What if Apollo/Saturn Had never been Cancelled?

[Lobo]

There was also Titan IIIL2 and Titan IIIL4 vehicles which used 15 foot cores, each with 4 engines + 2 or 4 SRBs.

http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/blog/?p=66

Cool.  Didn't know that.  However, would that have defeated the concept of having a NASA rocket that was common to the USAF payload and ICBM boosters, and creating an overhead NASA would have to pay for?

[mike robel]

It was going to be used to support Star Wars...

[truth is life]

Cool.  Didn't know that.  However, would that have defeated the concept of having a NASA rocket that was common to the USAF payload and ICBM boosters, and creating an overhead NASA would have to pay for?

It would have had components in common (the engines and boosters). In that respect it could perhaps be compared to Atlas V Phase 3 as opposed to Atlas V phase 1/2, or the notional "Atlas V Phase X" that shows up in ESAS relative to Atlas V. Although it does require some NASA-dedicated facilities, and NASA-dedicated overhead, it nevertheless has enough components in common that there should be efficiency gains in those components. Besides, even leaving out Star Wars, there might very well be a military use identified for all that lift (and giant payload fairing); high-res SAR spysat?

[Archibald]

However, would that have defeated the concept of having a NASA rocket that was common to the USAF payload and ICBM boosters, and creating an overhead NASA would have to pay for

A Titan III-L with a Centaur, and without the large solids, is very much... an Ariane 4 booster look-alike.
Might have made for a terrific competitor to the european launcher...
(it also works with a Titan III-E, scrap the large solids, and replace them with Delta 7000 nine strapons, and there's your American Ariane).

[mike robel]

There was a concept to place the strap ons onto the Titan II Satellite launch vehicle, so the idea cam much closer than you thought.

[RanulfC]

Perhaps Skylab COULD have been made somewhat "reusable" with more missions. MSFC seemed to think it was possible according to this "Beyond Apollo" article:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/nasa-marshalls-skylab-reuse-study-1977/#more-121546

Randy

[luke strawwalker]

OK, I have to post them.  Here is my 1/144 Saturn IF and Saturn 2F.

And just for fun, a mock up of a Saturn 2F1C - the 2F core plus 2 strap ons with 2F1s each.

As you may have figured out, I make a lot of Saturn I and V variations over the years.

Obviously, I think if we had not cancelled Saturn-Apollo we would have landed on Mars by now, and had a space station and maybe a moon base.

but maybe not.

What exactly is the Saturn 2F?

I think what he's referring to is basically a "Delta IV Heavy" type configuration, but using THREE of the twin-F-1 powered cores (the "so-called" Saturn I-F's) strapped together into a SIX F-1 first stage...  There was actually a study done to possibly modify the S-IC stage to accept TWO F-1 engines in the center positions, with the outboards moved outward by 39 inches (IIRC) to make room, and the stage strength increased to handle the higher thrust.  Of course this would have been very expensive and wasn't needed for the existing missions, and therefore never occurred and went no further than the study stage. 

A "heavy" version of the Saturn I-F (or if you prefer, the nearly identical "Jarvis" launcher from the late 80's that would have used an 8.4 meter ET-derived tank redesigned to handle kerosene propellant densities and volumes) would have been an EXTREMELY powerful booster...

Later!  OL JR

[luke strawwalker]

What exactly is the Saturn 2F?

I might be wrong, but I think it was a proposal to use J-2 as the core engine for an LEO-only crew launcher.

There WAS a proposal for the "Saturn II" which would have used an S-II Saturn V second stage as the core stage of a new vehicle, with FOUR of the Titan III SRM's as strap-on boosters surrounding it as the first stage booster rockets, since the J-2's didn't have the thrust necessary to lift themselves off the pad with a fully fueled stage, let alone payload.  IIRC the S-IVB could have potentially been used as an upper stage for this configuration as well. 

