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

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

[QuantumG]

It's a damn shame that a nice launch vehicle also happens to make a nice ICBM, but the progress of getting off this rock is a teenie bit more important that keeping foreign countries from spending less than a few million dollars and a few years of research and development to make their own design. Meanwhile, the much harder problem of making a man rated rocket is being done over and over and over again. Talk about duplication of efforts.

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

[Bazman]

Actually its more like a nice ICBM that also happens to make a not-very-nice launch vehicle. With an ICBM, you don't really care about re-usability. Just get it up, over and down onto your enemy with as much explosive payload as possible. With a launch vehicle you want to get up, up, and more up, then maybe down and up again, many times. Saturn V was the logical extension of the German V-2 rocket programme, but as a launch vehicle it was an expensive means to the end of getting to the moon before the Russians.

That doesn't stop me worshipping it :) I had a model Saturn V when I was a kid in about 1970, and if I still had it now and some government agent decides its a military component and wants to take it away from me, well, over my dead body. I'd feel the same way if I was working for NASA and they started tearing down my vintage 1960's Apollo posters.

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

[jamstar7]

It's what they came up with that was buildable in the time allotted. Sure, NASA was working on single stage to orbit designs, but they knew SSTO wouldn't be doable until the 90's, and the challange was to get there before 1970. It was a pure case of 'throw enough money at the problem and you'll get results'. And they did. By today's standards, Apollo was a dinky little deathtrap, the men who rode it were no-foolin' heroes.

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

[tgd]

I'm not sure the Saturn V would make a nice ICBM. Unless you're launching a payload of nukes, 40 nuclear engineers and a Grayhound Bus carrying them all, it may be a bit overkill.

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

[MichaelSmith]

By today's standards, Apollo was a dinky little deathtrap,

The more I read the ALSJ the more respect I have for the hardware. The Apollo CM would have survived both shuttle disasters. The Apollo 13 incident resulted in a more mature spacecraft with more redundancy. A similar incident on a shuttle would probably have killed the crew immediately. Building the system out of small modules meant that the architecture could accommodate expanded modules. Apollo serviced the lunar program, skylab and apollo-soyuz.

I just wish NASA had looked into an economical launcher to support it after the supply of Saturn Vs ran out.

the men who rode it were no-foolin' heroes.

No argument from me on that front.

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

[Pad-Lok]

"Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Saturn Vtoo in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings."

They sure were fast on that one!

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

[jamstar7]

How do you re-secretize something that is in Public Domain???

By invoking National Security, of course.

But then, if you posted someplace that NeoCons are total whackjobs that need massive amounts of medication to make them sane again, you're likely to get arrested for revealing state secrets...

Nah...

[NoMaster]

You've got it all wrong.

It's so they can hide the mini-bar from the kids...

Of course

[iamdrscience]

No word yet if the assignment of a Karl Rove protege high up in NASA has any connection.

Ah-ha! How could I be so foolish thinking that this could just be the case of one security guard being an idiot? Surely this is all part of Karl Rove's plan! He needs to get rid of the Saturn V rocket plans in order to keep our enemies from attacking the top secret laser-equipped moon bases he's built to control the earth with. It's all so simple!

Re:Of course

[bxwatso]

I know the majority of people dislike Karl Rove, but let me assure you, the Government was doing stupid things long before he came along, and that will never change.

No worries

[clarkkent09]

Just buy a new one from ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/Apollo-Saturn-V-Plans-1967-Ama zing-Item_W0QQitemZ230155998873QQihZ013QQcategoryZ 13903QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Seriously though, this must be some kind of silly bureaucratic mixup, someone overreacting to the new directive from above etc.

As if someone trying to build a freaking ICBM would not have already picked up every bit of public information (and more) regarding US, Soviet etc rocket technology.

Why just the Saturn V?

[Stanislav_J]

I would think older, simpler rocket designs would be more applicable to the needs of an emerging space power or rogue terrorist group. Why not censor and confiscate information about the older Titans that carried Gemini? Or the Redstone, Atlas, or even Little Joe rockets that propelled the Mercury program? Sure, they don't have the glamour or cachet of the Saturn V (which was, and still is, a beautiful machine), but I'm sure there are a lot of old technical manuals and such about those floating around. (I live in Central Florida, and have been to many estate sales of former NASA employees where there are tons of such material available. And, yes, I have profited quite nicely from them on eBay, thank you.)

But this is a futile effort -- 40 years of being in the public domain is a bit much to reverse and cover up now. Why do so many people still think that you can rein this stuff in after it's already been so widely disseminated? Especially in the Internet era -- it's like when someone wants something taken down from YouTube or some other site when millions have already viewed and downloaded the file, and copies and copies of copies and copies of copies of copies are multiplying like bunnies through the "tubes." Nowadays, once something is "out there" it's OUT, and you can no more undo the damage than you can "unexplode" a bomb.

