posted December 31, 2004 12:42 AM               

"Saturn"
by Alan Lawrie

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Saturn V was the largest, most powerful rocket ever produced. Developed in the 1960s, in response to President Kennedy's call for a moon landing by the end of the decade, it rose from the drawing board to flight vehicle in record time. The rocket was masterminded by Wernher Von Braun and did not fail in any of its flights.

The story of the moon missions is well known with many books and films on the subject. Little has been written on the Saturn V rocket and next to nothing on the development, manufacturing and testing of the rocket stages.

In this book, for the first time ever, the detailed story of the history of each Saturn V stage is presented. This includes the 45 flight stages built and all of the various test stages. Most of the stages ended up being launched. Some are in museums, some were destroyed on the ground and some are so obscure they are detailed for the first time in this book.

The book traces each stage from the start of manufacturing, through assembly, testing, static firing and transport to the Kennedy Space Center. Facilities across the US were used to manufacture and test the hardware at a pace demanded by the Kennedy pronouncement. Engines were built by Rocketdyne and the rocket stages by Boeing, North American Aviation and the Douglas Company. Testing took place in Santa Susana, Sacramento, Mississippi and other facilities around the country. There were many problems along the way and all are covered in a detail never published before. Stages blew up, materials disintegrated, engines exploded.

The development of the F1 and J2 rocket engines is covered as well as details of all the major manufacturing and testing facilities.

Throughout, unprecedented details of dates, times, events and parameters are presented.

Other unique aspects of the book include:
- details of the history of each and every engine on each stage including a log of engine allocation
- details of the transportation of each stage and engine by various means such as truck, barge, boat, super Guppy aircraft including a unique log of these trips
- details of every firing including timelines, test stands, problems, performance details plus logs of each firing on each stage

To supplement the book many photographs that have never been published before have been obtained and appear for the first time.

The location of the remaining hardware is identified with photographs of the museum pieces.

Research for the book has taken over two years and included unique access to all the major facilities and NASA history offices and libraries. Information has been obtained from Saturn veterans and also through the Freedom of Information Act.

In summary this book has the first ever comprehensive presentation of the complete Saturn stage and engines activities from the early 1960s to the conclusion of the program in the mid 1970s.

Bonus CD-ROM includes rare film footage.

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posted August 28, 2005 08:09 PM               

If anyone who attended the reunion has more information, it would be great if you can share it with others here.

posted August 29, 2005 12:03 AM               

Sorry if this has all been hashed out before.

posted August 29, 2005 10:48 AM               

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
The 200 books that were signed were for the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. At this time there are no details on how they will be offered, other than the Huntsville Times article mentioning their release would not be until next month.

If anyone who attended the reunion has more information, it would be great if you can share it with others here.

[This message has been edited by Robert Pearlman (edited August 28, 2005).]

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Didn't attent the reunion, for which I'm increasingly kicking myself, but just ran over to USSRC, where they said the books were only signed for people who were there. There are none left.

posted August 29, 2005 03:38 PM               

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Originally posted by Machodoc:
Perhaps this has been asked and answered before, but can the Saturn V be reproduced as flight ready today? For that matter, can the Apollo stack be reproduced as flight ready as well?

Sorry if this has all been hashed out before.

SW

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The plans for the Saturn V still exist, but the assembly lines are long gone, so any effort to build another one would have to start completely from scratch.

posted August 29, 2005 03:44 PM            

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Originally posted by Machodoc:
Perhaps this has been asked and answered before, but can the Saturn V be reproduced as flight ready today? For that matter, can the Apollo stack be reproduced as flight ready as well?

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Quick answer: No. But you wouldn't want to do that anyway.

The Saturn V was an immensely complex vehicle containing millions of parts from thousands of suppliers. Many of those companies no longer exist, or were bought up by other companies. (Chrysler made major parts. You don't hear about Chrysler being in the rocket business anymore, do you?)

The key parts were the engines, the F-1 and J-2. The blueprints, spare engines, and significant supporting information on their design, manufacturing and testing, all remain. In fact, the J-2 is proposed as the upper stage engine for the "Stick" rocket that would utilize a single Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). So clearly NASA and the manufacturer believe that the J-2 can be placed in production again. The F-1 could also be placed in production, but it presents more problems. The big problem is that the F-1 is an expensive rocket engine. Also, the production tooling for producing both the F-1 and J-2 has been destroyed, so it would have to be created before the engines could be built.

