction in decibel output, though. Perhaps that says something about human nature?
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Only has a Thrust To Weight of 1.5 (compared to >2 TW on a Eurofighter)
Weighed 5 million pounds fueled
Main engines burned for less than 2.5 minutes
Was travelling 6,000mph at burnout
Was slightly more fuel efficient than a Crystler SUV
Beep beep.
Apollo 20 was indeed assembled and serves as a memorial to the workers at the Michoud Assembly Plant near New Orleans. The first and second stages on display in Houston were originally slated for Apollo 19. The booster used for Skylab was that of the Apollo 18.
The owls are not what they seem
Protection and preservation are important. I think it needs a large roll down rubber covvering -- perhaps with an Spacemen reservoir in the tip!
ls
The hungry are not dieing from lack of money. They are dieing from corruption, apathy and malice, to name a few. Think Zimbabwe.
"Yes we can!"
I really can't get my head around how a society could undertake such a massive project as Apollo, then fail to preserve the artifacts for future generations. Heck, I am a future generation. I was only one year old when the last Saturn flew. I've seen the Saturn V in Houston, it's really astonishing. I can only imagine what it would look like standing next to the LUT.
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I know that feeding a troll usally means that one will get biten but here I go. Lets say we can get this money to actually help these refuges and it does not get eaten up by curruption. What happens to the children these people have during a one year period, who feeds them? And then what happens when the money runs dry? they just starve and so do their new kids. They real need to learn to take care of themselfs, not just accept hand outs.
Remember the Viking sailing ships?
Remember Columbus' sailing ships?
Remember the Conestoga wagons?
Remember the first steps off this planet?
and onto another world?
It tells who we are, like it, or not.
That way it can go into a movie museum with all the other movie props! (Kidding... no I don't think they were faked)
Yes, while we're at it, if the Statue of Liberty begins to fall apart, no worries, we'll just let it fall over.
Effiel Tower? Nah, France surrenders.
Big Ben? I already have a watch!
Taj Mahal? Whatever, we can just visit it virtually since they scanned it with 3D lasers or whatever...
</sarcasm>
What's with all the "who cares" posts? If you don't care, don't donate to fix the rocket. Go feed the hungry or whatever. Jeez, I've said this twice before in the last 24 hours, but geeks/engeneers really will find a way to disagree with anything just for the sake of argument. It's the god damned Saturn V! This ain't just America's history, this machine brought the first MAN to the moon. I say preserve it at all costs!
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
One thing I hate about most main stream space museums is that they tend to just spraypaint over everything so it all looks freshly painted. Much of the stuff at the A&S in Washington DC has been so "restored" that the pipes have been removed and everything repainted. It looks as bad as paint job from one of thouse places that repaint cars for $200.
The good places will carefully restore what is needed and replace pipes when needed and put them back to where they had been and they leave all the serail number plates on parts so they can be read.
There is a complete Saturn V indoors in a facility at the Kennedy Space center. Its in great shape (at least from the outside) and totally protected from the weather. Its in a museum facility that anybody can see.
I would say it was a hugely bad idea to leave such a complex piece of machinery outside in the elements, unprotected.
It should be restored to all its glory and made into a prominent display. I went to the Saturn V center at Kennedy just a few months ago, and you can almost hear people's jaws drop when they step into the Saturn V display. It's possibly one of the most historically important machines man has ever built, it should not be allowed to rot and decay outside.
Since I'm not a self rightous middle class twat with delusions of saving the poor down-trodden masses, I'd say the 7,000 refugees/famine victims aren't being used for anything useful either so they can 'depart' as well.
We can keep the 'feed the world' t-shirts, USA for Africa videos, etc, and generations of the 'future' can reconstruct your tedious "I'm such a virtous wanker" pomposity through virtual reality whenever they feel the need.
That's merely my opinion, though.
Well said. $2 a day given to the world's starving will not reach the starving, it would line the pockets of corrupt officials or get soaked up in the vast inefficiency the majority of charities operate with.
Space exploration (or historic preservation) and removing world poverty are not mutually exclusive. Ending world poverty requires removing corruption and improving logictics in 3rd world countries, pumping money at them will not solve these problems, it will sustain them.
--
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Don't spend money on nostalgia when the next generation of space craft are being built by private companies who are short of cash.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
maybe those wetbacks could fix up the damn antique rocket in exchange for green cards and a bowl of rice a day?
We all save 0.00007c of taxes, they get to give their children a chance to be IPO pump and dump scamsters, everybody wins!
This seems a lot of money to preserve what is mostly a large metal tube. What are they planning on doing that will cost that much? It's a museum piece so the components don't have to be kept in working order; it just has to look intact wherever they are visible.
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In a short-sighted, cold and logical sort of way, you are absolutely correct. However, we as a species like to think that we are both social and moral creatures and our actions today affect our lives tomorrow. Therefore, just letting the 3rd world starve is not just wrong in a moral sense, it's not smart considering what will happen a few years down the road when the remaining billions come for our throats.