Later!  OL JR  

[luke strawwalker]

All,

I did not take any of the criticism as a personal attack.  I lived on Merritt Island during Apollo; while I was not/am not a rocket scientist/engineer, most of my friends parents (and my dad) were, including some fellow named Gunter Wendt, whose daughter Norma and I are good friends.

Obviously, LOR as executed was the way to get to the moon at the time.  That was a tactical/operational decision to get to the moon by a certain time.  It worked.  That having said, the follow through was absolutely killed when we landed on the moon.

Remember, von Braun and others for years had advocated an integrated space program with shuttles, expendable boosters, space stations, orbital assembly, etc. etc. as needed for getting to the moon.  We didn't need it then and argueably, if we just want to go somewhere, we don't need it now.  But if we want to have a sustained program, it has to have some building blocks.  There are aspects of this thought in the present program (depots, the long term habs, etc.) and developments.

A bigger strategic mistake, once we had it, was cancelling Saturn and going with the Shuttle.  It doomed us to LEO for a generation or two.  And now look at us.

As far as boosters go, I have to tell you I think the Saturn C2, C3, and C8 really look like a bunch of kludges.  The Saturn C4 was fairly good (4 F-1s in the first stage).  The Saturn V was magnificent.  Again, the lack of an integrated program perhaps using the Saturn IB and/or Titan IIIC and Saturn V with appropriate mid and long ranage goals crippled us.

LBJ said something to the effect of "Americans are a lot better at going somewhere than they are with doing something after they get there.)="

Well, while it's clear with 20/20 hindsight now that it's all over with that shuttle was a mistake, it didn't have to be... More than a few folks realized that shuttle was headed in the wrong direction at the time, but they were "drowned out" by all the voices with "shuttle fever" from the massive overselling of shuttle in the 70's... from the rediculous claims of "near-weekly shuttle flights" to the idea that a complex manned vehicle with partial reusability would ever be a good replacement for launching unmanned cargoes, to the massive underestimation of costs of refurbishment and turnaround... interestingly enough, most of the very things that doomed shuttle to be the expensive magnificent mess that it was could be found in studies IF one chose to look hard enough. 

Shuttle was to be the FIRST STEP in a program basically centered on space stations and an eventual return to the moon and elsewhere, based on an EOR type approach.  Unfortunately, only the shuttle got approved, and it took another 14 years to get approval for a space station, and then it became a huge bureaucratic mess that didn't fly any hardware for another 12 years after the go-ahead, and took another 13 years of on-orbit assembly to complete.  Now we don't even have our own vehicle capable of getting astronauts to it... so clearly the failing was in the lack of funding and leadership and management, not lack of technical or engineering ability. 

Shuttle didn't HAVE to turn out the way it did... shuttle was a victim of compromises in design and construction, most of them politically motivated or motivated by funding and political tradeoffs, which led the design in directions that caused it to have no chance of being what they sold it as...

When the shuttle was finally flying, nothing else ever materialized, and so the ideas of developing an EOR type architecture to go back to the moon or anywhere else never came about.  Reagan finally approved Space Station Freedom which slowly morphed very painfully and expensively into ISS, but nothing ever became of the rest of the plans but studies. 

There was a study I read that proposed very different versions of the shuttle, one which was especially interesting was plans for a small "Dreamchaser" type shuttle for crew only or very small cargo, launched atop an "ultra-low cost launch vehicle" that was expendable or partially reusable.  Of course there were also the plans for the "Faget shuttle" that would have been fully reusable, virtually a flyback booster and upper stage "fluffy orbiter".  Either of these might well have led to a shuttle that would have been MUCH more likely to hit the goals that the shuttle program was aiming for, namely, higher flight rates and lower refurbishment costs.  I read  study that basically poked enough holes in the reasons for shuttle in the early-mid 70's that the thing should never have been built as it was... because it showed HOW SENSITIVE reusable spacecraft are to flight rates, and that high flight rates are required to justify the development costs of fully reusable systems, and that they are also extremely sensitive to refurbishment costs and turnaround time, which affects the refurb costs via manhours required and the turnaround times which limit the flight rates. 

