NASA Study Summary-"Apollo Systems Description"

Here's some interesting graphics from an 851 page NASA document on the Saturn Launch Vehicles, specifically with how they are used in Apollo flights. The study covers Saturn I Block II, Saturn IB, and Saturn V, in EXCRUTIATING detail. If you want to know ANYTHING about a particular Saturn vehicle, from various weights and measures to how the frangible nuts are wired up for staging to how the telemetry communications work to how the propellant dispersion charges are wired up on the range safety systems, to propellant line conditioning and engine chilldown to engine start procedures, it's in this document. Needless to say, it's a LOT of information. I saw no point in actually doing a summary, since it would be uselessly vague to stuff every Saturn afficianado already knows, or excruciatingly long and detailed and take a month to write, and STILL probably not have the particular bit of information one might want or need, since obviously EVERYTHING can't go in the summary! SO, here's the document numbers and stuff for anyone wanting to look it up.

Office of Manned Spaceflight Technical Memorandum X-881
Apollo Systems Description Volume II
N71-70815 (MSFC)

I downloaded it from a link on nasaspaceflight.com/forums and saved it, so I'm sure with a little surfing, someone wanting to dig through it can find it on NTRS or elsewhere.

In the meantime, I snipped the most interesting graphics from the study and post them here, since there's a lot of details that might be of use to Saturn modelers. Basically the text of the study tells you enough to almost build your own Saturn rocket; what alloys, materials, structures, processes, etc. VERY in-depth!

Enjoy!
OL JR

Pic one is a basic layout graphic of Saturn I Block II. Fairly detailed.


Pic two is a detailed cutaway of Saturn I Block II's S-I first stage. LOTS of detail!


Pic three is the aft part of the previous foldout pic, since it obviously all couldn't be scanned in at once without being cut off...


Pic four is a detailed cutaway of the S-IV second stage of the Saturn I Block II.


Pic five is an oblique view detailed cutaway of the S-IV second stage.


More to come! OL JR

Pic one is a basic layout graphic of Saturn IB with some details


Pic two is the Saturn IB S-IB first stage side view detailed cutaway foldout...


Pic three is the rear part of the same centerfold that got cut off in scanning...


Pic four is the Saturn I S-IVB second stage cutaway


Pic five is the Saturn I S-IVB stage structures on Saturn IB


More to come! OL JR

Pic one is the basic Saturn V sideview


Pic two is the Saturn V S-IC first stage centerfold aft with details...


Pic three is the front half of the same centerfold...


Pic four is the S-II second stage cutaway...


Pic five is a closeup of the cutaway...


More to come! OL JR

Pic one is the S-II stage structures


Pic two is the S-IVB sideview cutaway


Pic three is the Saturn V S-IVB oblique showing the structures details that are different from the S-IVB used on Saturn IB.


That's it for this one!

Later! OL JR

Thanks JR! This is great stuff (especially the Saturn V, but the 1B is a close second) if you are into scale.

The engineering and construction (not to mention the creative methods to get the constructed hardware to KSC) still boggles the mind. Truly remarkable.

Greg

Glad someone's enjoying these... I've picked up a lot of good stuff over the last few years... It's mind boggling what a great resource the internet can be!

Yessir, you are correct... it boggles the mind that not only did these guys build these systems with pencils and slide rules, without the benefit of computer aided design and analysis and 50 years of experience to guide them, but the fact that they were OPTIMUM for the job that had to be done... even after all this time, in the discussions on Ares V, the most optimized solution was time and again, denser fuel for a smaller first stage, and adding a true second stage to get rid of the massive weight of the first stage once up in the upper atmosphere... Trying to "do it on the cheap" and use LH2 as the first stage fuel made the first stage GARGANTUAN, and eliminating the second stage meant carrying that massive behemoth of a first stage MUCH later in flight than necessary, robbing much needed performance. It also meant pushing some of the requirements onto the EDS, making it unnecessarily large, which DIRECTLY cuts payload through TLI pound for pound-- unlike lower stages which operate at 4/1 to 10/1 weight increase/payload cut ratio...

Werner Von Braun and co. got it right the first time...

Later! OL JR

luke strawwalker said:

Werner Von Braun and co. got it right the first time...

