How is it possible that NASA lost its technology from the Apollo Program irretrievably?

[Pawelk198604]

How is it possible that NASA lost its technology from the Apollo Program irretrievably?
The Saturn V rocket project has been lost. Also, no new rocket can be built based on Saturn V.

I'm starting to wonder if those crazy people who postulate that we have never been to the moon, maybe they are right?

 

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20190303101632AAFql0U

 

[Xd the great]

They still have the stuff, its just the details.

Like how to fine tune the rngines for max performance.

[razark]

Why don't I have my elementary school homework?

 

I'm starting to wonder if I have never been to school.

[Xd the great]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=%23&ved=2ahUKEwiQ3MXg4eXgAhXZIaYKHXQZCD4QwqsBMAB6BAgKEAU&usg=AOvVaw0VTJzWxrN8ZFOD4xbU2nov

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=%23&ved=2ahUKEwiQ3MXg4eXgAhXZIaYKHXQZCD4QwqsBMAF6BAgKEAo&usg=AOvVaw0VTJzWxrN8ZFOD4xbU2nov

[MinimumSky5]

The Saturn 5 was oversized and expensive for post Apollo uses (as was planned at the time), so they stopped building them. As the engineers and designers that worked on it retired, the knowledge of how to build them was lost to NASA and its contractors, and so, we can't build them now. 

You need a heck of a lot more than blueprints to build any complex machine, and there is a good reason that S-5 is regarded as the most complex machine we've ever built. 

[magnemoe]

18 minutes ago, MinimumSky5 said:

The Saturn 5 was oversized and expensive for post Apollo uses (as was planned at the time), so they stopped building them. As the engineers and designers that worked on it retired, the knowledge of how to build them was lost to NASA and its contractors, and so, we can't build them now. 

You need a heck of a lot more than blueprints to build any complex machine, and there is a good reason that S-5 is regarded as the most complex machine we've ever built. 

This, US still produce M1 tanks even if they have enough of them. Simply to not loose the knowledge of how to make tanks. 
Re learning it will be more expensive. 

Add that lots of the components for the Saturn 5 are not produced anymore. You need to use other stuff who might be better but it would be an different rocket who has to be tested again.

[DDE]

Define “technology”.

There are aspects of manufacturing documentation, production tooling capability, and an overall technological level. Only the former two have been lost.

[adsii1970]

Yes, NASA has lost that data and is on the verge of losing the STS data, too. Data is the sum-total of knowledge... It's more than numbers on a spreadsheet or blueprints...

The U.S. steel industry no longer has the knowledge to produce cold rolled steel armor as was used in the battleships (BB) built from 1934 through 1946. There are very few iron workers and steel workers remaining alive from the era of cold rolled steel to pass on the knowledge and manual skills to turn out the armor plating to today's steel workers. It's more than just the machinery... it's having the knowledge in the hands of skilled tradesmen to do what needs to be  done. So, yes, data/vital information can be lost by NASA.

[NSEP]

Not only do you need blueprints, but also skilled workers who know how to build the parts. This was before fancy computer designs and fancy industrial robotics, everything had to built by hand, and everyone built the parts in their own way. Alot of the people who built the Apollo/Saturn parts have either passed away or are too old to teach people how to build the things.

[Gargamel]

But there is also a reason most of this knowledge has been lost.   For the vast majority of it, there is no longer a need for it.   Unless you are trying to do a historical recreation, there's no good reason to keep these techniques around.  They have been supplanted by superior techs that are more effective and efficient. 

The other main reason is storage.  Before the digital age, if you wanted to archive something, you had to make a deliberate act of doing so.  Today, usually just the act of creating something also means you have a copy in digital storage that should (theoretically) last forever.  So when we have an earlier draft of something, or a process that gets repleaced by a better one, we still have the records of it.  Then, if a process was deemed obsolete, there was no good reason to keep it around, so they just, re-allocated the resources needed to preserve it.    It's only when you get a forward thinking person or people, do you get archival data or items (like how some aircraft models are almost non-existent because no specimens were ever preserved). 

 

[Kerbal7]

6 hours ago, Pawelk198604 said:

I'm starting to wonder if those crazy people who postulate that we have never been to the moon, maybe they are right?

