Saturn 5 Blueprints Safely in Storage

space.com ^ | 13 March 2000 | By Michael Paine

[Dead Dog]

Saturn 5 Blueprints Safely in Storage

A NASA official has denied a claim made by a book author that blueprints for the mighty Saturn 5 rocket used to push Apollo astronauts to the moon were lost.

The denial came in response to a recent story in SPACE.com that reported on a claim John Lewis made in his 1996 book, Mining the Sky, that he went looking for the Saturn 5 blueprints a few years ago and concluded, incredibly, they had been "lost."

Paul Shawcross, from NASA's Office of Inspector General, came to the agency's defense in comments published on CCNet -- a scholarly electronic newsletter covering the threat of asteroids and comets. Shawcross said the Saturn 5 blueprints are held at the Marshall Space Flight Center on microfilm.

"There is no point in even contemplating trying to rebuild the Saturn 5 ... The real problem is the hundreds of thousands of parts that are simply not manufactured any more."

"The Federal Archives in East Point, Georgia, also has 2,900 cubic feet of Saturn documents," he said. "Rocketdyne has in its archives dozens of volumes from its Knowledge Retention Program. This effort was initiated in the late '60s to document every facet of F 1 and J 2 engine production to assist in any future restart."

Shawcross cautioned that rebuilding a Saturn 5 would require more than good blueprints.

"The problem in recreating the Saturn 5 is not finding the drawings, it is finding vendors who can supply mid-1960's vintage hardware," he wrote, "and the fact that the launch pads and vehicle assembly buildings have been converted to space shuttle use, so you have no place to launch from.

"By the time you redesign to accommodate available hardware and re-modify the launch pads, you may as well have started from scratch with a clean sheet design," he wrote.

In years past, rumors have abounded that in the 1970s the White House or Congress had the Saturn 5 plans destroyed "to prevent the technology from falling into the wrong hands".

That seems doubtful -- it would be a formidable terrorist group that decided to build a Saturn 5 to wreak havoc on the world, or build a lunar base. Also, by the1970s, the Soviets apparently had given up on the race to the moon.

Geoffrey Hughes from the Rotary Rocket Company supported Shawcross's view.

"There is no point in even contemplating trying to rebuild the Saturn 5," he said. "Having a complete set of Saturn 5 blueprints would do us no good whatsoever. True, we would still be able to bend the big pieces of metal fairly easily. But they are not the problem.

"The real problem is the hundreds of thousands of other parts, some as apparently insignificant as a bolt or a washer, that are simply not manufactured any more. Everything would have to be redone. So a simple rebuild would be impossible. The only real answer would be to start from scratch and build anew using modern parts and processes. Yet another immense challenge!"

It turns out that NASA is taking on that challenge, but not necessarily to chase asteroids.

Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are working on designs for a new giant launch vehicle called Magnum. It would use a curious mix of Russian rocket engines -- derived from the abandoned Soviet Energia rocket program -- and newly developed strap-on, liquid-fueled boosters that would first be tested out on space shuttles.

The Magnum would use the space shuttle launch facilities at Cape Canaveral and could launch 80 tons (81,280 kilograms) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). This compares with around 20 tons (20,320 kilograms) for the piloted space shuttle, and for un-piloted vehicles like the U.S.' Titan 4-B and the European Space Agency's Ariane 5. Its lift capacity, however, would be less than the 100 tons (101,600 kilograms) that the Saturn 5 and Energia could manage.

[Dead Dog]

I hear can't build it a lot now days. Who exactly was building crawlers before the first one was built? Just because we can't order off the shelf products to build replicas of the 1970s, does not mean can't.

[TomServo]

and the SaturnV really shook things.

My Father worked in the space program. So as a kid living in Huntsville, we'd hear 'em testing the engines on the Saturn 5 every once in awhile. Now - at 46 - I've just relocated back to, guess where - Huntsville. I've alerted my wife that when the dishes rattle and she thinks the earth is coming to an end, not to panic.

[orionblamblam]

Doesn't matter how wonderful scanning is, if the originals are no longer readable. I have more than a few drawings that were originally on vellum, then microfilmed, printed out blurry, allowed to fade in the sun, microfilmed again, printed out at reduced scale and then photocopied several times. Then a cat whizzed on 'em.

[RightWhale]

Yeah, I know. I'm in the business. The recent scans are surprisingly good. Even blueline linen printed on the back comes out better than adequate, better than the original.

[snopercod]

There is no foundry in the United States which can manufacture the large forgings for the crawler. The environmentalists have seen to that.

We would have to go to Czechoslovakia for such things. They still have the capability.

[RightWhale]

We would have to go to Czechoslovakia

Well, then we shall go to either Czech or Slovakia, or both.

[snopercod]

Ron Wyden mode?

