Hola Wonkeratti! It's time once again for another terrible Wonkette Sci-Blog. Mix yourselves another drink and come on in! Today, in honor of this week's American Independence Day we're paying homage to skyrocket and All-American Success Story, the Saturn V launch Vehicle. The "Moon Rocket" we all saw (well, some of us saw) launched from Cape Canaveral Florida in the late 60's and early 70's, the "Five" was the largest of NASA's Saturn series of multistage liquid fueled heavy lift rockets. 13 S-V's were launched, from 1967 until 1973, carrying all of the Apollo Lunar project missions and lifting the Skylab manned research station to orbit. The
Might be time to require that treeless firebreak lines be in place <i>before</i> people can develop property in fire-prone areas. Electric utilities maintain the right-of-way under power lines, so - &#039;Murcan cowboy fredumbs aside - it&#039;s not exactly an unpossible task.
How &#039;bout the body of that grinning idjit who ran with whats-his-name for President? Seems to have good muscle tone, and the head that&#039;s currently attached isn&#039;t really good for much.
It&#039;s Kerberos. Kerberous would maybe be the adjective. What it would actually mean is open to debate -- you get first dibs, being the inventor.
I&#039;m so glad the IAU ignored my fellow Trek nerds. I mean, why would you name a moon in the freezing outskirts of the solar system after the god of fire?! And Vulcan has nothing to do with the Underworld. You have to keep with the theme! It just was mythologically unsound. /nerd
One significant error (well, it&#039;s significant to us rocket geeks, anyway) in the Critter&#039;s otherwise pretty good description of the Saturn V: the five Rocketdyne F-1s in the S-IC stage together produced 7.65 million lbs. (34 MN) of thrust (not 1 million lbs.).
They were all simultaneously ignited 7 seconds before liftoff. The enormous rocket was literally bolted to the launch pad, so it didn&#039;t move until T=0, at which point explosive charges shattered the bolts, allowing the rocket to rise up off the pad. The first stage engines continued to fire for a duration of 150 sec., providing a total of 5.1 GN of impulse, resulting in a specific impulse of 263 sec. (Which, for a reaction motor operating within the atmosphere, is as good as it ever gets.) During that time the interior of each engine&#039;s combustion chamber reached a temperature comparable to the surface of the Sun. The first stage consumed just slightly over 13 metric tons of fuel per second (kerosene and LOX). At 135 sec. after liftoff the center F-1 was shut down in order to limit the acceleration load experienced by the crew to 4G.
In 2 and a half minutes the S-1C stage accelerated a 3,000 metric ton structure from a standing start at sea level to a velocity of Mach 6.8 and a distance of 58 miles downrange and 42 miles up, all against gravity and without the aid of lifting surfaces.
And there were two more giant stages still left to fire.
A fully fueled Saturn-V contained 2 KT of explosive energy potential, equivalent to approximately one-eighth of the yield of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
If you had the misfortune of being at ground level within one mile of the rocket at the time of launch, the shock wave created when the first stage engines were ignited would have pulverized every bone in your body. It required absolutely genius engineering to keep this stupendous rocket from blowing up from the tremendous heat generated by the first stage engines or being shaken to bits by the shock waves that they produced.
From blank sheet to its first launch of a manned mission in December 1968 the entire rocket had been developed over a period of just seven years. The Saturn V was and still is the most complex machine ever built, yet during its entire operational history it had ZERO failures.
With all due respect to Herr Von Braun, I can only suspect that if a Nazi official came to him and said, Werner, do you think we could fit 5 containers of [insert deadly bio-chemical agent here] in the A4, he would say, &quot;why not make it six.&quot;
In the world of building fires, we employ a risk management model for quickly evaluating what risks are we willing to take to initiate and complete a rescue in a burning building. Sometimes, the fire spread is such that we know the chance of survivability is nil, and the risk outweighs the benefit.
I know the USFS employs similar tools. But from the article (thanks C.R. Creature) it appears that convective energy is not strongly included in the equations. That was interesting to me because when calculating the rate of fire growth in a room or space in a building, it starts as a convective energy event and reverts to a radiant energy event when the smoke layer depth reaches a certain height and temperature.
May I suggest transplanting Silvio Berlusconi&#039;s head onto a recently deceased young girl so he can have bunga bunga parties all by himself in prison.
I get a big ol&#039; American hard-on over these rockets just like any other red-blooded American, but I can help but wonder why such a huge fuss (righteously so) was made over the use of Nazi gathered biological data but Gian Nazi Boner Science gets a pass.
Might be time to require that treeless firebreak lines be in place <i>before</i> people can develop property in fire-prone areas. Electric utilities maintain the right-of-way under power lines, so - &#039;Murcan cowboy fredumbs aside - it&#039;s not exactly an unpossible task.