 

 

 

The USA went to the moon. There is no doubt of that. But that was back during the Cold War when the USA was still a unified country and not just an economic zone. It'll never go back with astronauts again though. The political will can't be mustered up to build a high-speed rail system so you can forget about human moon exploration. Every few years they make a lot of noise about it, they've been doing that for decades. But It'll never happen again.  

 

Edited March 3, 2019 by Kerbal7

[kerbiloid]

Because they made it quick and dirty, bringing several thousands partially undocumented changes in the Apollo construction.
So, it's easier to redesign from scratch than recall what was written on a wall with a piece of coal., lol.

[Bill Phil]

Interestingly enough quite a lot of Apollo material just wound up in the hands of the workers who worked on it. I know my father has a copy of some Apollo mission reports that some of his NASA coworkers gave him back in the 80s. 

We didn’t lose the technology. We lost a the capacity to build a few specific examples of technology, examples that are no longer relevant and quite outdated. But we can still build rockets, and we could return to the Moon if the political will was there.

[Superfluous J]

Going to the Moon is like riding a bike.

Except the bike is on fire and you're on fire and everything is on fire.

[ZooNamedGames]

The technology wasn't lost, the skills and craftsmanship required to manufacture the parts and even the tools to create parts for the rocket and spacecraft fell to extremely skilled metallurgists, welders, mechanics, and other general craftsmen with immense amount of talent in their fields. Issue is, it's been 60 years since 1969, and those involved in creating the Saturn V and Apollo hardware had started to die off from old age, and often dying off without sharing the notes and details as to what little changes and details they would apply to each part of the rocket to make it work. No 2 parts were ever installed precisely the same, especially in relation to the F-1 rocket engines. They simply were too complicated and each needed tweaking by these engineers to function precisely as they desired. So as a result of their passing, we lost the crucial information required to create those parts and machines and as a result the Saturn V is exceptionally difficult to recreate. Although a theoretical Saturn VI, created using brand new technologies and modern manufacturing methods, could be feasible. It was this line of thinking, and the thinking to provide the Ares V (SLS' former identity) a higher form of thrust, so engineers created the concept of the F-1B rocket engine. Based on the F-1, the F-1B redesigned the entire rocket engine using modern manufacturing techniques and standards. Allowing them to make a far superior engine in stability (as the F-1 had a tendency to either explode due to chamber pressures and the excessively large size of the engine bell) and also cause immense vibrations to the launch vehicle structure which was the cause of the Apollo 6 mission being crippled in orbit and Apollo 13's second stage center engine's early cut off as the vibrations caused damage to the fuel lines and to the engines themselves.

Curious Droid does an excellent video covering the details as to why the Saturn V moon rockets are so far out of reach today.

 

 

[Starman4308]

Except possibly for some specialized manufacturing techniques (for which modern, often superior alternatives exist), we still have the technology. What is lacking:

The skilled engineers and technicians who built the originals.

All the little process details that never made it into the blueprints: things like "this bit usually needs to be filed down a bit" that never made it into the permanent documentation.

Many of the necessary supply chains. IBM isn't exactly in the business of making S-IVB instrument rings anymore.

We could almost certainly build a new rocket that outwardly resembles the Saturn V, and probably outperform it slightly to boot. On the inside, though, it'd be a whole new design: modern avionics, modern manufacturing processes, etc... and it's the fine details that make rocket design expensive, not aping the outwards dimensions.

[KerikBalm]

The specific designs and tooling are lost, the technology in general is still around and even better.

I'll bet we don't have what we need to make an X-15  now either... that isn't to say that we can't make something much better.

The same goes for a Gloster meteor, or a Me-262  (although there are some replica ME-262s, they aren't the same as the original, they use modern engines for instance, and other small tweaks)... or a Wright flyer (even when people make replicas, they change it because an exact replica would be more dangerous than a tweaked replica).

The Saturn V is old tech, and we could do better, if we had a use for (and a will to invest in) a rocket that can get people to the moon and back.

The advances in materials science and computing could probable substantially reduce the drymass (a few percent IMO would be substantial)

[wumpus]

11 hours ago, Starman4308 said:

We could almost certainly build a new rocket that outwardly resembles the Saturn V, and probably outperform it slightly to boot. On the inside, though, it'd be a whole new design: modern avionics, modern manufacturing processes, etc... and it's the fine details that make rocket design expensive, not aping the outwards dimensions.

