Fact File : “Saturn V” Rocket used in the various Apollo Missions to the Moon • Missions to the Moon required spacecraft that required lot of power to accelerate three astronauts and their spacecraft to a speed fast enough to leave Earth’s gravity. It just took nine minutes for the Saturn V rocket to climb into space, and burned up enough liquid fuel and liquid oxygen to fill one and half Olympic-size swimming pools. The force of the rocket was powerful enough to lift 500 elephants off the ground. Yet, despite the towering size ( height : 363 ft. (110.6 m), diameter : 33 ft. (10 m)) of the Saturn V, at the end of the Moon Mission, only the small Command Module, with its three astronauts aboard returned intact to the Earth. Everything else either fell back to the Earth, hit the Moon, or was left on the Moon, or was left on the Moon. The Apollo spacecraft was placed on top of the Saturn V. Kerosene was the main fuel. When it was burned with liquid oxygen, superhot exhaust gases propelled the rocket upward. NASA built 15 Saturn Vs, though two never flew – they became exhibits. • Though the last Saturn V flew in 1973, this monster rocket still holds the record as the biggest rocket ever built – towering 60 ft. (18 m) higher than the Statue of Liberty in New York. It dwarfed all earlier rockets – more than triple the height of the Gemini Titan and four times taller than the Mercury Atlas rockets. • The one-person Mercury Mission that first took American astronauts into orbit in the early 1960s was a converted missile. “Atlas D” rocket was deployed in five manned Mercury Missions. • Before the arrival of Apollo, series of Gemini Missions in the mid-1960s launched two astronauts into orbit around the Earth. These used another converted missile, the “Titan II”- still tiny compared to the Saturn V. Titan II launched 10 manned Gemini Missions. Source : “Mission to the Moon” by Alan Dyer
Posted on: Fri, 09 May 2014 15:33:30 +0000
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