Saturn V Engineer Luke Talley Discusses the Engineering of the Rocket

The Saturn V may soon be upstaged by Musk's Starship, but as of right now, nobody has come close to matching the lift capacity of the mighty Saturn V. Not one of the 192 other countries have landed a man on the moon. That's because it takes incredibly powerful machines to lift significant weight (a spacecraft that carries enough fuel to get back to Earth) out of our gravity well.

The crew of Apollo 8 said it was so loud during launch, they could not hear well enough to communicate. They also called it an "old man's booster" due to the modest acceleration. When compared to the 8G's of the Titan/Gemini booster ride.

Of note, I did get to spend some time with one moon walker, Charlie Duke. I asked him a question about hypergolic maneuvering thrusters and how they were used to stabilize a spacecraft. He was interested in my question and spent 20+ minutes telling me his moon landing story. One on one. I heard it directly from the man who did it! What an honor.
 
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The Saturn V may soon be upstaged by Musk's Starship,
Bigger, sure.

But look at the computing power and resources that SpaceX has to throw at it, compared to the slide rules and extremely limited computing power that got the Saturn program accomplished.

Nostalgia is a powerful beast and the Saturn V will always be more of a triumph in my mind than the Starship, even though I was still -3 years old when the last moon landing happened.
 
the Saturn V will always be more of a triumph in my mind than the Starship, even though I was still -3 years old when the last moon landing happened.

The mighty Saturn V performed a flawless first launch, Apollo 4. So in many ways, like you say, "more of a triumph".
The Saturn V is still king, clearly it is not a simple matter to de-throne it.

I really do wish Musk and crew the greatest success. If he pulls it off, it will be flat out remarkable. I do believe that the failures do highlight flaws that would not otherwise be seen.

Watched a video about the fact that the starship was significantly underpowered on it's first launch. And not just due to the loss of 3 engines initially. The acceleration rates were about 1/3 of a G and no more. We believe the engines were limited to 90% thrust. Even so, the numbers did not look promising.




 
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To be fair, we did blow up a fair number of F1 engines, so if NASA had done more 'all up' testing in the beginning there might have been more explosions. SpaceX just seems to have their finger securely on the 'send it' button so I'd expect more big public fails.

Still, Saturn V in my books.
 
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