Maybe that's the reasoning behind SLS... build the rocket first, which will need some payloads to be built to justify it, thus "securing" the funding necessary to make it all worthwhile... especially since they're building a rocket and capsule that is "too expensive" and "unsuited" to LEO operations... this seems to me to be the exact same kind of 'circular reasoning' that NASA engaged in to justify and "guarantee" the building of the shuttle in the 70's, and we all know how that turned out. 

Later!  OL JR

[luke strawwalker]

The irony in this whole discussion is the assumption that NASA's next launch vehicle would be some sort of F-1 based rocket. That's because everyone wants the F-1 around today.

But why would NASA, which had canceled the last two lunar Apollo mission to save money, want to design, built and certify a new launch vehicle when they had a perfectly serviceable rocket in the Saturn Ib? True you had to off-load a lot of fuel to get it Apollo into LEO but the Apollo Service module was designed to do both the lunar orbital insertion and the return to earth burns. It wouldn't need anywhere's near that much fuel for the sorts of LEO missions proposed for the Apollo Applications program. So the Saturn Ib would have remained adequate and gradual improvements in engine design and vehicle weight reductions would have made it even better.

I was surprised to read in the comment that one F-1 engine weighted more than eight H-1's (roughly 6000 kg to 8000 for the F-1). The ISP of the H-1 was 289 versus 256 for the F-1, as well. I'm not sure when the idea of clustering large numbers of small engines lost favor with NASA but looking at just these two numbers, the Ib is a better rocket. And assuming three Apollo Application missions a year that comes to 24 H-1 a year, so mass production would keep the costs down.

So, as much as one would like to have seen the F-1 remain in production all these years, I think the obvious choice for the times would have been to keep the already existing Saturn Ib and not spend money developing anything new.

These are good points... but I think for Saturn to survive there would have had to been a lot of streamlining and reducing the number of engines and stages that had to be produced for a Saturn based infrastructure to continue, in the interests of affordability.  Having the S-IVB stage production program, an S-II stage program, S-IC stage program, S-IB program, J-2 engine program, F-1 program, and the H-1 program as well, would have been too expensive to maintain.  The H-1 was a good engine, and as you pointed out, and the higher production numbers required for multiple vehicles would have put in some economies of scale, and one benefit of having vehicles with more engines means it has engine out earlier and a lot more flexibility in tailoring the thrust levels by shutting down engines instead of requiring more sophisticated throttling engine designs.  BUT, the F-1 buys you an HLV... and CAN be used on the Crew Launcher (CLV).  It might be a bit overkill or less efficient than the smaller engines, but I'd bet it would've been cheaper to accept the suboptimal CLV powered by F-1's than to keep the H-1 program going as well... and H-1's by themselves lock you out of an HLV if you cancel F-1 (unless you want to go to a US version of N-1, which I don't think anybody would advocate... or spend the money on large segmented SRB's, which basically puts you right back where we are now... the F-1 simply has too much going for it to go that route.)

The other thing is, from a stage standpoint, the Saturn IB cluster tank arrangement was very inefficient mass-wise and more expensive to produce and construct.  While a lot of weight was shaved out of the S-IB stage over the older Saturn I stage that preceded it, it was still a pretty inefficient way of constructing a stage.  While it WAS cheap and quick and used existing stuff back when the Saturn I was first proposed, for an ongoing program, you'd have probably been cheaper in the long run to simply go to a 260 inch diameter first stage using separate single LO2 and RP-1 tanks.  This would have been cheaper and easier to manufacture, and wouldn't have been THAT difficult or expensive to design and develop.  The 260 inch LRB rocket "pods" boosters that were proposed for Saturn V thrust augmentation would have been based on the S-IC stage design, basically downscaled from 396 inches to 260 inches, and adapted for twin F-1's instead of five.  They would have shared many commonalities and materials, with just some tooling differences and jigs and such. 

