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NASA Contractors Censoring Saturn V Info

Posted by kdawson on from the should-never-have-released-those-pr-stills dept.

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."

2 of 583 comments (clear)

  1. Saturn V Flight Manual still on NASA site by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  2. Re:This is why we're still in the Space Stone Age by Mutatis+Mutandis · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.