The record holder remains the Saturn V — for now. Its record is 141 metric tons into LEO. As NASA became more familiar with it, and its reliability was 100 per cent, they continued to push up performance. Even with that, Von Braun figured that 12 Saturn V launches would be required for a mission to Mars.
It sez here:
“Ares can take 410,000 pounds into low earth orbit; the Saturn V carried 260,000 pounds. And, the Saturn V could send a payload of 100,000 pounds to the moon; Ares will carry 157,000 pounds.”
http://www.thespacebuff.com/current/moon-rockets-saturn-v-vs-ares-v/
I found a goofy forum page where s vs a was sort of discussed, and someone said the Soviet (Sergei Korolev’s) N-1 booster was number one — it was not. It was a monstrosity with over 30 engines in the first stage; it would have required two more or less simultaneous launches to accomplish one manned lunar mission; would only have put one cosmonaut on the Moon and (hopefully) brought him back; and the first launch attempt destroyed one of the two needed launchpads. I think there were eventually two more test flights, each of which ended prematurely, in failure. Korolev died during heart surgery in 1966. In the massive “Korolev” biography, it’s mentioned that when he read of Von Braun’s plan to use a 100% cryofueled upper stage in the Apollo vehicle, he just shook his head and said, they’ll never solve all the problems with that approach. A couple of years later the engines were rockin’ it on the test stand, and Korolev knew the race was lost.
To put things into perspective, it would take somewhat more than three of the solid rocket boosters strapped together to produce something equivalent to the Saturn V. The three liquid-fuel main shuttle engines are among the most powerful liquid-fueled rocket engines ever built, but the three together don’t quite equal *one* of the F1 engines, of which the Saturn V had five. :’D
Here’s a picture (appeared I think in an FR topic last year) showing a height comparison of various historical rocket systems. The unlabelled one is the N1.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/rockets-compared.jpg
[snip] The F-1 after Apollo — There was an uprating redevelopment of the F-1 undertaken by Rocketdyne during the 1960s which resulted in a new engine specification known as the F-1A. While outwardly very similar to the F-1, the F-1A was actually lighter yet 33% more powerful (2 million lbf compared to F-1’s 1.5 million) and would have been used on future Saturn V vehicles in the post-Apollo era. However, the Saturn V production line was closed prior to the end of Project Apollo and no F-1A engine ever flew on a launch vehicle. [end]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-1_(rocket_engine)#The_F-1_after_Apollo
