Saturn V: The Largest Rocket Ever Made

this video is made possible by the great courses plus an on-demand video learning service learn at your own pace with no tests no schedules check out a free trial of the great courses plus through the link in the description below more about them in a bit [Music] hello really walk into maker projects various requests have been made to talk about giant rockets particularly the Apollo program particularly satellite in fact people were saying something why don't you talk about the Apollo program like well because it's substantially massive and took place over many many years and got people to the moon so I saw what we could do is break it down into different parts not that I've done different parts of anything up the first part which is all about the Saturn 5 rocket which is obviously the video you are watching right now if there are other parts of the Apollo program that you would like me to cover what you need to do is let me know in the comments below and while you're down there smash that like button because why not or if you don't like these videos smash the dislike button but your clicks on it so here you are enjoy maybe for all of the extraordinary achievements that humanity has seen few have been quite as spectacular as our voyages into space witnessing a space launch is unlike anything else on earth the thunderous roar that begins as flight control counts down through 10 a fireball billowing out from beneath the rocket steadily the rocket begins to climb gathering speed until it is about a dot on the blue Floridian sky but none of it would be possible without what lies below the astronauts and there was never a rocket quite like the saturn v i thought about trawling everyone by calling it the saturn v throughout the video but then i thought that would get annoying really fast the saturn v rocket was a beast there's not really any other way to describe it it remains the tallest heaviest and most powerful rocket ever used while Neil Armstrong and his one small step made headlines around the world it was the staggering thirty four point five million Newton's that 7.6 million pounds of thrust below him that got him into space and the other two guys that everyone forgets Buzz Aldrin and even the third guy whose name I can't remember the one who didn't walk on the moon or maybe he did later Colin harpercollins to give you an idea of what kind of power that is it's more than the output of 85 Hoover dams over the same short period [Music] the Saturn 5 measured 111 metres in length which is roughly the height of a 36 storey building or 18 meters taller than the Statue of Liberty or if you're British that's about 15 meters taller than big men a fully filled Saturn 5 rocket weightings launch weighed around 2800 tonnes much of that wage was the fuel propellant needed to push the rocket up into space now on a typical mission the Saturn 5 burned through a staggering amounts of fuel about 20 tons of fuel every single second its total consumption would be enough to send a typical car that gets 30 miles to the gallon around the world 800 times now you might be thinking that they need to make everything as light as humanly possible and yes that is the case that this rocket was still able to launch 130 tons into orbit it was constructed mainly of aluminium with smaller amounts of titanium and polyurethane also interestingly cork was used as a layer above some of the panels to absorb moisture and keep them cool as much as everybody involved with such an extraordinary project deserves credit there is one person in particular who has become synonymous with the Saturn 5 and his name was Verner von Braun he's a man who worked on the fearsome v2 rockets that Nazi Germany used against Britain towards the end of World War two in 1946 he and around 700 scientists who had worked for the Nazis were quietly brought over to the United States during something called Operation Paperclip this was a program that was authorized by President Truman to recruit as many of the top scientists still in Germany at the end of the war in order to gain a competitive advantage over there so via rivals it's always interesting how you know things can be forgotten to suit the needs at the current time yet this guy who was making rockets the bombs London it's like hey come build our moon rockets lease anyway between 1946 and 1957 von Braun was used almost exclusively to gain a better understanding of the v2 rockets despite his obvious talents regarding the future of space rocketry things change dramatically on the 4th of October 1957 as radios around the world and picking up the signal being sent by the Soviet Sputnik one the first satellite in space suddenly there was a really real threat and the Americans realized they were a bit behind in the old space race so they terms of von Braun and well he would become enormous ly influential as you know in the development of the saturn v between 1960 and 1962 the marshall space flight center MSFC designed for different versions of the Saturn rockets each with different missions involving in Earth orbit or lunar missions in mines these were C 1 C 2 C 3 and C 4 creative