The history of Saturn I

1957 in April, Werner Werner wernher von braun's team began to design replanted rockets for the Army Ballistic Missile Bureau, which was the beginning of Saturn project. Wernher von Wernher von braun suggested using the components of Redstone Rocket and Jupiter Rocket, and combining them to produce a new design, which can reach 654.38+0.5 million pounds of force (equivalent to 6.7 million Newton). Wernher von Wernher von braun once called Redstone and Jupiter rockets "Juno I" and "Juno II" as space launch vehicles, and the plan to mix them was called "Juno V".

Wernher wernher von braun's team plans to design Juno V as an integrated launch vehicle for developing "active and passive space weapons". The expected uses include various military services, such as launching navigation satellites of the navy, reconnaissance, communication and meteorological satellites of the army and air force, supporting the manned flight of the air force, and transporting materials of the army over 6,400 kilometers. He thinks this project can also be used as an excellent experiment of other propulsion systems, such as the Air Force's19551500,000 lb-force engine. Wernher wernher von braun also intends to use Juno as the basis for manned moon flight. Juno can transport 9000 kilograms of load to low earth orbit at a time. Wernher von braun suggested that a * * * use it to transport 15 times, and then assemble a 200,000-pound lunar spacecraft in Earth orbit.

They studied the combination of different existing components. The similarity of these designs is that the first-class city installed eight thrusters of Redstone rocket around the fuel tank of Saturn rocket. The bottom of the fuel tank is equipped with a propulsion plate, and eight H- 1 engines are installed on this plate. H- 1 rocket was first put forward in the development of Navajo rocket, and later used in Raytheon rocket and Saturn's S-3D. As the second stage, they consider using Titan rocket or Titan-1 rocket. Titan I was more popular because Titan was mass-producing for the US Air Force at that time, and there was no spare capacity. They suggested that the existing Titan be transformed to a diameter of 120 inch and extended to 200 feet. As a three-stage scheme, it is estimated that 1963 can use Centauri rocket. At this point, the first two stages should also complete their tests. This three-level design is taller and thinner than Saturn's later practical design.

1957 In February, the Missile Bureau submitted this design to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. According to this plan, this "rapid development project" will launch a fully operational system at 1963. From 1958 to 1963, the total R&D amount is estimated to be 850 million US dollars, including 30 R&D flights, some of which carry manned and unmanned loads. But it was not until August of 1958 that the development team was approved to continue development. In September, they reached an agreement with Aerojet to study the improvement of H- 1 engine, which was the official start of Saturn project.

In February, 65438, Wernher wernher von braun introduced their designs to the newly established National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and introduced his planned moon landing design. At the same time, the air force also showed its own design. The design of the air force includes four-stage propulsion using existing components. The largest rocket designed by the Air Force is much larger than that of Juno, and its purpose is to fly directly to the moon through a single launch. 1959 65438+1On October 6th, NASA chose Werner wernher von braun's design, which provided an important impetus for this design.

At the end of June+10, 65438, NASA completed its entire development plan, including Vega and Centauri advanced thrusters, Juno V and their own nova rockets. Later, after the initial secret Aquinas rocket was made public, the Nova rocket was cancelled because the function of the Aquinas rocket was similar to the original design of NASA.

1959 February, Wernher wernher von braun changed the name of this new rocket to Saturn because it was "behind Jupiter". Jupiter was designed on the basis of Juno II, and Wernher wernher von braun felt that the new design should have a new name. Saturn is developing rapidly. In May, H- 1 thruster was ignited. The construction of launch pad 34 began at Cape Canaveral in June.

The Air Force is obviously angry that the Army's design won the bid of NASA, and they are trying to win the contract of process management. The defense advanced research projects agency later supported the army, which made the whole incident more troublesome. 1959 19 In February, the Planning Bureau put forward a revised requirement to upgrade the second stage to four new propellers, using 20,000 pounds of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as fuel. At the same time, the Centauri rocket also needs to be upgraded accordingly. This is obviously necessary for Saturn to launch the X-20 testing machine. However, because the X-20 testing machine was originally planned to be launched with a 120 inch Titan rocket, it did not need such a powerful launch power, so the source of this requirement was very suspicious at that time. Later, it was proved that the delay strategy required by the real air force was aimed at enabling the air force to quickly design its own rocket that could compete with Saturn.

These changes were originally intended to delay the development of Saturn, but ironically, they later led to the final design of Saturn. Although the new 20000-pound propeller proposed in the request was not realized, in order to achieve similar propulsion capability, the designer used six Centauri engines and combined them on the newly designed third stage of 160 inch, thus producing the S-IV second stage propeller. Later, in IVB, these six Centauri rockets were replaced by a J-2 rocket. This greatly improved Saturn's launch capability and enabled it to launch the Apollo command/service module, which provided an inestimable role for the Apollo program.

Finally, the U.S. Department of Defense thinks that using Saturn rockets to perform military tasks is too big and expensive. They also believe that large launch vehicles with earth stars should be taken care of by NASA because they have no urgent military use. On July 1960, the whole Army Ballistic Missile Bureau was transferred to NASA. Saturn rockets became part of the Apollo program. The Ministry of National Defense shifted the focus of transportation and replanting to Titan rockets, and later developed Titan III and Titan IV rockets. Titan III can carry about the same weight as Saturn 1B, but its production and launch costs are lower than Saturn's.

The main cargo of Saturn 1 launch vehicle is Apollo spacecraft. At that time, there were plans to use it to launch X-20 testing machines and Gemini spacecraft.