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The Saturn V Rocket


saturn V rocket

The Saturn V rocket may be the most prolific rocket ever build, it is definitely the most powerful. This rocket has been immortalized as the rocket that took men to the moon. The Saturn V surpasses all of its contemporaries in every measurement of power. Even today there is no rocket to compare to the Saturn V in thrust (34 MN), size (111m tall), weight (3000 tones) and payload (118 tones to low earth orbit). The Saturn V was first developed by NASA in 1962 as the launch vehicle used to take astronauts to the moon; it was launched 13 times between 1967 and 1973. The rocket was composed of three stages, the S-IC, the S-II and the S-IVB. For the Apollo missions the Lunar Module (LM) and the Command/Service Module (CSM) sat on top of the 3 stages. The first stage used liquid oxygen and RP-1 as propellant. It had 5 engines arranged in a cross pattern and accelerated the rocket to 61 km altitude. The second stage used liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as propellant and also had a 5 engine cross pattern. The final stage also utilized liquid hydrogen/oxygen as propellant but had only 1 engine. This engine was able to be set off twice, once to reach the desired earth orbit, and once to send the rocket to the moon.

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