Working to save Houston's Saturn V moon rocket

If it belongs to the Smithsonian, let's move it to the National Mall where it ought to be!

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I was there a couple of years ago and it was most depressing to see this glorious rocket decaying in pieces on the lawn.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

A couple of more items didn't get mentioned:
:P

I noticed that they were inspecting it about two weeks ago.

You can have my Saturn V, when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Let'em take that facsimile from KSC!

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Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.

What, that thing will never fly!

Oh, you meant refurbish for display.

Actually, they probably do mean refurbishment for flight. When the Smithsonian refurbishes an airplane, they usually make it flight capable even if they have no intention of actually flying it. Restoring an S-5 would probably be one of the biggest jobs they've ever undertaken.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

I wonder if they would gain enough familiarity with the systems to build a new one doing that. :-?

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Anyone who believes in the warning of the bible (prophecies concerning the end time which is now) shall be benefited from my invention. Because they won't be stupid enough to pass this! -Alex Chiu

I'm not sure that it COULD be restored for flight, not with all the original stuff at least. While SOME parts could be restored, others, I believe, would simply not be available, particularly in the electronics arena. Of course, if it HAD to fly, I suppose they could rip out all the old electronics and replace them with something more modern. Imagine a S5 with a "glass cockpit."

...And a couple of Athlon 64s!

Even if I think the S V is a tad ineffecient, it's still a great machine, and a part of history. As such, I'm all for this! =D> \/

The budget for restoration is only $2.5 million. That's not nearly enough to restore a Saturn V to flight condition. Keep in mind that these airframes, more so than airplanes, are highly efficient structures that rely on materials properties being within very narrow tolerances. It is quite likely that exposure to the elements has weakened the structure to the point where trying to make it flight capable would require rebuilding the structure from scratch.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Somewhere around here, I have a copy of Smithsonian Air & Space where they talk about doing the restoration of the S 5 in Florida. Strictly cosmetic, as I recall, and they couldn't do a complete restoration, not only for budgetary reasons, but also because the insulation of parts of it were asbestos, which is dangerous to work with (not to mention outlawed in the US).

Reeeaaaally??!! I was told that we can't even get most of the parts needed to rebuild the Saturn rockets. That's why even though we have the complete blue prints of Saturn-V, we have to look for alternative means to send people to Moon, because it is next to impossible to rebuild Saturn-V.

My understanding (which could be wrong) is that when restoring old airlplanes the SI's Garber facility will actually make a part from scratch if the original isn't available. I mean, the SPAD factory stopped makeing fighters sometime after WW I, but that didn't stop the SI from refurbishing their SPAD XIII to flying condition.

Now, I will admit that there is a tremendous growth in complexity between a SPAD XIII and the Saturn V, not to mention the scale. So I probably overstated the case somewhat. Still, my guess is that they'll push it as close to flight condition as money and time will allow.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

It's easy to make a part the same shape as one that needs replacing. It's much harder to make it as robust.

When you build a car you can use cheaper materials that may not be as strong as advertised, and just use more of it to make up for any hidden weakneses. It's cheaper that way. But the result is a suboptimal vehicle. It will be larger and heavier than strictly necessary for its strength. It's quite a dance. You know when you see those robot welders working on car frames? Every time you see a shower of sparks, that's a bad weld. It's actually cheaper to do two welds where one would have sufficed, rather than do one really good weld.

In space engineering you usually want to minimize mass. That means paring away mechanical parts to their bare essentials and load paths. In order to do that, you have to have confidence in your materials. They have to be exactly as strong, thermally resistant, resilient -- whatever -- as advertised, because your margin is way narrow. That kind of material is quite expensive. To get 99.999% pure aluminum with no voids requires lots of money and difficulty to manufacture. And for some applications you have to go to more exotic materials like beryllium and to exotic production processes like Kevlar wrapping and carbon composites.

I'm skeptical whether $2.5 million is enough to thoroughly replace all that needs replacing to restore such a huge and exotic vehicle to flight condition.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

You're right about how they restore the old aircraft, when there's a missing part, or one so damaged that it can't be repaired, they make a replacement part on the same kind of machine that the original was made on. They do this because modern machines are much more accurate than the ones from just a few years ago. The replacement parts are marked with a code, indicating that they are replacement parts.

Given that the S V has millions of parts, there's no way that $2.5 could cover the costs of anything more than a paint job, and some structural repairs.

I'm not sure how the flatlanders (no offense intended ) ended up with it instead of it ending up in the Rocket City, but I'm glad they are restoring it. While they are at it, the need to restore the engineering test article at the Space and Rocket Center, as well as a few of the S1C stages laying around, including the one at Michoud.

Actually, I remember there being an effort to restore some of the engineering articles. Errr.... don't have time to search for it now.

I seem to recall some claim that if the Saturn V had one extra drop of solder on every connection and an extra inch of length on every wire, it would never have left the ground.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Here's where they tell you to send $$$:
"...Three genuine Saturn Vs remain; but only the one currently on loan and displayed outdoors at the entrance to the NASA Johnson Space Center is made up of actual flight-certified stages..."
http://www.nasm.si.edu/getinvolved/giving/saturnv/

Gray primer and cinder blocks eh? :P