The best solution would have been to go with the Saturn I-D stage and a half solution, IMHO.  You keep the 33 foot diameter of the Saturn V, which buys you an ENORMOUS payload fairing, maintain the capability of flying upper stages like the S-IVB or even S-II (if you can justify keeping production open for it) and still have the capability of launching it as a 4 F-1 boosted, 1 F-1 sustainer stage and a half to orbit "super-Atlas" CLV to put crew into orbit aboard a stripped down LEO-only Apollo or Apollo follow-on, small crew launch spaceplane, etc.  Could have launched a lunar-capable Apollo/follow on for EOR missions to the moon or wherever if desired (and affordable). 

If we'd have had S-ID and S-IVB, we could have launched a space station the equivalent of ISS in about a half dozen launches or less, from large Skylab-sized modules (sort of a "super-Mir") which of course, unlike Skylab, would have been designed around sustained reusability for indefinite periods.  We'd have also kept the door open to HLV launches when needed, and doing deep space missions when affordable or desired...

THAT is what we gave up for shuttle... a VERY bad trade IMHO...

Later!  OL JR

[luke strawwalker]

C3 started out as 2 F-1s. with a 10M diameter, and then went to 3 F-1s.  My Saturn 1F2 was 260 Inches.

No, it started at 6.6m, then grew to 8.4m before finally settling at 10m in its third iteration.  I would have left it at either 6.6m or 8.4m, the 10m being too wide for center of pressure purposes.  I have a good document on the C-3 as it originally stood, even a clustered first stage form of 4 for a lunar direct landing configuration capable of lifting over 140 metric tons, all around the 6.6m/260" design.

Now you have to realize, how in my modeling world, the Saturn 1F2 evolved.  I built the Saturn MLV 24 (L) with streched SIC and SII tanks and a NERVA 3rd Stage, as well as 4 260inch Liquid strap ons with 2 F-1s each.

While I was waiting for the LRB nose cones to arrive, it occured to me that an SIVB would sit fine upon the booster, so since the Saturn IB/V IU could handle boost, I said to my self, "Self, why not" and built it.  It looked pretty snazzy and more capable than the Saturn IF.

And that is how the 1F2 was born and inserted into this conversation.

and a good job too.

Would love it if you'd post that document... or could you email me a copy??  Please PM me for my address if you'd be willing to email it...

Thanks! OL JR

[Downix]

C3 started out as 2 F-1s. with a 10M diameter, and then went to 3 F-1s.  My Saturn 1F2 was 260 Inches.

No, it started at 6.6m, then grew to 8.4m before finally settling at 10m in its third iteration.  I would have left it at either 6.6m or 8.4m, the 10m being too wide for center of pressure purposes.  I have a good document on the C-3 as it originally stood, even a clustered first stage form of 4 for a lunar direct landing configuration capable of lifting over 140 metric tons, all around the 6.6m/260" design.

Now you have to realize, how in my modeling world, the Saturn 1F2 evolved.  I built the Saturn MLV 24 (L) with streched SIC and SII tanks and a NERVA 3rd Stage, as well as 4 260inch Liquid strap ons with 2 F-1s each.

While I was waiting for the LRB nose cones to arrive, it occured to me that an SIVB would sit fine upon the booster, so since the Saturn IB/V IU could handle boost, I said to my self, "Self, why not" and built it.  It looked pretty snazzy and more capable than the Saturn IF.

And that is how the 1F2 was born and inserted into this conversation.

and a good job too.

Would love it if you'd post that document... or could you email me a copy??  Please PM me for my address if you'd be willing to email it...