naming the C one was eventually developed into Saturn 1 Saturn 5s older less capable brother while C 2 was scrapped early on with preference to the C 3 which was designed with the Earth orbit rendezvous concept in mind this was an idea that NASA mulled over they would have called for various sections of the rocket to be assembled separately in space this was an idea that was ultimately rejected in favor of the lunar orbit rendezvous lor which was used on all the Apollo missions to the moon just a quick side note here the lor was in fact a technique of landing on the moon first proposed by a ukrainian soviet engineer yuri kondratyuk as early as 1919 but it was NASA who greatly developed the theory the lor called for the main spacecraft and a lunar module to travel to the moon together after arriving the spacecraft would remain in lunar orbit while the lunar module descended to the surface once work was completed on the moon the module would take off and rendezvous with the main spacecraft once again the crew and whatever they had brought up from the moon would then transfer back over to the spacecraft in the lunar module would then be cut adrift before the astronauts made their way Hymas c 4 was essentially a larger version of the C 3 but would have needed only two launches for an earth orbit rendezvous rather than three the C 5 concept was announced in 1962 it would be a rocket composed of three sections or stages the s 1 C is the first stage with 5f1 engines the s 2 second stage had 5 J 2 engines and the S 4 B third stage had a single j2 engine the first and second stages would detached once they had been used while stage 3 would remain with the spacecraft in 1963 NASA opted for the c5 model and it was renamed at the Saturn 5 the rocket would be built by outside contractors who would each assemble different sections I if you want to follow me on Twitter and ants I'm and Whistler and I recently posted a picture of a news article that I saw on the BBC's website and it was like why are astronauts afraid on the launch pad and I mean I posted it with the obvious because they're sitting on top of a giant rocket and someone commented because they're sitting on top of a giant rocket made by the lowest-priced contractor and I thought this was particularly amusing anyway anecdote over let's move on now just before we continue with today's video let me take a moment to tell you about today's sponsor the great courses plus you can learn from the world's best professors on the great courses plus you want a recommendation for a course well I'm gonna give one to you look you're watching a video all about the Saturn 5 and look they've got a course called Apollo 11 lessons for all time now this is a shorter one for the great courses plus it's made up of just four lectures but they have range for example one of them talks about what we can learn from moon rocks and another one talks about the geopolitics of space and kind of Halbert all developed since Apollo 11 and landing on the moon so yeah like I say range basically the great course is plus and that is just one course about one subject it it's really what they have on there is incredible like if you've seen something on this channel and you go look it up on great courses plus you're probably gonna find a significant amount of education related to that subject anyway the great courses plus is like a university education but at your own pace no tests no schedules incredibly easy to access you can do it on your PC phone tablet over your wish they've also got audio streaming which I love because I'm a busy dude I don't always have time to sit there lazily and watch content who does that but you can listen seriously it's pretty great I just plug in when I'm commuting to work or doing things around the house it's awesome so yeah it's great stuff try for free there is a link in the description below and let's get back to today's video built by Boeing in New Orleans most of the stage run rocket was dedicated to fuel it was 42 meters tall and was 10 meters in diameter it provided over 7.6 million pounds force that's 34,000 kilonewtons of thrust as it surged skyward and just for fun that's the equivalent of a hundred and twenty 747 passenger airliners at cruising speed so it's a lot of thrust it's dry or empty weight was 131 tons but when fully loaded it weighed two thousand three hundred tons just in case you're interested and lazy with maths that's two thousand one hundred and sixty nine tons of fuel it was powered by five Rocketdyne f-1 engines arranged in a quincunx which is the shape of the five dots on a dice the moyer now the sensor engine was held in a fixed position but the four arounds it could be hydraulically moved to steer the rocket after takeoff the center engine was turned off after 26 seconds to limit acceleration but stage one as a whole fired its engines for 168 seconds once it cut off the rocket wasn't an altitude of 37 miles 67 kilometers which is 195 thousand three hundred and sixty feet which is roughly five and a half times the cruising altitude of a 747 airliner and it was traveling at 5144 miles per hour which for reference is really quick Stage two built