How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life

[roo_ster]

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/

Long article with lots of photos telling how some NASA engineers tracked down an F-1 booster rocket and disassembled it while scanning it into CAD.

Neat stuff worth your time.

[Brad Johnson]

Pretty cool.

Brad

[mgdavis]

Way cool!

I got to go through the Saturn V building at Kennedy about a year and a half ago. The scale of that machine is absolutely jaw-dropping.

[brimic]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgvd9-R8HoA

I got to go through the Saturn V building at Kennedy about a year and a half ago. The scale of that machine is absolutely jaw-dropping.

Yes it is.
Its one of the most impressive man made things I've ever seen.

[Northwoods]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgvd9-R8HoAYes it is.
Its one of the most impressive man made things I've ever seen.

Too bad they intentionally destroyed the engineering work and drawings in order to make the case they need the funding for the Shuttle.

[mtnbkr]

Too bad they intentionally destroyed the engineering work and drawings in order to make the case they need the funding for the Shuttle.

That's not what the article says:

One urban legend holds that key "plans" or "blueprints" were disposed of long ago through carelessness or bureaucratic oversight. Nothing could be further from the truth; every scrap of documentation produced during Project Apollo, including the design documents for the Saturn V and the F-1 engines, remains on file. If re-creating the F-1 engine were simply a matter of cribbing from some 1960s blueprints, NASA would have already done so.

Chris

[Sergeant Bob]

Pretty interesting stuff. I see they are using 3D printing for some of the tooling, and basically 3D to recreate some of the more complex parts.

[birdman]

Too bad they intentionally destroyed the engineering work and drawings in order to make the case they need the funding for the Shuttle.

As mtnbkr said already, this isn't true.  Not only that, I have personally looked at a bunch of the f-1 and j-2 engineering work, and even tooling, when I was working at rocketdyne.