Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Subject: Re: Apollo Block I (was:Reliability of Shuttle...)
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 02:00:21 GMT

In article <4vtfj9$eu2@cronkite.seas.gwu.edu> wayneday@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu (Dwayne Allen Day) writes:
>...If you look at the clustered tanking on the 
>Saturn I/IB you will see where it got the name--it consisted of a cluster 
>of Jupiter tanking (rather inefficient when you think about it...

Well, Jupiter and Redstone tanking -- a Jupiter tank in the middle with a
ring of Redstone tanks around it.  All of which dates to the earliest days
of the Juno V, when it was purely a technology demonstration not intended
to fly, and it was more important that the tanks be cheap than that they
be efficient.

>increases the surface area of the tanking, increases the weight, and 
>decreases the internal volume--one big tank is better than a bunch of 
>smaller tanks).

It also does interesting (i.e., complicated and painful) things to both
the structural dynamics and the fuel-slosh behavior.  I've read one
technical book by the Marshall people which seemed to say, about every
ten pages, "none of this is a problem unless you use clustered tanks,
but if you do, here's what happens...".

>: Actually, the Saturn II (or any of several other names), a Saturn IB with
>: a Centaur on top, came very close to flying -- it was originally the chosen
>: launcher for Voyager (the original Voyager...
>
>NASA, of course, chose to fly Voyager/Viking on the Titan III, which 
>itself was really the result of an Air Force desire to NOT rely on the Saturn.

Actually, Viking was a drastically shrunken remnant of Voyager -- there
wasn't a prayer of the original Voyager fitting on a Titan.  When it
outgrew the Saturn II, there was only one place to go:  two spacecraft
at a time on a Saturn V.
-- 
 ...the truly fundamental discoveries seldom       |       Henry Spencer
occur where we have decided to look.  --B. Forman  |   henry@zoo.toronto.edu

Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Subject: Re: Apollo Block I (was:Reliability of Shuttle...)
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 17:38:27 GMT

In article <321CB847.4CA3@pacbell.net> Michael Walsh <mp_walsh@pacbell.net> writes:
>> [Saturn I a waste of time]  It is most unlikely that von Braun would have
>> bothered with the Saturn I, had he known that its only utility would be as a
>> precursor to the Saturn IB.
>
>Henry, this is real second guessing in the context of history...

Note that I specifically said "had he known".  In retrospect, the Saturn I
was one of those things that looked like a good idea at the time, but ended
up being a waste of time because history bypassed it.

>In fact the first plans of what turned out to be the Saturn I booster, which
>was the common first stage for both the Saturn I and Saturn IB, that I saw
>was labled as a Jupiter vehicle...

It started out as Super-Jupiter, and then spent a while as Juno V before
becoming Saturn.

>I believe this had something to do with
>diverting funds obtained for the Jupiter missile program to the space booster.

I'd be surprised; I suspect it was more a matter of creative naming to avoid
problems with the bureaucracy, in the same way that a souped-up Redstone 
used for Jupiter component testing became "Jupiter C" because that tended
to get it higher priority at the Cape.  As far as I know, no significant
money was spent until it became Juno V, at which point it had ARPA funding.

>There were a number of versions of what became the Saturn V which were
>never built.  One of these had the Centaur as an upper stage...

Actually, the Saturn II (or any of several other names), a Saturn IB with
a Centaur on top, came very close to flying -- it was originally the chosen
launcher for Voyager (the original Voyager, not the Mariner Jupiter/Saturn
concept which took over the name after the original folded).  It died when
Mariner 4 revealed that Mars's atmosphere was much thinner than expected,
which drove the Voyager lander's mass up beyond what the Saturn II could
launch... at a time when Saturn II had no other firm customers and NASA
was trying to reduce the number of launcher projects it was involved in.

>Marshall SFC was much concerned about getting as much experience with
>LO2-LH2 vehicles as possible and the first engine available was the RL-10.
>I think this desire to get actual experience on a real vehicle was the main
>driving force for the S-IV stage which had six RL-10 engines.
>I don't know what went on in Werner Von Braun's mind, but I rather doubt
>that he would have passed up the opportunity to get this valuable
>experience.

Note, though, that Marshall was already involved with Centaur, which would
give similar experience even earlier... and in fact, von Braun cited this
as the major reason why he wasn't worried about an S-IV design which
clustered six unproven engines.  As it turned out, Marshall paid so little
attention to Centaur that in 1962, after big schedule slips, a spectacular
failure on the first flight, and a Congressional subcommittee report which
pointed to cultural clashes and inattentiveness by Marshall as major
causes of the problems, NASA HQ took Centaur away from Marshall and gave
it to Lewis.  This doesn't sound to me like an urgent desire to acquire
LOX/LH2 experience.
-- 
 ...the truly fundamental discoveries seldom       |       Henry Spencer
occur where we have decided to look.  --B. Forman  |   henry@zoo.toronto.edu