Why are so many people still doubting the authenticity of the US moon landing?
One of them is,Why can't the United States build the Star 5?
In 1973, the U.S. Saturn V announced its retirement, and in the next 50 years, American science and technology advanced by leaps and bounds, but it was slow to replicate the Tuxing VCould it be that the American moon landing was fake? This article is limited to the "Saturn V".
In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite in human history.
In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went into space, becoming the "first man to go into space."
Seeing that the Soviet Union's development in the field of aerospace was in full swing, the United States, not to be far behind, officially announced on May 25, 1961 that they would let astronauts really set foot on the moon before 1970.
The first part of the lunar program was to launch a spacecraft into Earth's orbit by a launch vehicle, and at that time, no launch vehicle in the world could send an entire spacecraft into Earth's orbit at a time.
In 1962, the United States began to develop a moon launch vehicle, and their inspiration was the V-2 rocket and the Jupiter series of rockets, and the Saturn 1 was eliminated due to insufficient thrust, followed by the Saturn 1B and several subsequent models, until the Saturn 5.
On November 9, 1967, Saturn 5 completed its maiden flight, with a total of 17 experiments and a 100% success rate.
The Saturn 5 is a great miracle in the history of American launch vehiclesIt goes up to 1106 meters, take-off weight is 30385 tons, with a total thrust of 3408 tons, a low-earth orbit carrying capacity of 118 tons, and a lunar orbital carrying capacity of 45 tonsIt is the largest self-weight launch vehicle ever used in human history.
From a structural point of view, Saturn 5 can be divided into **,The first stage is 42 meters long and 10 meters in diameter, equipped with five F-1 engines; The second stage is 25 meters long and 10 meters in diameter, equipped with 5 J-2 engines; The first is long 188 meters, diameter 66 meters, equipped with 1 J-2 engine.
1.The capital investment is too large
As mentioned above, at the beginning, the Soviet Union scored a lot of points in the field of aerospace and set a number of "firsts" in a row, even if the United States kept up, it could not be regarded as a tie, because the Soviet Union was earlier, so if the United States wanted to overtake, the best way was to create the history of human landings on the moon.
It is reported that the total cost of the Apollo program in the United States was $24 billion, of which the total appropriation for Saturn 5 was as high as $6.5 billion, and the highest in 1966 was $1.2 billion.
At that time, the cost of a Saturn V was as high as 1800 million US dollars, which is converted to 121.3 billion US dollars so far, can build the most advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with 10 pieces.
The United States won the Cold War, and after losing the pressure of the Soviet Union, they naturally will not spend lavishly on the construction of Saturn 5.
2.The engine is going in the wrong direction
When we look at the Saturn 5, we must sigh at how large its sprinkler irrigation area is, but this phenomenon is related to kerosene engines.
The first stage of Saturn 5 uses liquid oxygen and kerosene propellant, and kerosene will coke when burning, and when the combustion chamber pressure is greater than 7MPa, it will start to produce agglomeration, which is very easy to clog the fuel pipeline.
For this reason, the US solution is to frantically increase the area of the nozzle, and there is no time to carefully study what the problem is and how to effectively solve it.
Later, after the United States won in the aerospace field, scientists found that the defects of the kerosene engine were too obvious in the aerospace field, so they simply did not study it, and directly used a more advanced and reusable hydrogen-oxygen engine.
In other words, in the process of development, the United States eliminated kerosene engines in favor of hydrogen-oxygen engines, and then went back to building the kerosene engine of Saturn 5.
There have been rumors on the Internet that the United States lost the drawings of Saturn 5, so it could not be built, this news first came in 1996, John Lewis in the book "Digging Space", said that he has been searching for the drawings of Saturn 5 for so many years, but unfortunately, these drawings are lost.
But NASA quickly came forward to refute the rumors, saying that the Saturn 5 documents are in the federal archives department in East Point, Georgia, and the blueprints are kept on microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
In fact, regardless of whether the drawings of Saturn 5 were lost or not, there was no need for the United States to build another Saturn 5, and after 1975, the United States and the Soviet Union suspended the competition in the field of space, and neither side continued to throw money.
The Saturn 5 parts manufacturers are also products of the 60s and 70s of the last century, after decades of development, some of these ** companies have closed down and gone bankrupt, and some have closed the production line for transformation, even if they hold the drawings, they cannot 100% copy the Saturn 5.
Now NASA has decided to develop the Successor Space Launch System (SLS System) in the space field, so the Saturn 5 is a product of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and it has completed its mission.