How &#039;bout the body of that grinning idjit who ran with whats-his-name for President? Seems to have good muscle tone, and the head that&#039;s currently attached isn&#039;t really good for much.
I <i>still</i> would not watch. The mere sight of that hideous harridan makes me ill.
Buzz-Kill-roy...Killy-Roy...Kill-Roy...
It&#039;s Kerberos. Kerberous would maybe be the adjective. What it would actually mean is open to debate -- you get first dibs, being the inventor.
I&#039;m so glad the IAU ignored my fellow Trek nerds. I mean, why would you name a moon in the freezing outskirts of the solar system after the god of fire?! And Vulcan has nothing to do with the Underworld. You have to keep with the theme! It just was mythologically unsound. /nerd
One significant error (well, it&#039;s significant to us rocket geeks, anyway) in the Critter&#039;s otherwise pretty good description of the Saturn V: the five Rocketdyne F-1s in the S-IC stage together produced 7.65 million lbs. (34 MN) of thrust (not 1 million lbs.).
They were all simultaneously ignited 7 seconds before liftoff. The enormous rocket was literally bolted to the launch pad, so it didn&#039;t move until T=0, at which point explosive charges shattered the bolts, allowing the rocket to rise up off the pad. The first stage engines continued to fire for a duration of 150 sec., providing a total of 5.1 GN of impulse, resulting in a specific impulse of 263 sec. (Which, for a reaction motor operating within the atmosphere, is as good as it ever gets.) During that time the interior of each engine&#039;s combustion chamber reached a temperature comparable to the surface of the Sun. The first stage consumed just slightly over 13 metric tons of fuel per second (kerosene and LOX). At 135 sec. after liftoff the center F-1 was shut down in order to limit the acceleration load experienced by the crew to 4G.
In 2 and a half minutes the S-1C stage accelerated a 3,000 metric ton structure from a standing start at sea level to a velocity of Mach 6.8 and a distance of 58 miles downrange and 42 miles up, all against gravity and without the aid of lifting surfaces.
And there were two more giant stages still left to fire.
A fully fueled Saturn-V contained 2 KT of explosive energy potential, equivalent to approximately one-eighth of the yield of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
If you had the misfortune of being at ground level within one mile of the rocket at the time of launch, the shock wave created when the first stage engines were ignited would have pulverized every bone in your body. It required absolutely genius engineering to keep this stupendous rocket from blowing up from the tremendous heat generated by the first stage engines or being shaken to bits by the shock waves that they produced.
From blank sheet to its first launch of a manned mission in December 1968 the entire rocket had been developed over a period of just seven years. The Saturn V was and still is the most complex machine ever built, yet during its entire operational history it had ZERO failures.
Just as a practical note - they don&#039;t really need to <i>reach</i> the moon. Or even low earth orbit, if you think about it...
Blow up a balloon, let it go and watch it zoom around the room: rocket science.
Work for 40 years to develop a rocket powerful enough to launch habitable vehicles into space: rocket engineering.
Which one&#039;s harder?
With all due respect to Herr Von Braun, I can only suspect that if a Nazi official came to him and said, Werner, do you think we could fit 5 containers of [insert deadly bio-chemical agent here] in the A4, he would say, &quot;why not make it six.&quot;
Giant Rockets are good for America, between their inherent awesomeness and all the people that we employ in their assembly and deployment.
The Saturn V is of course the best kind since its purpose has generally not been killing people.
In the world of building fires, we employ a risk management model for quickly evaluating what risks are we willing to take to initiate and complete a rescue in a burning building. Sometimes, the fire spread is such that we know the chance of survivability is nil, and the risk outweighs the benefit.
I know the USFS employs similar tools. But from the article (thanks C.R. Creature) it appears that convective energy is not strongly included in the equations. That was interesting to me because when calculating the rate of fire growth in a room or space in a building, it starts as a convective energy event and reverts to a radiant energy event when the smoke layer depth reaches a certain height and temperature.
May I suggest transplanting Silvio Berlusconi&#039;s head onto a recently deceased young girl so he can have bunga bunga parties all by himself in prison.
Styx? Hopefully for the mythological reference and not because there are that many fans of the band that made &quot;Come Sail Away.&quot;
I get a big ol&#039; American hard-on over these rockets just like any other red-blooded American, but I can help but wonder why such a huge fuss (righteously so) was made over the use of Nazi gathered biological data but Gian Nazi Boner Science gets a pass.
I don&#039;t know, it took 14 seconds for the Saturn V to go from zero to sixty....
What&#039;s that? It was pushing 2800 tons straight up?
Never mind.