Will the Saturn 5 ever be used again?

If Nasa wants to go to the moon soon, would they use the Saturn 5 rocket or derivative of?

It's extremely unlikely. They can't simply whip out the plans and start building them again, I'm pretty sure all the plans were destroyed. I think the only part of the Saturn 5 that could be built within 5 years may be the F-1 engines. Everything else would have to be re-designed from scratch as if it were a brand new rocket. Throw in the added work of adjusting for all the new materials and electronics and it becomes more sensible to simply build an entirely new rocket.

I agree with you but I don't see why the prints would be destroyed.

The plans for Saturn 5 were destroyed. Deliberately, with the specific intent of preventing folks from trying to research, build or propose a disposable heavy-lift option to the STS.

This is what happens when bureaucrats and polititians are placed in charge of scientists and engineers.

The plans are still around. The assembly lines are not. Same reason we aren't going to build anymore A-10s, B-52s, B-1s, etc.

False.



How about you drop the "NASA is the Great Satan" attitude?

I did hear that one of the engineers, upset over the 'destroy the plans' order, kept a full set and had them squirreled away in his garage. That has an Urban Legend feel to it though and I've no idea if it's true. Cadet brings up a good point to. Although much of the machist work could probably be restarted there's a ridiculous amount of missing infrastructure to go about building a new Saturn 5.

I am a big fan of NASA. I am not a big fan of the Federal Government. I think that NASA employs many of the brightest minds on the planet and I am sure that many great things are still to come from that organization.

I know about the Saturn 5 plans because I was told about it by a very reliable source whom has been involved with NASA ever since project Gemini. I hope that TJ is right and someone objected enough to bury a copy of blueprints somewhere.

Not only are the assembly lines not available, but neither are the launch pads, they've all been converted. Plus, there's the biggest question of all: Why in the world would you want to launch with 40 year old technology?

Finally, there's the price. According to Astronautix, launch price of a Saturn V was $431 million in 1967 dollars. That's $2.3 billion in 2003 dollars.

So file an FOIA with the Federal government to see the blue prints, since they acknowledge that they have them, with sets stored in two different locations.

To many people that 40 year old technology is better than the 25 year old technology that replaced it.

I've heard enough conflicting versions of the missing plans though that I really couldn't guess which is true.

Personally if it were up to me I'd be pushing to have something along the lines of Robert Zubrins 'Ares' heavy lift booster if a big booster was needed. Although I also think that building an Orion should be investigated. This website http://www.nuclearspace.com/ used to have an interesting article up about that idea that made me think it should be investigated.

Perhaps, but if we are going to start building a new line of vehicles I don't want the original blue prints, I want it updated to reflect what we've learned in the past 40 years. It's more efficient, cheaper, and safer.



They've given specifics as to the form of media it is stored in and the locations. The only conflicting reports are some guy who said "I can't find it, NASA MUST HAVE DESTROYED IT!!" and some unknown source.



1. I personally prefer the SeaDragon. 500 tons of LEO goodness.
2. A multimillion ton vessel powered by detonating nuclear bombs is insane in the extreme.

You know that's probably one of the real reasons why I like it. Also a design that has 1,000 ton payloads for trips to Mars with a 4,000 ton ship as a smaller design just might be worth a second look. Although short of a world wide emergency it's not likely to ever be built. At least not on earth.

http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_five_000313.html
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/space/controversy/
http://yarchive.net/space/launchers/saturn_v.html

I tend to be of the school that there's no point in trying to revive the Saturn V. You could call it a Saturn V and it might even look like a Saturn V and would probably even use roughly similar engines. Remember the J-2 engine design has been dusted off even recently for the X-33's never-flown linear aerospike engine and the some of the Shuttle designs origionally had a J-2S rocket on them -- it's just that they needed more thrust.

The really interesting "what if" is the Saturn Shuttle.

The interesting future movement is what happens after the shuttle retirement. I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be attempts to revisit Shuttle-C.

Or in space. It's pointless. Why spend trillions when you can spend a few billion for the same capacity and without violating nuclear weapons treaties or devising new weapons (I don't think that current weapons can be used due to the way that they are built).