Saturn V Preservation Efforts

PizzaFace writes "Saturn V: The rocket that took man to the moon remains a totem of its time and a magnificent memento of youthful superpower. Yet Slashdot reported a year ago on the neglect suffered by the Saturn V rockets that were not launched into space. Some progress is being made toward preserving these awesome vehicles. The Kennedy Space Center has already brought its Saturn in from the rain; Houston and Huntsville are putting shelters up this year and working on funding for restoration and more permanent indoor exhibits. These gigantic masterpieces of 20th century engineering deserve a visit - maybe a pilgrimage."

Comments

Keep your eye on the ball, here

[CompressedAir]

As one of the many thousand people who work at Johnson Space Center, I have watched them enclose our Saturn V over the past few months. All of us are quite appalled.

Where I once came to work next to a giant reminder of NASA's past accomplishments (or rather, left for lunch by it, as I usually come in via the back gate), now I only see a big, white, ugly building. Where once tourists could stand back in awe as they took in the rocket's size, now they have to peer through windows at it.

A permanent building housing our Saturn V will surely protect it better from the elements... but it wrecks the whole reason for having it there in the first place.

A better preservation program would have three steps:

1. Commit the money needed to re-paint it once every 10 years.

2. Inspect it once a year for structural problems; repair those as they arise.

3. Do something worth doing and go someplace worth going, so that our most impressive accomplishment is not a 30 year old rocket.

What about the tech ?

[MosesJones]

Sure the rocket is impressive, the most powerful machine every created.

But standing still its just a great big tube. Having seen the one at Kennedy, its just not that impressive as a static thing. When it was running then sure, what a beast.

But what about the tech that REALLY got man to the moon. Saturn V is just a big WWII rocket, the thing that made the difference was the IBM computing "power" that directed the thing.

I'd love to see the old mission control re-built with the original style technology, and simulate the information going into it. Imagine a school trip where you had to solve the same problem as for Apollo 13, or making the error over-ride decision of Apollo 11.

It wouldn't even really matter if it was just running on one PC behind the scene as long as you got the experience of how limited the power was.

Firing a rocket is grease monkey impressive. Getting it to hit the moon is the achievement.