at Seal Beach in California by North American Aviation was composed of five Rocketdyne j2 engines also in a quincunx shape a 24.87 metres in length it was almost half the size of stage one but with the same diameter 10 meters hill at a dry weight of about 36 tons and fully fueled it weighed 480 tons the second stage blasted the Saturn 5 through the upper atmosphere with 1.1 million pounds force 4900 kilonewtons of thrust that's just 18 seven four sevens now just built by Douglas Aircraft Company at Huntington Beach in California Stage three was the smallest section of the Saturn 5 powered by a single j2 engine it measured seventeen point eight six meters in length which I am sure of six point six meters it came with a dry weight of ten tons and fully fueled weighed 119 tons this differed from the other stages in that the engine could actually be restarted and if you had any hope of getting to the moon this was pretty important now the first burn of two and a half minutes occurred just after the cutoff of stage two and it took the spacecraft into a parking orbit this was just a temporary holding orbits before stage three fired its rocket for the second time and that would break the parking orbit and push the spacecraft towards the moon this second burn was known as the translunar injection and it lasted for six minutes when this burn occurred on Apollo 8 it was the first time that humans had left low-earth orbit and it set a new speed record for a crewed space flight of 24,000 miles per hour which for reference is even faster from Apollo 9 onwards stage 3 it was fired for a third time around 40 minutes after the translunar injection had begun at this of acrobatics was needed at this point stage 3 was still attached to the command service module for CSM for short and the lunar module or lamb but this wouldn't be the case for long this complex process is known as transposition docking and extraction it involved the CSM detaching from both stage 3 and the LEM turning a hundred and eighty degrees before reconnecting with the LEM during launch the CSM is directly above the LEM with its thrusters are facing down into it so this is needed to ready the CSM to begin traveling using its own power roughly 50 minutes later stage 3 disconnects entirely and files for a third time to move it safely away from the spacecraft [Music] the size of the Saturn 5 made transportation and assembly quite a challenge sage 1 traveled down the Mississippi River by barge before using the intercostal waterway to reach its final destination stage 2 travel to Florida from California by a boat via the Panama Canal while stage 3 was the only stage small enough to actually be flown at the vertical Assembly Building VAB the stages were assembled or stacked on a mobile launch platform MLP which consisted of a launch umbilical Tower lut with 9 swing arms to keep the Saturn 5 in place the VAB is quite a beast itself and to this day remains the single largest story building in the world I've actually bends the Kennedy Space Center I have seen this thing it is I mean you know it's unbelievably vast but then you see it a person it's like oh my gosh it is huge this building it occupies 3.66 5 cubic meters of space which is definitely enough space to assemble the largest rocket ever constructed it also makes it one of the largest buildings on the planet by volume it's if you get a chance to go to Kennedy Space Center definitely worth it it's insane the entire stack was then moved to the launch pad using the crawler-transporter CT which in itself was an extraordinary piece of equipment weighing a mammoth 2721 tons running on four double tracked treads this giant transporter was required not only to move the Saturn 5 but also to keep it level for 3 miles to the launch site the size and weight of the Saturn 5 meant that the smallest shift could be disastrous [Music] as I said earlier there are a few things quite as visually impressive as witnessing a rocket taking off but it is a sequence that is both carefully crafted and fraught with danger eight point nine seconds before launch the stage 1 ignition sequence begins the center engine is the first fire followed by the remaining four as the countdown reaches zero the whole rocket arms release the rocket and it begins to move upward the launch speed was controlled by the control release mechanism which involved bracket sets into the hold down arm each with a tapered metal pin which was then pulled through Di's set at the base of stage one at the moment of takeoff the mechanism provided further stability for the Saturn 5 for the first 15 centimeters it's just 6 inches of the launch after that the rocket began to accelerate rapidly isn't it it's just mind-blowing that you know this thing is so huge but the precision there is like yeah yeah it just needs a little help for the first 15 centimeters it's difficult to imagine what this moment must feel like sat staring straight up as the awesome power of the Saturn 5 begins to push you away from the earth if something we're going to go wrong at this point the rocket would not be able to return gently to earth due to the amounts of fuel any failure at this point would