The current plans for a return to the moon would rely upon a Crew Exploration Vehicle that looks a lot like a shorter, thicker Apollo CSM.

posted September 05, 2005 04:37 PM            

Many of these records were misplaced and presumed lost after Project Apollo, as NASA had not the funds to care and file them. But Alan Lawrie and Robert Godwin searched archives around the United States and England(?) to reconstruct them for this book. This new publication tells what happened to each and every stage of every Saturn -V launch vehicle ever assembled, even the ones that were not used!

It begins with the rare Saturn V news reference to give the reader a familiarity with the Saturn. Then it documents the facilities and transportation methods, and then the engines themselves and then each vehicle built.

The book goes into the construction, movement, testing, assembly and launch. It goes into the test stands and tells what happened before the fliight versions were built and it details every test firing of every rocket engine for the mighty Moon rocket.

How many people know that the third stage for the first manned flight to the Moon (Apollo-8), exploded on the test stand (S-IVB 503) and had to be replaced (S-IVB 503-N for New construction)? and that Apollo-16's Saturn V first stage (S1C-11) caught fire on the test stand and took a year to rebuild, and almost delayed the Apollo-11 which was on the launch pad counting down for it's historic mission?

The book sadly concludes with the rare Saturn V payload planners guide that details how Saturn could easily have allowed us to launch probes around the Solar System. A lesson that we hope is not lost on the new generation.

Every major director and engineer of every major contractor who is planning to build the new launch vehicle will want to buy this book, because they no longer have to go thru the NASA archives digging and hoping to find these nuggets of information about how we did it before!

The bonus DVD/ROM includes the vehicle records and films of Saturn assembly, and various tests firings.

ERRORS- The color section has a photo of the stacking of the Apollo space craft on the third stage of Apollo-Saturn 500F that is wrongly listed as erection of the launch escape system for Apollo 6 two years before this happened? S-IVB-DF (pg255) wasn't this kept at JSC until the late 80's as part of the public tour of Skylab? DVD-Video?ROM disc menu in back- First test firing of S-1C-T at Mississippi test Facility March 1967? ...or 1965!

posted September 13, 2005 02:09 PM               

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Originally posted by DavidH:
Didn't attent the reunion, for which I'm increasingly kicking myself, but just ran over to USSRC, where they said the books were only signed for people who were there. There are none left.

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Our latest best seller is Saturn by well known space author Alan Lawrie. It’s in stores now, but here’s an interesting twist, after speaking with one of our other authors (Ed Buckbee: The Real Space Cowboys) we decided that we wanted to help the US Space & Rocket Center (Which was first envisioned by Buckbee) to raise funds in order to move and house its own Saturn V. So with Ed’s help we have managed to tempt most of the surviving original von Braun Huntsville rocket team to sign 200 copies of the book which we will sell on our website to help raise those funds for the new building that is needed in Huntsville. Signatories include Conrad Dannenberg, Ernst Stuehlinger, Fred Ordway, and about 60 others who were all directly involved in creating the Saturn V rocket. An artifact such as this we believe has never been available for purchase before and we expect to have great demand for them once we put them up on our website shortly. I will advise everybody as soon as they are available to purchase.

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posted October 12, 2005 09:49 AM               

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Many members of Dr. Wernher von Braun's teams including surviving members of the Operation Paperclip team who escaped Germany at the end of World War II gathered in Huntsville to sign copies of our Saturn book authored by Alan Lawrie. Noted participants included Konrad Dannenberg, Ernst Stuehlinger, Jack Lee and Charles Lundquist. The books will be numbered and will come with a certificate of authenticity. The number of copies is limited to 200. This highly desirable artifact will no doubt become a priceless collectible in the near future. Proceeds from the sale of the book will go directly to the US Space & Rocket Centers Saturn V Restoration Project in Huntsville. Maintaining America's priceless space history such as that at Huntsville will hopefully inspire future generations to exceed to an exceptional degree as Wernher von Braun and his teams always did.

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