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Actually, the original rationale for periodic
Japanese temple burnings is much simpler than this: burning these temples was
the easiest and (on a windless day, at any rate) safest way to demolish a
structure made entirely of wood and susceptible to the degradation that an
open-air wooden structure suffers in a climate that gets quite humid (as I can
tell you right now, sitting in our family's pre-war, and rather porous,
wooden house in Tokyo, worrying about the next big earthquake). In
the west, churches and cathedrals were built for the ages, and some cathedrals
took decades to erect. In China and Japan, the perpetual edifice was
reserved for the static, immortal State. While I'm sure there has been
some after-the-fact mystical or philosophical rationale for a rite celebrating
temple burning, the real reasons are practical ones at the root.
Seymour Cray, father of the supercomputer,
endured some similar mythicalization. He liked wooden boats, but one day
had to retire one on a lakeside beach, and figured out that the cheapest and
safest approach was incineration. Someone noticed this, word got around,
and a romantico-mystical myth grew: that Cray built a new boat every year, and
burned it at the end of a year. He was at loss as to how to debunk this
urban legend, and I guess he finally gave up.
I'm frankly skeptical about all this "lost
art" handwringing over the Saturn V vehicles. Sure, some of the people who
applied poorly documented techniques are dead or senile, but a 25 year old
technician who, in 1969, actually practiced what a 50 year old engineer
came up with is very likely to still be alive and kicking in 2003, and a 25 year
old recent engineering graduate, upon being shown what was possible then, has a
very good shot at reinventing it if necessary. These people weren't
demigods. The main obstacle at NASA (then as now) was people who *thought*
they were demigods.
-michael turner
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 5:27
AM
Subject: Re: Fw: SPACE: Loss of the
Saturn V
Larry,
Thanks for posting that informative piece on the
Saturn V. In Japan, there is a temple made of local pine that is
periodically burned to the ground and rebuilt. The rationale is the
technology and "know how" (i.e., the important details not on the blueprints)
to make a replacement are thus passed along to future generations. I
note that the abstract below was presented over ten years ago. The last
time an F-1 engine was fired was over 30 years ago.
Gary
At
01:15 PM 9/7/2003 -0400, LARRY KLAES wrote:
Larry:
That all the blueprints were destroyed is, I believe, an urban
legend.
The following annotations from my Romance to Reality website
(http://rtr.marsinstitute.info) might go some way toward
answering Mr. Bradbury's questions.
"The Saturn V F-1 Engine
Revisited," AIAA 92-1547, B. W. Shelton and T. Murphy; paper presented at
the AIAA Space Programs and Technologies Conference, March 24-27, 1992,
Huntsville, Alabama.
The authors are engineers at NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center and the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell,
respectively. Marshall designed the Saturn V rocket which propelled
Americans to the moon, while Rocketdyne built the F-1 engine. Saturn V had
five F-1 rocket engines in its first stage - together they developed 7.5
million pounds of thrust. Sixty-five F-1 engines launched thirteen Saturn Vs
from 1967 to 1973 with "100% success." Shelton and Murphy point out that the
SEI Synthesis Group recommended considering the F-1 for use on SEI
heavy-lift rockets. They propose changes in the F-1 design reflecting 20
years of manufacturing and materials advancements to produce an upgraded
F-1A engine. Upgrades include strengthening the engine bell, thrust
chambers, and turbine exhaust manifold, and replacing undesirable materials
such as asbestos. Suppliers exist for all major parts, and Rocketdyne has
300 active personnel who participated in F-1 production, test, and flight
operations in the Apollo era. Five spare F-1s in storage are available as
"tooling aids" and "pathfinders" for test stand activation. The authors
point out that the Atlas and Delta production lines were revived after
shutdowns lasting about 20 years. Shelton and Murphy estimate that reviving
the production line and test facilities will cost about $500 million, and
each F-1A engine will cost $15 million if eight engines are manufactured per
year.
"Launch Vehicles for the Space Exploration Initiative,"
AIAA 92-1546, Stephen Cook and Uwe Hueter; paper presented at the AIAA Space
Programs and Technologies Conference conference held in Huntsville, Alabama,
March 24-27, 1992.
NASA's Exploration Program Office (ExPO)
launched the First Lunar Outpost (FLO) study in late 1991. Initially, ExPO
invoked an Earth-orbit rendezvous (EOR) mission scenario using four
heavy-lift rockets, each capable of placing 120 tons into low-Earth orbit
(LEO), to establish its lunar outpost. By the time this paper was presented,
however, ExPO had opted for a direct ascent mission profile using two
heavy-lifters, each capable of placing more than 200 tons into LEO. The
authors, engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Alabama, note that this is roughly twice the requirement imposed on the
Saturn V rocket used to launch Apollo missions to the moon. The authors
analyze FLO launcher configurations based on both Saturn V and projected
National Launch System (NLS) technology. They assume that the FLO booster
will eventually launch piloted Mars missions (thus raising the LEO payload
requirement to about 250 tons). Both the NLS and Saturn V-derived vehicles
use an upgraded version of the Saturn V F1 engine designated F1-A.
Saturn V-derived launcher: The 12.4 million pound rocket
includes two strap-on boosters with two F1-A engines each, a stretched first
stage derived from the Saturn V S-IC stage, a stretched second stage derived
from the Saturn V S-II, and an upper stage for Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI)
with one engine derived from the Saturn V J-2 engine. The Saturn V used for
Apollo moon missions stood 363 feet tall; the FLO derivative stands 40 feet
taller (403.2 feet). The rocket can place 254 tons into LEO and launch 95
tons out of LEO to the moon.
NLS-derived launcher: The 12.4
million pound rocket includes four strap-on boosters with two F1-A engines
each, an "NLS Core" consisting of a stretched Space Shuttle External Tank
with four engines derived from the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), and a
TLI stage with one SSME. The NLS-derived FLO launcher stands 372 feet tall.
The rocket can place 265 tons into LEO and launch 95 tons out of LEO to the
moon. Both designs could be launched from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in
Florida, the authors find. They assume that NASA will launch two FLO
missions per year, each requiring two FLO heavy-lift rocket launches, and
will fly eight Space Shuttle missions per year during the FLO Program. They
find that new facilities and changes to existing ones, such as the twin
Complex 39 Shuttle launch pads and Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), are
required.
New facilities include a Lunar Payload
Encapsulation Building for placing FLO landers inside their streamlined
launch shrouds. A new Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) Stacking
Building would permit SRB operations to be moved from their current place in
the VAB to make room for FLO stage stacking. Alternately, a new Vertical
Integration Facility (VIF) sized to assemble eventual Mars program rockets
might take on FLO payload encapsulation and stacking, leaving the VAB
largely unchanged. A VIF will eventually become necessary because the VAB
doors are too narrow to pass a Mars booster, the authors assert.
Pad 39A modifications include flame deflector enlargement and
a new slidewire escape system. The latter is necessary because the existing
Shuttle system provides emergency egress from a point more than 200 feet
below the height of the FLO crew capsule (that is, at the height of the
Shuttle crew hatch). A taller Mobile Servicing Structure gantry tower will
have to be constructed to replace the Saturn V gantries shortened in the
1970s for the Space Shuttle Program. The existing crawler/transporter, built
in the 1960s to move Saturn V rockets from the VAB to the Complex 39 pads
and subsequently used to move Shuttles, is too small to transport FLO and
Mars rockets, so a new, larger crawler/transporter will be required.
David
David S. F. Portree
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
http://members.aol.com/dsfportree/dsfp.htm
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