Saturn V high speed footage

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rXtG3vfAlA
Pretty sweet.

[280plus]

heh,,,that was cool... 

[AJ Dual]

I swear, those turbopumps that fed the F1's could probably have lifted lesser rockets into orbit without igniting the fuel. Given some magical external power source that weighed nothing, water might have sufficed.

Love the compression shock rings around the stages at about 3:20 as it starts to go sonic. (Is that when Max-Q happens?)

And perhaps someone can explain this, the first stage of the Saturn V is the only rocket where I've seen this. How the fuel just on the edge of the engine bells isn't burning, it ignites a few feet down. Is it burning, but moving too fast for incandescence, or is it some other effect? Like the regenerative cooling of fuel through the nozzle wall or something?

[Manedwolf]

One of the alternate booster plans for the shuttle used F1's, along with winglets and an automated return to a remote airstrip.

They should have gone with that, I think. The F1 is the most reliable engine ever built. They probably can't even build them anymore, all the tooling is gone, the subcontractors are gone...

[mfree]

The unburnt fuel moving down the nozzle sides is likely there for cooling purposes.

EDIT: On further research, the "black stuff" is turbopump exhaust, cooler helium. It's there for the same purpose though, absorb the heat and carry it away lest the chamber heat up and burn through.

[MechAg94]

Is that unburnt fuel or a nitrogen blanket to keep the reaction under control? 

A company has a plant at Merritt Island that has been there since those times.  It supplies high pressure nitrogen.  I think they have a 7000 psi pipeline that feeds all the launch pads.  The entire outside of the vehicle is blanketed in nitrogen to make sure no stray sparks or leaks can cause a problem.  They won't attempt a launch without it.  A competitor supplies the liquid oxygen for fuel.

Also, I guess if it is fuel and not O2, it won't mix with the O2 until it gets below the nozzle and will help cool the nozzle.  They do similar things with big burners in boilers and heaters to control where the combustion occurs.

[roo_ster]

I doubt that we will ever, in the era of trillion-dollar entitlement programs, do such again as a nation.

[Brad Johnson]

Here's one for you.  For fuel, the stage one engines burn good old kerosene.  How's that for a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem?

Brad

[RocketMan]

I doubt that we will ever, in the era of trillion-dollar entitlement programs, do such again as a nation.

I am sure you are entirely correct.  That is why I merely sigh when someone mentions our planned replacements for the shuttles, and future missions to the moon.

The video is impressively bittersweet.   Will this nation accomplish anything so technologically magnificent ever again?

[Physics]

I doubt that we will ever, in the era of trillion-dollar entitlement programs, do such again as a nation.

I am sure you are entirely correct.  That is why I merely sigh when someone mentions our planned replacements for the shuttles, and future missions to the moon.

The video is impressively bittersweet.   Will this nation accomplish anything so technologically magnificent ever again?

I really hope so.  That video was very cool, but I have much the same reaction.  It makes me sad, like watching that Feynman interview on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk8TVopOBGE      I fear we may see a return to the moon by Virgin Galactic before the United States government. 

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

I fear we may see a return to the moon by Virgin Galactic before the United States government.

A-OK with me.  Privatize space.

[280plus]

All your space are belong to us!

[RocketMan]

I fear we may see a return to the moon by Virgin Galactic before the United States government.

A-OK with me.  Privatize space.

Works for me.

[AJ Dual]

Here's one for you.  For fuel, the stage one engines burn good old kerosene.  How's that for a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem?

Brad

Higher molecular weight fuel, gives higher Isp no? or was it simply the challenge of keeping that much LH2 in one place in the large first stage tank? Or the size of the tank needed because the needed mass of LH2 would have been much (unworkably) larger in volume?

[Mabs2]

Mmmm fire fire fire.

[Brad Johnson]

Higher molecular weight fuel, gives higher Isp no? or was it simply the challenge of keeping that much LH2 in one place in the large first stage tank? Or the size of the tank needed because the needed mass of LH2 would have been much (unworkably) larger in volume?

I think more than anything it was a proven technology they knew worked well and wouldn't need a jillion man hours of new engineering to be useful.  If nothing else old Werner was a stickler for efficiency.

Brad

[AJ Dual]

I think more than anything it was a proven technology they knew worked well and wouldn't need a jillion man hours of new engineering to be useful.  If nothing else old Werner was a stickler for efficiency.

Brad

True, having a non-cryo fuel must have immense engineering savings. OTOH, IIRC, the upper stages were LH2. The L02 tank for the first stage had to be close to twice the size of the liquid kero tank, due to the different densities of the two liquids, the burn/oxidization ratio, not to mention all the other handling characteristics. Something like just under a million and a half liters of L02, but only 800,000 liters of QRSTWXYZ-P1 or whatever they used for the actual Kerosene.

Then it flips, and the LH2 tanks were several times the size of the L02 tanks in the upper stages.