[XBob]

113 - "I work in Logistics and Maintenance, dude. "

In what?

It's sort of hard to get a factory to gear up for production of qty - 3ea highly specialized, obsolete parts, with no past or future demand. And then, trying to get them into the production schedule within a year or two is another problem.

So, what you end up with is a part, which originally cost 3 cents, costing $25,000 and taking 2 years to produce.

[orionblamblam]

What size scanners do you have, and what resolution? I have some large drawings... V-2 iso, V-2 engine and components, and one extra-spiffy Saturn V inboard profile... that I'd like to get scanned so's I could clean them up. But these are big suckers (the S-V drawing isn't wide, but it's about 5-6 feet long; the V-2 drawings are 2-3 feet wide, and longer photocopies of the originals).

[XBob]

119 - "Fiche was not a great technology. Modern scanning is. A world of difference."

I agree, however, that was one of the major technologies used to 'store' the space age drawings, and because of it, they have 'disappeared', literally. I know, I spent weeks sometimes trying to 'read' or identify required parts from drawings. On numbers of occasions, I had to give up, go back to the salvage area, and literally put a micrometer to an actual part, get two tech's and an engineer or two, to agree on a 'best' description (materials,sizes,etc), and the 'pray' it would fit after we went out and had it specially built.

[RightWhale]

These are engineering size scanners. They will take 36" wide and any length. We don't have a scanner here anymore, and the latest batch was done at the electric utility. The state is also up and running and scanning everything. It's all on the Internet. 1000s of images, maybe millions, who knows. No more bluelines, yay!

[XBob]

120 - "Rocketdyne and the other Sub's would simply go to their favorite vendors to build parts to the SCD."

Rocketdyne is one of the very few major contractors/subcontractors which even sort of intact, and I think it is now a part of Boeing. But there were thousands of other vendors and suppliers, most of which don't exist any more, nor do their technologies, techniques, and expertice.

[RightWhale]

Fiche was at best a temporary solution, especially the diazo copies. They get scratched, fade if exposed to light, heat or maybe the exposure wasn't right in the first place. If the operator is inexperienced there are a percentage of fuzzy cards. Some expertise was required, and that is not so plentiful in America anymore.

Scanning requires feeding the drawing right-side up and not much more: the rest is automated. You get to name the resulting file. Just right for the talent level of the workforce.

[RightWhale]

there were thousands of other vendors and suppliers, most of which don't exist any more, nor do their technologies, techniques, and expertice

They are still there, just not visible. When sprinkled with government money, they become visible again. Watch.

[XBob]

121 - "I hear can't build it a lot now days. Who exactly was building crawlers before the first one was built? Just because we can't order off the shelf products to build replicas of the 1970s, does not mean can't."

Well, back in those days, the crawlers were built by a 100year old company which came into major ascendency building the heavy equipment and giant steam shovels and digging machines to dig the panama canal - Marion Power Shovel, of Ohio. They built huge crawler type steam/diesel shovels. As coal mining in the US progressed, and we went on into strip mining, they built huge strip mining coal shovels. I remember one picture of one, The Mountaineer, showing it with two cars parked side by side in it's shovel.

No more panama canal, no more strip mines, no more giant shovels/crawlers.

the crawlers were huge, but they had experience, equipment, technology, to build these huge things. We no longer have it.

http://www.roadtripamerica.com/places/marion.htm

[Dead Dog]

I hear what your saying XBob, but how many of those vendors existed in 1960? Or better yet, how many of those were building Saturn V parts in 1960.

One big question I have is how much of these components were designed based off of a vendors inputs...or did they do it the usual expensive way, Joe Engineer at Prime/Sub Contractor designs widget #10,000,000 then lets the vendors bid.

[XBob]

129 - "What size scanners do you have, and what resolution? I have some large drawings... V-2 iso, V-2 engine and components, and one extra-spiffy Saturn V inboard profile... that I'd like to get scanned so's I could clean them up."

Go to a city (like Houston) which has lots of E&C outfits, and check the yellow pages for blue-prints, and the best have giant machines which do the job for a reasonable price, if you only have a few. There are not a lot around, but they are around.

[XBob]

133 - "Fiche was "

That's right, it WAS, and still IS. The originals are gone. The poor quality/disappeared fische, in many cases, is all that is left. I know, I went all over the country in search of some accurate/legibile drawings, and often they just no longer exist.

[RightWhale]

That's right. Fiche walk off. What somebody without a fiche reader might do with a fiche card is another mystery.

[XBob]

134 - "They are still there, just not visible. When sprinkled with government money, they become visible again. Watch."

Sorry - mostly, they are dead, little one and two man shops which made critical parts by hand. And with them, their craftsmanship and expertice.

There was a government requirement, that 17% of the procurements were set aside to these small firms, no matter what the price. Affirmative action for women and minority owned businesses.