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> Saturn V could lift 140 tonnes to low earth orbit. Just to be pedantic, remember, that the only thing Saturn-V brought to LEO and left there was Skylab, with
by avmich 6y ago
> Saturn V could lift 140 tonnes to low earth orbit.
Just to be pedantic, remember, that the only thing Saturn-V brought to LEO and left there was Skylab, with mass 77 tons. Other than that you counting parts of Saturn-V itself as part of payload, which is inconsistent - you don't count mass of Falcon-9 second stage as part of payload, for example, even though it gets to orbit.
Saturn-V is better characterized by the mass it leaves on translunar orbit, which is 48,6 tons. For LEO it's awkwardly lopsided with mass of 3rd stage and remaining fuel.
In other words, if you have a 140 tons satellite, you couldn't get it to LEO with Saturn-V. So the comparison is wrong.
- twic 6y agoGood points. I think the reason this is complicated is that the Apollo missions included one stage, the S-IVB, which was used twice, for getting into low earth orbit, and for departing for the moon. You have to count some fraction of that as mass lifted to orbit, but i don't know how much.