Then again, we (the peoples of the "West") really need to have this discussion. We've needed it for over a hundred years, but no one has been willing to pick it up, for various reasons. USA for Africa is just a Band-Aid (in your face, Bob Geldof!), but we will need to help them somehow, and soon - if for no other reason than our own long-term survival on this planet. The present state of affairs is not sustainable.
Money for nothing, pix for free
This may sound a bit callous, but I think preserving the rocket is more important than feeding 7,000 starving people for a year. The rocket is part of our history; it is a fully functional launch vehicle that may be needed in the future. "Plans and working diagrams" aren't the only things that go into building a rocket: a lot of experience goes into it too, and this can't be shown in plans. All of the original builders of the Apollo are retired, and in another 30 years, all will be dead. You can't simply build a working model off of the plans if all the designers are dead. Having a working model to dissect and recover the technology provides many more clues as to the technology if the designers are dead.
And don't pretend like the Apollos are ancient history. It may not seem like it now, but there will be a time when we need that technology again. Shuttles are one thing, but if we want another manned mission to the Moon, we're going to need the old, powerful rocket technology found in the Apollos. We haven't built them in 30 years, so letting our final working model turn into rust would be foolish.
As for the 7,000 starving people, they don't amount to much. If we feed 'em for a year, they'll die after that anyway. They won't contribute to mankind's future in space. This is the callous part, and many (religious) people probably wouldn't agree with me here, but a rocket is worth more than the lives of 7,000 starving 3rd-world-country-dwellers who will never amount to anything. Think of it in another way: a lot more than 7,000-lives-worth of effort went into the Apollo program, so letting all of that go to waste over only 7,000 current lives wouldn't be worth it.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Cut the damn thing into hand-sized pieces, seal in plastic bags, sell them for $25 a piece and use the proceeds to send Carly to Mars on a one-way mission to sign outsourcing contracts with the Martians.
Damn, my living room museum needs a brick from the Berlin Wall, a chunk of the Biggest Rocket Ever Built, and a single hard-copy SCO share to go along with my original mint-condition 20-diskette pack of IBM's OS/2 (which never flew, either).
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I used to work (until about 1.5 years ago) pretty much opposite the Johnson Space Center in Houston. They have a Saturn V outside there - I often took people who came to visit me to JSC, and we'd have a look around the rocket park.
It's an impressive thing up close. From our parking lot at work, it didn't look that impressive. But when you got up close to it, it was another story.
However, the Saturn V at JSC is also in pretty poor shape - it's corroded right through in places if you look closely. The white paintwork on the CM is badly cracked. Apparently, it also became a home for some owls (which is not a bad thing really).
The best artifact inside JSC is an Apollo capsule that went to the moon and back. You can actually (or could when I was last there) touch the heat shield - it's neat touching something that's been to the Moon and back. When you look at it closely, with its primitive electronics and its small size, you wonder how they ever did it.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Out of that 5 million, only about 500 thousand is really needed. The rest goes to politics and pork.
If you want to fix it, get a group of volunteers that are willing to fix it themselves and then offer to do it.
As was discussed recently, they have a lot to teach us.
I'm not convinced at all that we should be spending billions of dollars of government money on new launchers when we have a system sitting around that works very nicely, thank you very much.
Sure, a brand new system would be better, but between the brevity of our pass by-with Mars, the vitality of private space programs, and our humbled and abused government finances, perhaps the Saturn should be more then a five million dollar paperweight and conversation piece.
And even beyond that, nothing gives perspective on a subject liking getting to look up close and personal at the gear used to do it. Especially since leading-edge gear from the seventies and earlier (like, say, the Spirit of St. Louis) always looks so DIY to anybody who pays attention.
I found it very energizing when I was a kid to see the Kennedy Space Center Saturn and think "hmm.... that wouldn't be so hard to build at all".
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Ebay anyone?
Having fond memories of the Huntsville Space and Rocket center from my youth, I recently went with my wife and a friend. We were shocked to find the entire place in utter disrepair. Most of the rockets on display outside (including the Saturn V) were visibly rusted with many completely rusted through in spots. Most of the paint was either flaking or so sun-damaged that it would come off on your fingers with the slightest touch. Not only was the rocket park essentially a scrap heap, but the museum seemed to be now devoted almost entirely to military technology. One exhibit, the "future warrior" exhibit was particularly disturbing. I hate to think that one of our country's biggest sources of pride has shifted from scientific progress and exploring frontiers to the presumption that we are a bunch of badasses who can annihilate anyone who crosses us.
One thing that stikes me every time I drive through southern states (North Carolina,South Carilina, Georgia, Alabama,etc) is the compete lack of public self-respect. Especially on the major highways. Each state has tons of sites to see and even sites woth seeing, but you wouldn't guess it from the highway.
