Mega Power

[gdawgs]

I was watching the Modern Marvels show about horsepower the other night. They were talking about the Saturn V rockets that NASA used in the Apollo moon missions. The five first stage rockets had 7.5 million pounds of thrust! The equivalent of roughly 160 million horsepower! Just thinking about it gets the testosterone boiling. :shock:

Ah what a great time in American History. Too bad I wasn't even born yet(I believe the final Apollo mission returned to Earth a couple weeks before I was born). It would have been neat to experience the moon landing events.

[monkeyracing]

Yup. That'll roast yer marshmallows.

[jglutz]

It was a great time....I was in elementary school at the time...every time a Gemini or Apollo lauched...the entire school crowded around a small rabbit ear'ed black and white.

Saturn-V was/is the most powerful machine ever built by man...excluding nuclear.
1st and 2nd stage...within the first orbit had the 3rd stage, LEM, service module, and capsule going 17500 MPH.
When they pressed the button for TLI (trans lunar injection) they accelerated to +28,000mph.

Think about this...if your driving at 70mph and I tag you from behind at 80 mph...something...not pretty...is going to happen at a difference of only 10mph 0r 14 feet per second. When the LEM and capsule 'captured' each other...they where in excess of 17,500 mph with difference in speeds of ±1 foot per second.

A couple years ago I had the chance to attend a conference at NASA Marshal Space Flight Center...Huntsville, Alabama...I was able to climb around the Saturn -V engine test stand and climb around an abandon engine still mounted to the frame....it was awesome!

I love this stuff. I think we're in the wrong forum...but I could'nt resist!

[FB71]

I took my boys to the Air and Space Museum in DC last year. They have a 1/4 section of one nozzle mounted on a wall, with mirrors placed around it to emulate all five nozzles. They were quite amazed... Can't wait to take them to Canaveral next summer!!!

[jglutz]

^^where I plan on spenting my retirement....if i ever get there!

[gdawgs]

Here are a couple more fun factoids. At reenty, they were moving at 24,000 mph(38,000 kmh for you Canadians), in roughly four minutes of blasting through the atmosphere, they slow down to 200 mph. So they are decelerating at an average rate of 145 feet/sec^2 (averaging over 4 g forces during the trip, although they reach 6 gs). Pretty sure I'd puke.
If you got a ride in a sweet supercar that can go 0 - 60 in 3 sec, your average acceleration is only about 29 feet/sec^2, not even one g.

Also, if you could convert all the heat generated during reentry into electrical energy, you could power all of L.A for 1.5 minutes. Or if you prefer kinetic energy, you could lift every person in the U.S 10 inches off the ground.

[sasquatch]

all this talk about crazy amounts of speed is making the veyron look slow lol

[jglutz]

prefer kinetic energy, you could lift every person in the U.S 10 inches off the ground.

I think you mean potential energy (energy of position, 10 inches)...kinetic would require a velocity or time componenet...anyway...that's still alot of snot (my favorite unit of measure)