NASA did exactly that to test it as an option for SLS (or one of its earlier names).  https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/

Lots of 3d printing replacing lost welding techniques, and I'm sure the controls were modernized as well.  I think by the 1980s NASA could no longer launch their remaining Saturn V rockets (I think there is one outside at KSC) due to fine details of the countdown that people no longer remembered, retired, died, or simply couldn't do the process fast enough (and might only get one try).

There's a certain mentality that seeps through ISO-9000 procedures that ignores the issue that lots of technology is in the people who do the actual manufacture of the device.  Ignore this at your peril.  Also from a historical perspective technology *IS* infrastructure.  If you can't buy 1960s MIL-SPEC parts, you can't build a Saturn V to the original NASA bill of materials.  And you are probably better off replacing much of the materials with modern ones (asbestos heat shields might work better, but they also could kill your workers).

[DDE]

15 hours ago, wumpus said:

asbestos heat shields might work better, but they also could kill your workers

*laughs evilly in beryllium-doped propellant gels*

[sh1pman]

Why don't we still have blueprints for Roman aqueducts? I'm starting to think they were built by aliens.

[ARS]

You can't just simply make more rockets simply by having a replica of one of the rocket in the first place. Yes NASA has a bunch of engineer, yes they can reverse-engineer technology, yes they can make rockets. But when you have a Saturn V engine outside your office, reverse engineering isn't merely just copying it down to the rivet count, you had to know how it was made like that. It's pointless to copy the engine when you KNOW this cable goes from A to B, but doesn't know WHY it goes from A to B

[wumpus]

3 hours ago, ARS said:

You can't just simply make more rockets simply by having a replica of one of the rocket in the first place. Yes NASA has a bunch of engineer, yes they can reverse-engineer technology, yes they can make rockets. But when you have a Saturn V engine outside your office, reverse engineering isn't merely just copying it down to the rivet count, you had to know how it was made like that. It's pointless to copy the engine when you KNOW this cable goes from A to B, but doesn't know WHY it goes from A to B

Except that is more or less how modern manufacturing "build to print" really works.  The details you won't find anywhere in a single engine (you might get an approximation using all 5) are the tolerances, and certainly excess slop isn't something you can tolerate in a Saturn V.

The other catch is that most of a Saturn V were effectively custom made, so that a single tolerance factor wouldn't be enough.  All the other components were adjusted by hand to build a single engine, so you would have to know "WHY" each part has certain dimensions (and the notes by the guys who did this are lost).  I'd expect you could copy a Falcon 9 using straightforward copy and use all 9 (plus vacuum) engines to determine tolerances, then make good guesses on the rest.

PS: Until some time in the 1990s NASA had 3 copies of all their records during roughly the Apollo era (may have included Gemini).  They decided that such redundancy was unnecessary and gave two of them away.  The University of Maryland got one of the copies, so if you want to see what's there (and what's missing) you could try College Park, Maryland (presumably NASA's copy isn't in the US archives, also on the UMD campus).

[wizzlebippi]

As an engineer who has worked on a few derivative designs, loosing how something was designed or built is easier than you might think. While the majority of the design is in the drawings and documentation, a large number of design decisions are made by individuals and not written down. Trying to improve on an existing design is amazingly difficult if you don't know why it's that way to begin with. Whoever did it first may have designed around a then known issue that you won't ever find written down. So you hope that individual still works at the same company, ask why this is the way it is, hope they respond, and actually remember. Everyone who designed the Saturn V has likely retired or died, so good luck.

Building it is even worse. The process for assembling aircraft since the beginning has been lovingly reffered to as "beat to fit, paint to match", and the industry has only recently begun moving on to less wasteful manufacturing practices. I can't imagine a rocket built in the '60s is any different. This process means the knowledge to build a Saturn V existed in a few people's heads, who coached everyone around them.

Long story short, you're better off not trying, and building something new from scratch.

[Bill Phil]

10 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Why don't we still have blueprints for Roman aqueducts? I'm starting to think they were built by aliens.

Or the Great Pyramid?

Wait, we may have actually found some documentation for its construction...

[DDE]

13 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Or the Great Pyramid?

Wait, we may have actually found some documentation for its construction...

Indeed, even on Steam!