NASA Contractors Censoring Saturn V Info

cybrpnk2 writes "Get ready to surrender your data sheets, study reports and blueprints of the Saturn V to stay in compliance with ITAR. Armed guards are reportedly taking down and shredding old Saturn V posters from KSC office walls that show rough internal layouts of the vehicle, and a Web site that is a source for various digitized blueprints has been put on notice it may well be next. No word yet if the assignment of a Karl Rove protege high up in NASA has any connection."

Comments

Saturn V Flight Manual still on NASA site

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad they forgot to take down the Saturn V Flight Manual from their own site, huh?

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.g ov/19750063889_1975063889.pdf

Re:This is why we're still in the Space Stone Age

[Mutatis Mutandis]

It's a damn shame that a nice launch vehicle also happens to make a nice ICBM...

Saturn V would be a ridiculously poor choice to use as basis of an ICBM. It stood 110 m tall, weighed over 3,000 tons fueled, and used liquid hydrogen and oxygen as fuels.

A good ICBM needs to be compact, so that is easily hidden, and above all it must be storable in a ready-to-fire form. That meant using storable liquid fuels instead of condenses gases for first generation missiles, and solid fuels in the later designs. To give an idea, Minuteman III is a mere 18 m long, weighs 32 tons at launch mass, and uses solid fuels. Even the big Soviet R-36 aka SS-18 Satan did not exceed 210 tons, and while it used liquid fuels, it used liquid fuels that could be stored at room temperature.

Rationally, Saturn V never had a military application, and certainly today its technology is no longer of any military value.

Re:Why do I get the feeling...

[foobsr]

Yep, a marketing stunt that coincides with the Saturn 5 restored to former glory.

Besides, the blueprints seem to be stored away, quote:""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.""

CC.

Stupid guards

[Shoten]

If the guard had half a brain, he'd know that ITAR has to do with export, not possession. Under ITAR, the version of IE that supports 128-bit encryption held the same classification; this didn't mean that you had to wipe your hard drive and go back to the 64-bit version, just that you couldn't give/sell/loan your computer to someone in another country. ITAR has no jurisdiction or concern with regard to ownership within the United States.

Re:private sector

[gilesjuk]

Actually, there were moon landings by the Soviet union, however these were unmanned. So he is technically incorrect but correct to point out that others did land craft there.

Re:Protecting their IP?

[PeterBrett]

After all, space has been opened for the enterprising public, maybe NASA wants to keep their edge in rocket development.

Tells you something about R&D if that 'edge' is 40+ years old...

Just got an e-mail from Scott Lowther saying that he's established that there's no ITAR issue and it's just some idiot being unnecessarily officious.

Actually, everything has settled down. Just got off the phone... there's no ITAR issue.

Panic over, everyone!

Re:WTF??? How do you take down?

[Keebler71]

It's probably because of the new CEV program (which is totally not just an Apollo redux... the CEV program will feature more seats).

Yes, it looks the same - but the capability leap is staggering. It *looks* like the Apollo SM/CM for the same reason most bridges look the same - a good engineering solution is a good engineering solution. The CEV is being designed to carry 6 crew to ISS and 4 to lunar orbit (accomodating the increase is habitable volume necessary for this is why the diameter of the vehicle increased from Apollo's 3.9m to well over 5 meters). Much more importantly, the CEV is being designed to support much greater operations (read: science) at the moon. Apollo missions durations were limited by their fuel cells and could only target lunar equatorial landing sites [although it appears the lunar poles is where th intersting science opportunities are] and had narrow launch windows (driven largely by abort return geometries). To support long duration spaceflight CEV is designed to remain dormant at ISS or in polar lunar orbit (in support of a permanent lunar outpost) for up to 6 months at a time. The staggering delta V requirements for just getting into and out of lunar polar orbit (with an anytime abort capability) really put CEV in another class of vehicle than the Apollo CM/SM. Don't assume it is "apollo reduc" just because it looks similar and you don't understand the implications of the differences in requirements.