Thanks! OL JR

I'll see if I can dig it out. (way too much stuff of mine in storage atm)

*edit* while digging this out, found another,even earlier C-3 design, of 5.9m, which sported 1 F-1 central engine with 4 H-1's around it which handled steering as well as thrust. They went from this to the final 8.1m design in less than 20 months, the 6.6m appears to have been the choice for less than 4 months

[luke strawwalker]

I occurs to me to wonder whether, when McDonnell Douglas decided to bid on the EELV program, any engineer there might have considered putting an RL-10-powered upper stage on top of a 3- or 4-meter-diameter first stage powered by five or six RS-27s.

They proposed this way before the EELV program.

Got a document or link to that??

Thanks!  OL JR:)

[Proponent]

... but I think for Saturn to survive there would have had to been a lot of streamlining and reducing the number of engines and stages that had to be produced for a Saturn based infrastructure to continue, in the interests of affordability.  Having the S-IVB stage production program, an S-II stage program, S-IC stage program, S-IB program, J-2 engine program, F-1 program, and the H-1 program as well, would have been too expensive to maintain.  The H-1 was a good engine, and as you pointed out, and the higher production numbers required for multiple vehicles would have put in some economies of scale, and one benefit of having vehicles with more engines means it has engine out earlier and a lot more flexibility in tailoring the thrust levels by shutting down engines instead of requiring more sophisticated throttling engine designs.  BUT, the F-1 buys you an HLV... and CAN be used on the Crew Launcher (CLV).  It might be a bit overkill or less efficient than the smaller engines, but I'd bet it would've been cheaper to accept the suboptimal CLV powered by F-1's than to keep the H-1 program going as well... and H-1's by themselves lock you out of an HLV if you cancel F-1 (unless you want to go to a US version of N-1, which I don't think anybody would advocate... or spend the money on large segmented SRB's, which basically puts you right back where we are now... the F-1 simply has too much going for it to go that route.)

But why would you want an HLV if you've only got a 1970s type of NASA HSF budget?  An HLV could make sense if you had the budget to fly it a few times a year, but that wasn't the case.

The other thing is, from a stage standpoint, the Saturn IB cluster tank arrangement was very inefficient mass-wise and more expensive to produce and construct.  While a lot of weight was shaved out of the S-IB stage over the older Saturn I stage that preceded it, it was still a pretty inefficient way of constructing a stage.  While it WAS cheap and quick and used existing stuff back when the Saturn I was first proposed, for an ongoing program, you'd have probably been cheaper in the long run to simply go to a 260 inch diameter first stage using separate single LO2 and RP-1 tanks.  This would have been cheaper and easier to manufacture, and wouldn't have been THAT difficult or expensive to design and develop.  The 260 inch LRB rocket "pods" boosters that were proposed for Saturn V thrust augmentation would have been based on the S-IC stage design, basically downscaled from 396 inches to 260 inches, and adapted for twin F-1's instead of five.  They would have shared many commonalities and materials, with just some tooling differences and jigs and such.

As discussed a few pages ago in this thread, the S-IB's excess mass didn't really matter.  There were much more cost-effective ways of boosting payload capability.  With the S-IB being cheaper than the S-IVB anyway, it's hard to see how designing a whole new first stage could have been economical at the flight rates that might have been managed on the available budget.

[Proponent]

*edit* while digging this out, found another,even earlier C-3 design, of 5.9m, which sported 1 F-1 central engine with 4 H-1's around it which handled steering as well as thrust. They went from this to the final 8.1m design in less than 20 months, the 6.6m appears to have been the choice for less than 4 months

I'd like to see that.

Attached is the December 1959 report of the Silverstein committee, which I believe provides the very first definition of the Saturn C series.  It's indicated that for the C-3, the thrust of the first stage would be boosted to 2+ Mlb either by uprating the H-1 engines or by replacing the center four with an F-1.  Its diameter at the time was to have been 6.6 m.

Also attached, though of somewhat debatable relevance to the current discussion, is a 1961 draft of a technical history of Saturn.

