In the comments for this entry, Dominic Pledger dismisses Shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicles in favor of a resurrected Saturn V.
Here are my thoughts on why that is a bad idea.
For one thing, the facilities have been reassigned. Where would you build it? Where would you launch it? It’s nothing money couldn’t fix, of course, but then…it’s something that’s going to cost a lot of money to fix. Shuttle, and by extension Shuttle-derived, already has the manufacturing and launch facilities available and mostly ready to go (how much depending on your choice of vehicle architecture…some are more compatible with existing facilities than others). Note that manufacturing facilities does not just mean “a big building”, but includes the large tools and specialized equipment needed to handle and assemble the large pieces into ever-larger subassemblies, and ultimately to bring it all together to form the finish vehicle — while along the way heat-treating, inspecting, cleaning, plating, painting, and insulating the various assemblies and subassemblies. That’s a lot of facilitization.
Second, the companies that produced the components for the Saturn V may no longer be around. Which means you have to find suppliers with the skills and experience to produce the specialized parts to the required tolerances and quality standards. And then, you have to qualify them to produce flight hardware for a manned vehicle. Which again is a problem that money can solve — if you have the budget to do pay for it. In contrast, Shuttle hardware is currently in production. Certain new or modified items used on a derived vehicle would go through this qualification process, but that’s significantly different (and far cheaper, and far less time-consuming in total) than building up the supply chain from scratch.
Third, the design is obsolete. It was built with mid-1960’s materials and design methods and manufacturing processes. Updating any of these three affects the other two — changning from explosive hydroforming of domes to hot spin-forming, for instance, would mean reevaluating the alloy used and a thorough design analysis of the tank. Changing the aluminum alloys to lighter, stronger aluminum-lithium alloys to boost payload would entail a thorough redesign of the tank. Unless you are willing to build-to-print this vehicle on built-to-print tooling with obsolete materials and processes, you’re going to end up making some changes somewhere. And once that can of worms is opened, you’ll very quickly end up designing an entirely new vehicle with about as much traceability to the Saturn V as the Atlas V has to its nominal ancestors. If you start with the ET, your tankage has been optimized over twenty-five years and a hundred and thirty effectivities for weight and manufacturability. The technology involved may still lag a bit in some areas, but it is nowhere near forty years out-of-date.
And that really is the best argument against reviving the Saturn V: you can’t. There would be too much incentive to modernize it, and this would lead to it becoming an entirely new vehicle. The design and facilitization work involved would neccessarily cost much, much more than for a Shuttle-derived HLLV — for the price of a “Saturn V Mark II”, you could afford even the drastic pad and MLP modifications required for the super-high-payload tandem-ET SDVs studied during the NLS project.
I love the Saturn V as much as any space fan, but face the facts: resurrecting Saturn V would be like rebuilding the Titanic or her sister ships. Sure, they were marvels of their time, but you don’t see Royal Caribbean or Holland America building coal-fired ocean liners with riveted-plate hulls and spark-gap wireless telegraphs.
Time has passed Saturn V by. It was a shame to throw away that capability when we had it, but it happened and can’t be undone. Now we have the Shuttle stack instead. What we are saying is that it would be just as much a shame to throw *that* away when it can be readily and inexpensively adapted to heavy-lift. Throwing this capability away in the name of nostalgia would make it all the more obscene.
I hope that SpaceX or any other startup company that may arise can build and launch a HLLV that resembles Saturn V and sounds like it on blastoff! I hope NASA chooses SpaceX’s proposed HLLV instead of a shuttle-derived HLLV for future manned Moon and Mars missions!
Why? I’ve explained why it’s not a good idea. Can you explain to me why I’m wrong?
Saturn V was a beautiful thing, but its time has passed. We can do better now.
The Saturn V should never have been abandoned in the first place! We can do better now by building a new HLLV that is more powerful, has higher performance with much improved payload capability. The new HLLV would be as different from the Saturn V as the Atlas V is from the original Atlas. It’s first and second stages should be reuseable with parachute recovery. Higher performance can be achieved by using all new ~2Mbf at SL, ORSC closed cycle Lox/RP-1 engines with a SL Isp of 300-310 sec. Five of these engines would be used in the first stage. The second stage would be powered by five SSME’s and the third stage would be powered by five RL-60’s. Engine out capability is provided by using five engines in each stage. This rocket would have about twice the payload capability of a proposed Shuttle derived HLLV while having a lower development cost that the Saturn V. This would make it easier to set up future Moon and Mars bases by reducing the number of launches required. NASA needs a super heavy lift rocket if we plan to set up permanent bases on the Moon and Mars.
T.L. James
The new ~2Mlbf at SL engines mentioned in my previous comment would be scaled up versions of either the RS-84 or TR-107. The TR-107 has a pintle injector for it’s preburner. Therefore it would be better to base the first stage engine on the TR-107 rather than the RS-84 as there has never been a failure of a pintle injector engine!
A Saturn V style SHLLV can be built and operated at a reasonable cost by using derivative engines in the first stage as mentioned above and using off the shelf engines in the second and third stages. The new RL-60 engine will be available by the time NASA gives the go ahead for a manned mission to Mars. The new launch vehicle would have significantly fewer parts than the Saturn V for much increased reliability. The reuseability of the first and second stages would significantly reduce operating costs over a fully expendable launch vehicle.
The first stage engines could be adapted to burn Quadricyclane instead of RP-1 to increase SL Isp by about 2%. Quadricyclane also has a higher density than RP-1. This would reduce the size of the first stage by reducing the required propellant tank volume while increasing payload capability. The reduced size of the first stage would make it easier to build and transport than an equivalent RP-1 fuelled first stage. In the future, a nuclear powered third stage could replace the RL-60 powered one. This would increase payload capability to Mars further and would also dramatically reduce the journey time.
The VAB at the Kennedy Space Centre was originally built for the final assembly of the Saturn V! It could easily be used for the final assembly of a new Saturn V style SHLLV! The launch pads 39A and 39B at the KSC were originally built for the Saturn V! They could easily be adapted to launch the new SHLLV!
Please read this carefully and send a copy to NASA so as to get their opinion!