Click to expand...

So say we all!

luke strawwalker said:

The study covers Saturn I Block II, Saturn IB, and Saturn V, in EXCRUTIATING detail.

Click to expand...

That's not EXCRUCIATING, it's EXQUISITE!





BTW- here's a link for the PDF and a few others!
https://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.space.history/2005-10/msg00454.html

Amazing to see what WE COULD DO back before computers, the human made CAD drawings are very impressive and just think, we designed, built and flew those rockets in how many years?

It now takes us 5 years just to get a design approved.

Those are great designs. I still do not know why we can't remake a Saturn V or larger rocket based on that design.

cwbullet said:

Those are great designs. I still do not know why we can't remake a Saturn V or larger rocket based on that design.

Click to expand...

Because Saturn V didn't use ATK SRB's and SSME's...

SERIOUSLY, the politics of who gets the contracts and what products they're selling (and have available) makes all the difference. That's why things are going as they are going.

The US doesn't even produce kerosene rocket engines anymore-- we buy them from Russia (excluding SpaceX's Merlin C's) and a LARGE kerosene engines is really what you need for first stages-- hydrogen engines make a poor substitute due to hydrogen's VERY LOW density, meaning the first stage has to be absolutely ginormous to hold enough propellant. Add to that the fact that the US doesn't really have a high-thrust level liquid hydrogen engine either (SSME is only 1/3 the thrust of an F-1, and even RS-68 is only maybe half the thrust of F-1, and can't be put in large clusters due to it's ablative cooling). The only 'high-thrust' option we have anymore is SRB's, and they're both expensive and difficult to handle, and definitely have upper limits to thier performance upscaling before they become too difficult and expensive to handle and support-- as Ares V found out. Diminishing returns start biting you in the butt when you go much beyond 5 segment Ares V SRB's... they get too heavy for the crawlers, crawlerways, and VAB to handle. About like the 260 inch SRMs in these studies, it was a good idea but in practice it would have been a nightmare to deal with... especially the concepts of adding FOUR of them onto a Saturn V... :y:

In reading about shuttle history, one of the original plans was to launch the shuttle from Matagorda county, TEXAS, (near Bay City) at the Spiro T. Agnew Space Center, 90 miles west of JSC (what you say?? There is no Spiro T. Agnew Space Center?? Well, there would have been under that plan!) The idea was to launch shuttles out over the Gulf and recover the SRB's out there and bring them back. Shuttle would have been stacked on the pad, eliminating the VAB and crawler method that had been invented for Saturn V ops at the Cape, and going back to the 'stack on the pad' concept used for every Saturn I and IB prior to Skylab (which launched off the milkstool using the Saturn V pads for the three Skylab missions and the ASTP mission). The argument to 'reuse the existing infrastructure' won the day and the Spiro T Agnew Space Center is still a rice field or cotton field or cow pasture today...

Course, that also limited the size of the SRB's and shuttle. Remember Saturn V's were transported to the pad EMPTY of fuel, essentially a hollow tube. That's why the Saturn V could have the tower on the launch pad with it. When the decision was made to reuse the VAB, MLP's, and crawlers to stack and move shuttle, the tower was the first thing that had to go... Carrying 3 million pounds of SRB's plus shuttle orbiter and tank shuttle stack meant that the crawlers and crawlerways were very nearly maxed out-- the million pounds of tower had to come off the MLP and be bolted to ground out at the pad... hence the FSS (fixed service structure) and RSS (rotating service structure). It also means that Ares V, with two five segment boosters and a Saturn V size core vehicle with six heavy RS-68 engines was too much for the crawlers and crawlerways to handle, requiring a new six-truck crawler and beefed-up crawlerway gravel beds... and six-segment booster proposals to make up Ares V shortfalls would crack the floor of the VAB... :eyepop:

All because the US abandoned large kerosene engine technology at the end of the 1960's to embrace SRM tech, and now is inextricably wedded to the supply chain politically...

Later! OL JR

You know one thing that's rather sad to me... The way the S-IV stage was never really exploited to it's potential.