[Downix]

*edit* while digging this out, found another,even earlier C-3 design, of 5.9m, which sported 1 F-1 central engine with 4 H-1's around it which handled steering as well as thrust. They went from this to the final 8.1m design in less than 20 months, the 6.6m appears to have been the choice for less than 4 months

I'd like to see that.

Attached is the December 1959 report of the Silverstein committee, which I believe provides the very first definition of the Saturn C series.  It's indicated that for the C-3, the thrust of the first stage would be boosted to 2+ Mlb either by uprating the H-1 engines or by replacing the center four with an F-1.  Its diameter at the time was to have been 6.6 m.

Also attached, though of somewhat debatable relevance to the current discussion, is a 1961 draft of a technical history of Saturn.

I see the origin of the 5.9' in there, the S-III stage. The one picture of the stage I saw had an S-III on top of a same-diameter unit sporting 4 H-1's with center F-1. Dated mid-'59.

I really need to get a scanner.

[Archibald]

Bringing this very interesting back to life to asks a question to all experts here. A question about Saturn INT-20.
Could a standard, stock Saturn V (say, the unused -514) have been butchered into an INT-20 ? By trashing out the S-II and a couple of F1, and that's it ?

[mike robel]

The plan for the INT-20 had the ability to essentially plug and play with different engine arrangements, so there may have been a weight penalty to pay for such a conversion, but I can't see any reason why it would not work.  The basic versin was for a 4 engine first stage, but you could add the 5th at anytime.

[Patchouli]

Perhaps Skylab COULD have been made somewhat "reusable" with more missions. MSFC seemed to think it was possible according to this "Beyond Apollo" article:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/nasa-marshalls-skylab-reuse-study-1977/#more-121546

Randy

Too bad they didn't have it where an Apollo delivered the reboost module as that probably could have been ready before the station's orbit decayed.

An off the shelf solution the reboost module is launched on a Titian IIIc along with a set of new CMGs and a new solar array for Skylab then an Apollo is launched on a Saturn IB and docks with it.
Next the stack rendezvous with Skylab and work begins.
The reason for two launches is due to the IB's limited payload and the fact automated rendezvous and docking was untested by the US at the time.

[Lobo]

The plan for the INT-20 had the ability to essentially plug and play with different engine arrangements, so there may have been a weight penalty to pay for such a conversion, but I can't see any reason why it would not work.  The basic versin was for a 4 engine first stage, but you could add the 5th at anytime.

That was my impression of it too.  S-IC would go through an upgrade on the thrust structure so that it could mounte 3 or 4 engines for INT-20, or it could mount all 5 for Saturn V or INT-21. 
Some other small changes would probably be necessary, such as the Saturn V's S-II to S-IVB interstage adaptor might need a minor change to sit on top of the S-IC rather than S-II, etc. 
Also, INT-20 would probably require some modificaitons to the ML's.  Not sure if you'd want to use the Saturn 1B milkstools, because the S-IC on the bottom is meant to sit on the bottom of the ML.  Yet the utilitiy swing arms are all placed for the height of the SAturn V without the milkstool or saturn 1B with.  So they might need to modify the tower to have movable swing arms and plumbing, or (more likely) modify one of the 3 ML's to shorten the UT so all the arms lined up correct.ly.  Or just build a new one specifically for the INT-20.  Cargo INT-21 or SAturn V can ue the exisitng ML's.  NOt sure if there would be a crew INT-21, but I'd think not as it'd need a modified tower as well as the crew would sit lower without the S-IVB, unless there could be a PLF designed to the dimensions of the S-IVB that Apollo sat on top of so all of the arms and umbilicals would line up, with the S-IV arms not being used of course.  That would be an interesting option.

BUt yea, INT-20 and INT-21 were just "lego" options for the 3 stages of Saturn, allowing the S-1B stage to be retired.  The main thing with INT-20 was with all 5 engines left on the S-IC, it would accelerate too fast and burn out too fast.  So they could either shut down engines during ascent, or modify the S-IC's MPS to handle multiple engine configurations.