Re:Why just the Saturn V?

[arivanov]

It is the same level of thinking that tries to remove the nitration chemical reactions out of the chemistry textbooks. Very popular with many governments and many countries.

It does work after a fashion. Instead of working tireless only that grand bang that will make loads of smoke and noise, kids sit bored staring into the blue screen until they go completely brainnumb. The process produces easily controlled model taxpaying consumer-producers which is what the government wants. Bingo, goal achieved.

kdawson, stop

[Winckle]

Seriously, this is not your political blog, I'm no right winger, but even I'm getting sick of it.

Re:So why mention it?

[iamdrscience]

How on earth is the parent poster defending censorship? Nothing was said about his opinion of this censorship, he was questioning the summary's implication that this connected with Jane Cherry (Karl Rove's "protoge").

Ridiculous

[moosesocks]

The Saturn V is one of the greatest accomplishments of American Engineering. To shroud it like this is nothing short of disrespectful to those who built it, not to mention a pretty startling reflection of the current status of science in America.

That all said, anybody who would consider using a Saturn 5 rocket as any sort of weapon is absolutely insane. The Saturn rockets were huge, and designed to deliver massive payloads (all of Skylab was launched via a single Saturn booster). The capacity of a Saturn rocket is just shy of 118 times as massive as the largest nuclear device ever constructed.

Needless to say, it'd be pretty damn difficult for anybody to hide a rocket that big, along with that much nuclear material.

Smaller rockets are scarier, because bombs don't need to be particularly heavy in order to cause serious damage, and because they can be easily concealed and launched at sea.

Oh, geeee...

[GFree]

Hmm, do they really think they're gonna be successful in blotting out references to Saturn V info on the web?

Hey, censor-guys, lemme give you an example, see if you follow:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Hiding information never works.

[miffo.swe]

There is no benefit from hiding information about technology. Take the atom bomb as an example. Once you know its possible to build one you are halfway there. The leap wasnt that somebody succeded in building an atom bomb but rather that someone had a rough idea that it might work. Any country hellbent on making a missale can do so over a small period of years. They know its possible and building the knowledge up isnt that hard. Often the basic information (fuels, materials etc) are very well documented, all you need is to work out the kinks IRL. Sadly things like this hurts the US most since their engineers wont learn from previous mistakes and endavours. They have to relearn things over and over from person to person.

I don't know about this

[NotmyNick]

All I see is a guy who makes his living selling memorabilia and documents screaming about the possibility of some of those docs becoming artificially scarce (in just a few short hours!) and the only corroboration he seems to have is what looks to be the excerpt of what could have been an email from an unknown person in some NASA office somewhere at Kennedy. Something smells.

Re:private sector

[phozz bare]

The two nations that have put people on the moon

You are of course referring to the United States and America?

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

Idea: Nuttier than a fruitcake.

[Ancient_Hacker]

Totally nutty idea.

• Nobody's going to build a Saturn V for "terrorist" applications.
• You can't build a Saturn V from a poster. Or a blueprint. Or even 100 blueprints. Every detail, from the metallurgy of the rivets, to the welding techniques for the heat exchangers, to the construction of the tools, dies, jigs, test fixtures, processing chemicals, dips, platings, surface treatments, case-hardenings, ball peening, test plans, processing timelines, and much more, each encompasses a whole thick book of technology, most of which has been lost. Or is available on microfiche from any good Univerity or Govt documents repository library. Plus the Saturn V had about 130,000 subcontractors that supplied everything from gold-plated lockwashers to platinum-skinned servomotors. The technology for those was not captured in the basic Saturn V documents. For instance the specs for a small servomotor might have read "35 ft-lbs torque, 0.1% resolution, 77 to 800 degrees C. and how they did it was a trade secret of some now defunct subcontractor. And the making of the motor's teflon-coated wires was a trade secret of the wire manufacturer. And so on. Multiply that by 130,000 times.
• So you not only would not want to, you could not even begin to build a Saturn V from the "blueprints".

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

[tgatliff]

Why is this seen as a political issue? I mean, ignorance applies everywhere.... And "Neo Cons"?? Where the hell did this come from?? Instead of everyone just speculating and trying to fufill what you want to believe, why doesnt someone just file a FOIA on some of the Saturn V docs. In fact, I will do that today and see what turns up... At least then you have an official response...

And no, I am not going to believe this "terrorists could use Saturn V to deliver nuclear warheads" crap. That argument is just plain ignorant.....

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.

Re:Protecting their IP?

[Opportunist]

Gah, when you let government work on decryption... The message was that we plan to moon the terrorists.

You Didn't See Anything.....

[segedunum]

.....this isn't the rocket you're looking for.

