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> Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Saturn V was that the first one ever flown—50 years ago this November and scarcely five years after Kennedy’s edic
by mmooss 2y ago
> Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Saturn V was that the first one ever flown—50 years ago this November and scarcely five years after Kennedy’s edict—worked perfectly. And not one failed.
That is quite impressive for an order-of-magnitude improvement in a technology (rocketry), tackling a very challenging and previously untouched problem (flying people to the Moon, landing, and returning), with new solutions, and within seven years. We were having trouble with orbit when it started.
- kqr 2y agoNote that most of the things you mention are out of scope of what is here meant by "Saturn V". The stuff it carried did not work perfectly!
- mmooss 2y agoYes, good point.
- wat10000 2y agoI wouldn’t say worked perfectly. It never failed in a catastrophic big-kaboom way, but it had multiple engine failures. One was so bad that it put Apollo 6 in the wrong orbit, and a relight failure kept it from going to the moon as planned. On Apollo 13, an extremely lucky engine failure actually saved the launch, as the rocket was in the process of shaking itself to pieces because of extreme vibrations from that engine.
- mmooss 2y agoGood points. Also, good engineering results in failures that don't have catastrophic outcomes.
- wat10000 2y agoIndeed, the fact that Apollo 13’s center engine was vibrating so violently was bad, but the fact that the structure managed to hold up to it is a testament to the general robustness of the machine.