Hi everyone; it’s Grubby, back to do a blog on my recent trip to Houston and the Johnson Space Center. As some of you may already know, I do a piece with ESPN2 called Grubby’s Garage. They’re little tech segments that run during race shows where I explain some of the components we use and other aspects of our race cars. Since most of us in the nitro ranks are power junkies, I thought it would be a good idea to do a segment on the Saturn V moon rocket, and while I was at it, I may as well share some the facts and figures with everyone here in our Team Kalitta blog.
The Saturn V was first developed in the late 1950s by Dr. Wernher Von Braun, a German rocket scientist who came to the United States after WWII. The rocket’s primary use was in the Apollo program that ultimately took men to the moon between the years of 1969 and 1972. The vehicle was made up of three main propulsion stages, an instrument and guidance unit, and the Apollo Space Craft. On the pad, the rocket stood 365 feet tall and weighed over 6.5 million pounds, close to 90 percent of that weight was fuel. The propellant used in the first stage was liquid oxygen as the oxidizer and RP-1 as the fuel. RP-1 was a special grade of kerosene that was only used in the first stage. The second and third stages used liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.
The Johnson Space Center has one of only three Saturn Vs left on display. It’s housed in building and is laying down separated into stage sections. There’s so mush that can be said about the Saturn V that it would go beyond the scope of this blog, so for now I’ll just focus on the first stage and its engines. The first stage was made up of five F1 engines with each engine producing 1.5 million pounds of thrust for a combined total thrust of 7.5 million pounds. The latest Boeing 747-400 series jumbo jet produces approximately 62,000 pounds of thrust per engine so you can do the math and figure it out how they compare.
The fuel tanks in the first stage where enormous. 332,000 gallons of liquid oxygen was stored at -296 degrees and 205,000 gallons of PR-1 at ambient temperature. Each engine consumes approximately three tons of fuel and oxidizer every second. Yes that’s three tons every second with all five engines consuming 15 tons per second. Think about that for a minute; the average Top Fuel engine burns approximately one gallon per second, or approximately 10 pounds. For those of you that have been to the races, you know how loud our engines are and how they shake the ground. That Saturn V burned 414 gallons of liquid oxygen and 260 gallons of RP-1 every second in each engine. You think that thing was loud and shook the ground when it left?!
The main part of the engine that produced all these astonishing flow numbers was the Turbopump. The Turbopump was made up of three separate sections, the oxidizer pump, the fuel pump and the turbine, all sharing a common shaft. The way this system worked was that a small percentage of propellant was bleed off and burned in the gas generator. The expanding burnt gases were then feed into the turbine. As the turbine spooled up, it also spun the fuel and oxidizer pumps and created fuel pressure which fed the engine. This works pretty much the same way a turbo works on your street car to make boost. The turbine was dual stage and at full power operated at over 5,250 rpm and was rated a 55,000 horsepower. Yes, that’s right; just to run the fuel pump for one engine required over 50,000 horsepower. And I thought 8,000 horsepower in a dragster was impressive…wow!
The Saturn V is an amazing piece of engineering and a testament to what can be done if you really put your mind to it, considering all this was done near 40 years ago makes it even more amazing. If you’re ever in the Houston area, I encourage you to stop by and take a look at great piece of American history, you will not be disappointed.