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

[jon_anderson_ca]

It's probably because of the new CEV program (which is totally not just an Apollo redux... the CEV program will feature more seats). If terrorists know exactly where the join was between the first and second stages of the booster rocket, they could... uh...

How about this: we can't say exactly what they could do because it's classified! But trust me, they could totally do stuff.

Really.

Would the US government lie to you? Are you calling us liars? Why do you hate freedom?????

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:Stupid guards

[starless]

ITAR has no jurisdiction or concern with regard to ownership within the United States.
No, it governs the nationality of the people who are allowed access to the information. If something is ITAR controlled only US citizens and green card holders can have access to it.
ITAR applies to almost anything that could plausibly be used to construct a spacecraft or launcher.
ITAR can make international collaborations very awkward, and even makes it hard to work with US universities with the large number of non-US people working at any major university. Some US universities don't even allow ITAR controlled data on their campuses (presumably to avoid the chance of being prosecuted).

I don't know whether ITAR is slowing down the development of weapons by foreign governments and terrorist groups. But, in my experience, it certainly is slowing down the development of US science and technology.

Re:private sector

[Oktober Sunset]

He's talking about a little know moon landing by Elbonia, using the unconventional catapult launch method instead of the more commonly used rocket. The Elbonian government covered up the landing themselves, as it was deemed embarrassing that the moon was a nicer place to live then Elbonia.

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

[crawling_chaos]

Even if you can not make it impossible for your enemies to obtain a secret, you can still make it harder -- every step of the way. And making it harder for America's enemies (such as Iran and North Korea) to build their own ICBMs is a good goal.

And so it goes. Once a great nation was told "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." Now a small one is sold the message of "be afraid, be very afraid, and let the good God-fearing leaders take care of you sheep."

What happened to my country, and will you cowards please give it back?

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:private sector

[Hijacked Public]

In return for knocking down the Berlin Wall so we could build McDonaldses all over East Germany, the US gave them 8 hours of film time at Studio Moonbase.

I can't find a link at the moment but I'm sure one is out there somewhere.

Re:private sector

[AlHunt]

Have we forgotten the accomplishment of The Duchy of Grand Fenwick and professor Kokintz so soon?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_on_the_Moon

http://www.amazon.com/Mouse-Moon-Margaret-Rutherfo rd/dp/B00004ZBVN

Sad, sad, indeed.

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

[iminplaya]

I guess if Rove & Co were living in ancient ages, they would have made sure that any reference to catapults were removed from Library of Alexandria?

Naw, he'd just burn the place down.

Re:private sector

[Bastard of Subhumani]

You have a link to the German details?

In three words, Werner Von Braun.

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

[tbannist]

They were confiscating and destroying posters purchased at the gift shop. These aren't technical specs, they're public relations fluff posters with a rough cut-away display of the interior of the rocket.

So you think it's reasonable in a free and just society for armed men to go into a private company's offices, rip publically available posters of 40+ year old technology off the walls and destroy them in the name of national security?

Think about this for a second. The Saturn didn't have computers on board, it's older than the computer age. When it was designed, you probably couldn't fit a computer into it's entire cargo area. It doesn't make sense on any level to try to even pretend that the technology should be classified, it's clearly a sign of massive incompetence on the part of the Bush cronies who were recently put in charge at NASA. These people have no relevent education or experience, hell one of the morons was the second in command at FEMA during Katrina and now's he's got a different plush job at NASA where he's screwing up just he did a FEMA.

It will probably take decades to clean up the mess that Bush is making of the U.S.

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

[tbannist]

'Where do you see "cowardice" here?'

I see cowardice whenever someone tries to justify intolerable abuse of power on the basis that maybe it will make it harder for some unknown enemy to strike at us.

Brave men demand more than vague threats and hand waving before they surrender their basic rights, cowards don't.

Re:private sector

[mikeabbott420]

He aimed for the moon but hit London. (old,old joke)

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:private sector

[MillionthMonkey]

The future of space travel belongs to the private sector.

That's what they said four years ago about the private sector in Iraq. And privatization turned out to be inferior there to socialism in every way, even as implemented by a buffoon like Saddam Hussein: Socialism 1, Privatization 0. That really opened my eyes to the intellectual bankruptcy of this decades-old canard, that the public sector needs dismantlement and the private sector deserves to be worshiped. They both share corruption as an Achilles heel.

Who the hell wants to watch Nike and Disney doing cross-marketing from a low Earth orbit anyway? Which they will have bought for pennies at a corrupt auction so they can launch billboards and crap into space? LEO has already been considered as a venue for obnoxious advertising, to the horror of astronomers- and once it becomes feasible, you can expect to see a lot of well-funded lobbying efforts to protect its feasibility for investment. I'd rather have our current system even if it occasionally launches drunks or psycho bitches into space.

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.