The sign accompanying the Saturn V model.
It reads
A Towering Achievement
A Giant Model
The Saturn V rocket is the most powerful launch vehicle ever successfully
flown. The NASA Marshall Space Flight Center team developed the vehicle from
the ground up for the Apollo lunar missions. To this day, it reamins the only
vehicle ever to have carried astronauts beyond low Earth orbit, safely carrying
all Apollo missions from the Earth to the Moon. Although the final launch of
the Saturn V was in 1973, this rocket continues to inspire people today.
Steve Eves launched this
1:10 scale model in Maryland on April 25, 2009. It flew to a height of
4,441 feet (1,354 meters) and safely parachuted to land on its tail.
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Saturn V 1:10 |
Saturn V 1:1 |
Height |
36 ft (11 m) |
363 ft (110.6 m) |
Maximum diameter |
61.5 in (154.94 cm) |
33 ft (10.1 m) |
Mass |
1648 lb (748 kg) |
6,200,000 lb (2,800,000 kg) |
Thrust at launch |
367,000 lb (1,632,497 N) |
7,648,000 lb (34,020,000 N) |
The "Thrust at launch" figure appears to be in error; contemporary
reports
indicate that the total impulse was 181,000 Newton-seconds. With the reported
engine burn times, that
averages out to about 8,000 pounds of thrust during the first four seconds of
flight, although Eves himself said in an interview that the rocket had "about
10,000 pounds" of thrust. It's uncertain as to what the actual thrust was at
the moment of launch, although my nephew (an aerospace engineer) looked up the
data
sheet for the commercially-available engines, extrapolated that
information to the larger motor, and estimated thrust at launch to be in the
low to mid-11,000 pound range.
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