It was the first LARGE, SELF SUPPORTING hydrogen stage in existence. (Centaur was the first EVER hydrogen stage, and it was balloon construction like Atlas and had to be pressurized at all times to avoid collapse). The RL-10engines, despite their relatively low thrust (requiring large clusters to get high thrust levels) have exceptional ISP, and are very cheap, in the aerospace world terms anyway. The J-2 had MUCH higher thrust but the ISP was lower, and once you're in orbit and not fighting gravity losses and you want to go anywhere in space, ISP is KING-- thrust is relatively unimportant (unless it requires inordinately long burns to escape velocity where gravity losses again become substantial or it prevents you from gaining maximum advantage of the "Oberth Effect".

In fact, a modern version has been proposed by the DIRECT team-- the "JUS" or Jupiter Upper Stage, which would be based on the ACES/ICES stages proposed by ULA for upgrades to the EELV fleet. The JUS would use a cluster of six RL-10's similar to the S-IV stage, propelling an ET diameter (8.4 meter) self-supporting common-bulkhead high-mass fraction SLWT design stage, for a combined second stage/EDS stage. The RL-10's superior ISP gives it MUCH better performance than the heavy, fairly low ISP J-2X engine, IF you can get the rocket high enough that the J-2X's superior high-thrust level is not an advantage due to higher gravity losses on the RL-10 cluster due to the lower thrust. For EDS duties, the lower weight of the cluster of RL-10's over the single HEAVY J-2X, along with the much better ISP of the RL-10's over the fairly suboptimized J-2X ISP, gives the RL-10 a CLEAR advantage. It also gives the EDS an engine-out capability that the single J-2X could NEVER have... in fact, TWO of the RL-10's could fail and STILL have a successful (though longer) EDS TLI burn than the J-2X, which if it fails to light, ends the mission then and there.

RL-10/ variants (CECE) will most likely end up being the lander engine of choice in the future anyway, so there's a lot of economies of scale to be had using RL-10.

J-2X is an excellent SECOND STAGE ENGINE, but suboptimal for EDS duties. S-IV with it's RL-10's would have been an EXCELLENT in-space stage, especially had it been tank-stretched for additional propellant...

Later! OL JR

brianc said:

That's not EXCRUCIATING, it's EXQUISITE!





BTW- here's a link for the PDF and a few others!
https://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.space.history/2005-10/msg00454.html

Click to expand...

Does anyone have a copy of the Saturn technical information handbook .pdf that this post/link refers to? I'd sure like a copy.

TIA
Gary

this is awesome!! I know you posted this years ago...it was before I found the Forum!...great stuff and I might be able to use this on my current build of the 1b....thanks Luke!

luke strawwalker said:

Pic one is a basic layout graphic of Saturn IB with some details
View attachment 46676

Pic two is the Saturn IB S-IB first stage side view detailed cutaway foldout...
View attachment 46677

Pic three is the rear part of the same centerfold that got cut off in scanning...
View attachment 46678

Pic four is the Saturn I S-IVB second stage cutaway
View attachment 46679

Pic five is the Saturn I S-IVB stage structures on Saturn IB
View attachment 46680

More to come! OL JR

Click to expand...

vcp said:

Does anyone have a copy of the Saturn technical information handbook .pdf that this post/link refers to? I'd sure like a copy.

TIA
Gary

Click to expand...

Do a google search with the exact name and number I quoted in the summary-- it SHOULD get you an online version, if there is one still...

I originally got all these off the net over a few years long period-- BUT of course many websites go down or go away, and then there's that whole NTRS debacle caused by Congress's kneejerk reaction to Chinese spying... so basically any existing links on websites to NTRS documents are now null and void... ie won't work...

Here's a hint, though... most of the stuff I've got I picked up from links on the nasaspaceflight.com/forums in various threads, and from the "secret projects forum"... the rest I found by perusing and searching the NASA Technical Resources Server (NTRS)...

Good luck on your hunt! OL JR

PS. I wouldn't bother summarizing these things but would post them directly, but unfortunately most run in the 5MB to 500MB range... FAR, FAR too large to post to the forums-- besides, probably 95% of the information in the reports are of little/no interest to most of the rocketry community-- only that 5% that applies to building a scale model is really necessary, plus the historical "background" and technical information that I summarize in the summaries themselves...

Which reminds me, I'm sitting on a ton of studies that I need to start summarizing and posting again...