Instead of seeing the museum as an expense they should view it as a moneymaker ($tourism). Alabama politicians must be just plain stupid to let the U.S. Space and Rocket Center fall apart. Maybe the federal government should step in and confiscate these national treasures?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Why, if the rocket is owned by the U.S. Government (I believe the rocket is owned by NASA and leased to the center) and the Rocket Center, which is owned by the State of Alabama on U.S. ground (Marshall SFC / Redstone Arsenal), are they going to private sources for funding of this restoration? There is a little thing called taxes which are already diverted to the center.
... older kids went to "Space Academy") when I was there was the oldest piece on the training center floor. I kid you not, it was so badly wired that it caught fire inside the electrical panels (the structure was hand-built and mostly wood and wires). No, not just once ... but at least 3 times just while I had kids in it (and I watched one of literally dozens of teams most weeks). The answer was always to evacuate the kids, put out the fire, replace any bad wires, and open it back up for the next time. I'm not kidding ... the place should have been shut down by the fire marshall and sued by parents. And yes, we brought this to the attention of management on a regular basis as did the maintenance staff.
...
Also, it is largely the Rocket Center's fault that things got so bad. I worked there for 2 years as a counselor about a decade ago and the condition of the exhibit then was the same as it is now (minus another 10 layers of paint and mildew/moss/etc). Guess what their idea of maintaining the exhibit was to go out every year and paint over the past year's mildew with a new layer of paint. Anyone who knows about paint, mold and mildew will realize what decades of overpainting will do. I'm sure that covering the exhibit with a simple structure like a tent-roof, while expensive, would have cost less than $5m when they first set up the exhibit, even counting for inflation since then, especially if they had leveraged their relationship with the army engineers on Redstone Arsenal.
Of course, the USSRC had very short-sighted management throughout the time I worked there as well as for at least a few years before and after I left. They continuously had smaller exhibits break down and their maintenance was horrible. They had great exhibits, but didn't do a good job of keeping them up.
Other examples? Sure:
* The simulator used for Space Camp (elementary age
* Most of the other rockets in the park have a similar problem and undergo the same painting "refresh". The difference is they are mostly upright and so it is not as visible (and they're alot smaller). Except for their shuttle mockup, which is going to have the same issues in a few years as the SV exhibit.
* The Shuttle tank usually has pennies and pencils stuck in it from kids tossing them into it. They usually clean them out about once a year. Not sure what the solution for this would be, but even a sign saying "hey, please don't deface this exhibit" would have been useful.
* The "centrifuge" exhibit/ride continuously broke down. It sometimes was down for a week or more. It was very popular, but instead of getting a real overhaul one year they just shut it down and scrapped it.
Additionally
- Space Camp programs, during the years I was there, brought in a tidy profit. However, the museum was in such disrepair that it was a loss center. So, instead of Space Camp programs being able to expand and fix things properly, money was diverted to the museum to keep it afloat.
- During the years I was there it was standard practice to lay off everyone they could during the holiday months. While this is practical it also had the add bonus (to the center) of marking all of us as Seasonal employees. This meant that we didn't have to be paid benefits.
- Along with no benefits, even though some counselors had been there for years, there was also no overtime. Think that being scheduled for 80+ hours a week (a few of us worked 2 programs, and I know of at least 4 people including myself who -averaged- 80 hours in the summer and sometimes hit 100 hours
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
This is getting out of hand... /. thread, I've read about Saturn V rockets in Houston, Orlando, Huntsville, and Kennedy Space Center.
In this
(I saw the one at KSC last summer... spectacular and very well kept. Bigger than I imagined.)
I thought there were 3 Saturn V rockets, from Apollo 18, 19, and 20.
Can anyone clarify??
Thanks.
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Estes still makes and sells a Saturn V kit, but a small outfit in CO sells a bigger version, with instructions in MPEG video form on CD-ROM:
http://www.apogeerockets.com/Saturn5.asp
The Saturn V could be rebuilt today, but would cost a lot due to reengineering. It's not that the plans were lost, but that technology has changed. Many things available in the 1960's are not available any more, because they've been replaced by improved technologies. For example, Saturn V had sequencers, not computers. The whole rocket could be run with the equivalent of a mini-itx board saving a lot of weight and complexity over the old sequencer circuitry, but the reengineering would cost millions.
The engines themselves were relatively unremarkable (except for their amazing size) scale-ups of typical kerosine-LOX engines of the 1960's. Easy to make new ones if we wanted to.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
This is a nifty table that explains why Russian engines are so desireable.
This is a fluffier piece on the RD-180, now being built in the US under license.
Finally, this is a crowded table of all the Energomash engines. NOTE: this table's hard to read, and you'll find some WILD variants...
Frankly I hope they DO, I would really like to see this country get back into real space exploration and something like that would REALLY kick us into overdrive. I've been saying for a while now what we need is a good competitor for space exploration, once Russia went kaboom we quit going ourselves, nothing like a good pissing match to get us back in space.
--- www.f-theocean.com
Sorry, somehow my link didn't come through.e _000313.html
http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_fiv
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.