like to be catastrophic the 12 seconds it took the Saturn 5 to clear the launch Tower mister felt like an eternity the first stage burned for about 2 minutes and 41 seconds reaching an altitude of 42 miles and a speed of 6100 64 miles per hour which is about 2756 meters a seconds or you know so you can understand it better 8 times over the speed of sound the second stage burned for six minutes and hurtled the Saturn 5 to an altitude of 109 miles under speed of 15 thousand six hundred and forty seven miles per hour on Apollo 11 the third stage burned for about 2.5 minutes until cutting off 11 minutes and 40 seconds into the flight the spacecraft was then 1430 nautical miles downrange meaning the horizontal distance from where it took off after the stage three engines cut off the spacecraft is in that parking orbit at this point it's traveling just over 17,000 400 miles an hour which is about 28,000 kilometers now after the translunar injections and mid-flight acrobatics that we mentioned earlier the final section of Saturn 5 disconnects leaving the command service module and the lunar module to contain you off on their jolly way to the moon Saturn fives extraordinary job was complete well for Apollo 11 Saturn 5 at least the final 5 Apollo missions involved stage 3 being crashed on purpose into the surface of the Moon with the idea that seismic measurements would be taken to hopefully understand the moon's interior better the stage three components of Apollo missions 8 through 12 still actually orbiting the earth to this day in total Saturn 5 rockets were used on 12 Apollo missions with all but two carrying a human crew the Rockets themselves had a faultless service records though apollo 6 and 13 faced technical issues originating in other parts of the spacecraft now we can't talk about the apollo missions without starting with number 11 the first trip to the moon was one of the most iconic moments of the 20th century until this day remains one of the most extraordinary achievements that humanity has ever accomplished Apollo 12 was famously hit by lightning twice during takeoff but suffered no significant damage and made successful landing on the moon as you probably already know Apollo 13 came the closest we've ever seen to complete disaster in outer space after the oxygen tank on the service module malfunctioned two days into the mission causing an explosion the safe return of the stricken shuttle after catapulting around the moon captivated the entire world perhaps nearly as much as the first moon landing itself the final Apollo mission to use the Saturn 5 rocket was Apollo 17 on the 7th of December 1972 how many knew this would be the last flight was probably quite another matter there were three further plans Apollo missions but these were all canceled mostly down to budget constraints at a time when the Vietnam War was draining the United States from 1964 until 1973 6.4 billion dollars which is around 37 billion dollars in 2020 money was spent on research developments and flights of the saturn v in 1966 nasa received its biggest ever yearly budget with 4.5 billion dollars going to the space program about 0.5 percent of the gross domestic product of the entire united states around 1.2 billion dollars nine point four billion dollars in today's money of that was spent on the saturn v that year between 1969 and 1971 the cost of a single saturn v apollo mission was between 185 and hundred and eighty nine million dollars which is roughly 1.1 billion today around 110 million dollars was used for the construction of the Saturn 5 itself equivalents to about 700 million in 2020 dollars another reason that the Apollo mission came to a premature end was the deteriorating public interest low TV figures for the Apollo 17 mission showed the American public had lost its fascination with the space program the final outing of the Saturn 5 was to launch the Skylab the USA's first attempt at a manned space station on the 14th of May 1973 it would be the last time this extraordinary rocket ever defied gravity and blasted into the great unknown in recent years there seems to have been a comeback in interest and the attention the recent SpaceX launch received shows that perhaps the world and the American public is once again looking skyward Saturn 5 remains to this day an iconic part of the u.s. space program a thunderous workhorse of a rocket almost unimaginable in size and power when they have walked on the moon but without the Saturn 5 we would have never even got off the ground so I really hope you found their video interesting I loved these rocket ones I loved Apollo I find the whole space exploration thing super interesting if you'd like more stuff like this well you know you watch this video to the end so fantastic if you've got suggestions please let me know them in the comments below I do look at them especially the most uploaded ones so vote for what you like and as always thank you for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 458,117

Rating: 4.9389243 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: WCPQgQFmp40

Length: 20min 42sec (1242 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2020