How Does The Powerful Saturn V Moon Rocket Work?

Article Written by Josh G for Onkla

The Saturn V moon rocket is the largest rocket to ever fly. It produced over 7.6 million pounds of thrust with its five F-1 engines on the first stage at liftoff. The rocket was massive as it stood over 363 feet tall! There are many different stages and parts of the Saturn V rocket, so lets dive into each stage of the rocket.

The first stage is the bottom part of the rocket. It was called the S-IC pronounced S- one- c. The stage was built by Boeing at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans where the space shuttle external tanks would later be built by Lockheed Martin. The S-IC first stage has two main tanks. One being for the RP-1 or kerosene, and the other being for liquid oxygen.

The first stage had five powerful F-1 engines on the stage to burn all of that propellant in just over two minutes! The stage had a dry mass of 303,000 pounds, but when loaded with propellant it weighed over 4.8 million pounds!

The second stage is just as complicated as the first stage. However, instead of being fueled with kerosene and liquid oxygen, it was fueled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. The second stage had five J-2 engines, which provided 1.1 million pounds of thrust when ignited at full throttle. The engines would burn for around five minutes prior to the engines being cutoff. The stage would then be depleted in the ocean.

Saturn V First Launch Photographed From Just Around 4 Miles Away

The third stage would separate and would ignite its single J-2 engine for its shorter burn with a duration of just around two minutes. The reason this burn is shorter is because the second stage left it at around 25,000 kilometers per hour, and orbital velocity is around 27,000 kilometers per hour. That means that the third stage only needed to accelarate around 2,000 kilometers per hour to reach orbit. However since there is only a single J-2 engine, the burn time would have to be multiplied by five compared to the second stage because instead of having five engines like the second stage, the third stage only had one. The third stage ran on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen just like the second stage did.

The second burn that the third stage would perform would be the Trans-Lunar Injection or TLI. That is where the third stage would burn for approximately six minutes to almost double the velocity of the spacecraft. That maneuver would fling the third stage, lunar module, and service module out to where to moon would be in just three days.

After the second burn is completed with the single J-2 engine on the third stage. The command module is separated with the capsule. It slowly drifts away prior to turning 180 degrees back around. It then fires its RCS (Reaction Control System) thrusters to push it towards the lunar module. Once it docks to the lunar module, it will then pull the module out of the second stage, and then will continue its journey to the moon.

Once the spacecraft reaches its apogee around earth, and is near the moon, the service module will fire its single engine retrograde in order to circularize their orbit around the moon. Once that burn is complete, then the apollo astronauts are in lunar orbit! Preparations would then begin for the descent onto the surface of the moon.

Two of the three astronauts would board the lunar lander, and then undock from the command module, which would remain in lunar orbit. The lunar lander would the slowly descend to the lunar surface. Once it landed the astronauts would unpack their expiriments and begin to study the lunar surface. In orbit, the single astronaut would remain, and perorm science in orbit.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong Walking on the Surface of the Moon

The LEM or lunar escape module had a single engine. It is used to get the astronauts off of the surface of the moon, into lunar orbit, and docked back at the command module. Once that is completed the crew would move back over to the command module, where the crew would re-unite before jetissoning the LEM from the command module.

Onboard computers would light the engine in order for the command module to be able to target the exact second that it has to start the burn which would return the astronauts back to earth. The burn would last a few minutes while they were on the far side of the moon. That means that they couldn't communicate with the spacecraft, so if something did happen to go wrong, they wouldn't know until they came out of the blackout period.

They would then begin their three day journey back to earth prior to burning the engine retrograde once again for their orbit to circularize around their home planet, earth. The service module would then perform the de-orbit burn, and then the module would be separated, leaving just the astronauts, in the capsule, travelling at over 25 times the speed of sound, shooting towards the ground.

The service module would then perform a series of burns to get it safely away from the crew capsule, however on the Apollo 11 mission, these burns failed, so it was a very close call of the capsule almost being destroyed by the service module. However on all the other missions the burns were successful and mostly went correctly.

Apollo 12 Capsule Splashed Down in the Atlantic Ocean

The entry interface would begin and they would enter another blackout period. This is because of the plasma buildup around the capsule blocking all communication waves from travelling in or out of the capsule. The period lasts usually from 4 - 7 minutes.

The drouge chutes are then deployed which are soon followed up by the main parachutes which would do most of the slowing of the crew capsule prior to it splashing down in the Atlantic ocean for recovery. The crew would then exit the capsule and board a liferaft, and would be recovered by a boat. They would then sail back to florida on the boat, and then start evaluations which usually lasted around one to two weeks after they splashed down.

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