Saturn V stage recovery... there wasn't any?

[Motokid600]

Im hard pressed to find any notable information about what happened to the spent Saturn V stages. Its almost as if once each booster separated from the main rocket it was forgotten and disappeared all together. So why wasn't there an effort to recover these stages? Instead we just let them splash down engine first. Apparently the second stage would break apart due to the air pressure. But did the first stage remain intact before impact?

There was some recovery done by the CEO of Amazon..

Why were there no parachutes? Would it have been too expensive to refurbish each stage after a salt water soak? So besides that one there and a few others... the majority of the worlds F1 engines are at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

That was alot of money hitting the water at terminal velocity. Shame..

[astropapi1]

Imagine a giant (really, really giant) metal tube with lots of extra equipment and five massive F-1 engines coming down to the water. There's not much a pair of chutes could do to slow it down, and that particular stage had no means of control after separating from the main stack.

Really, money wasn't the problem, it was the russians, and the last thing NASA engineers wanted to hear about was reusability.

[brooklyn666]

At the time of the Saturn V design, there were several proposals for recovery and re-usability, but none of them were seriously considered. 2 proposals for recovering the S-IC included parachute recovery, and catching it mid-air with a giant helicopter. Really though, it boiled down to the cost and time constraints of developing these technologies, and the fact the the Saturn V was only planned for a limited number of launches to begin with, making re-usability somewhat pointless.

[FanaticalFighter]

catching it mid-air with a giant helicopter

What? I'd never heard that. link?

[brooklyn666]

What? I'd never heard that. link?

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1045/1

[Kerbart]

Why were there no parachutes? Would it have been too expensive to refurbish each stage after a salt water soak? So besides that one there and a few others... the majority of the worlds F1 engines are at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

It's unavoidable, given the used trajectory, that those engines land in a very deep part of the ocean. While these machines were use to fly to the FRIGGIN' MOON, at the same time this was the late 1960s/early 1970s. To put things into perspective: Germany was still using steam locomotives for express trains. There was little technology to locate the engines at the bottom of the ocean, let alone for retrieving it. So, if you intend to retrieve the first stage, you'll have to keep it into reasonable state after splash-down (sending astronauts up in a banged-up first stage? "Meh, we think it will hold") AND it will have to float. That will add considerable weight in turn, a luxury that not really existed in the Apollo program.

The primary concern was getting to the moon and back. If the goal was to save money, not running the Apollo program at all would have been a much easier and effective strategy.

[NovaSilisko]

Its almost as if once each booster separated from the main rocket it was forgotten and disappeared all together.

Apart from the shuttle SRBs* and maybe some experimental rockets, that's how every rocket ever has worked since the beginning of spaceflight. SpaceX is only just now beginning serious attempts at recovering rocket stages.

*a bit of a stretch, since they were just big long tubes with nozzles at the end full of rocket fuel, and a bunch of pieces of them were blown off in the descent process... they practically had to be rebuilt after recovery.

[astropapi1]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1045/1

What a sight to be had!

[NovaSilisko]

Frankly, I'm surprised that concept got as far as even having a scale model made, heh.

[jwenting]

the scale model looks like it's using 1990s era materials or later, not 1960s, so no doubt made by someone decades later.

Just like the scale models of German aircraft proposals that would have "turned the tide of the war" if only they'd been more than sketches on a cigar box when the war ended.

Another big reason for not trying to put parachutes and other recovery systems on those boosters is weight.

Building them so they can be recovered makes them a lot heavier, thus seriously reducing their effeciency. TWR goes down, payload goes down, no more Apollo.

[Brotoro]

Yeah. Apollo was scrimping for payload capacity as it was. They couldn't afford to add recovery systems to the booster.

[rpayne88]

On of the design proposals for the Shuttle involved launching the orbiter and external tank on an S-1C. The S1-C would then fly back and land.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn-Shuttle

[Capt. Hunt]

even then, the engines would have been replaced after each use. I'm not sure if that would have been that much more cost effective then discarding the spent stage after separation.

[DonLorenzo]

Imagine a giant (really, really giant) metal tube with lots of extra equipment and five massive F-1 engines coming down to the water. There's not much a pair of chutes could do to slow it down, and that particular stage had no means of control after separating from the main stack.

Really, money wasn't the problem, it was the russians, and the last thing NASA engineers wanted to hear about was reusability.

Come to think of it, that would be pretty darn amazing to observe

[Sillychris]

What the bloody hell, they made a ceiling fan apollo engine catching chopper?

Somebody needs to make a Swarzenegger "Get to da choppa!" meme out of that!

[Nibb31]

I wasn't that crazy. They used helicopters and cargo planes to catch Corona capsules.

But to answer the OP, why on Earth would they want to retrieve burnt out, salt-water-soaked engines? They couldn't be reused anyway.

[Nibb31]

I wasn't that crazy. They used helicopters and cargo planes to catch Corona capsules before they splashed down.

But to answer the OP, why on Earth would they want to retrieve burnt out, salt-water-soaked engines? They couldn't be reused anyway.

[Starwaster]

the scale model looks like it's using 1990s era materials or later, not 1960s, so no doubt made by someone decades later.

As someone who grew up in the 60s I have to disagree.

Do you think we were a bunch of stone age cave men back then???

Well maybe we were. No CGI concept proposals back then. Scale models like that were made at the drop of a hat back then. Especially if you wanted to get someone's attention for that contract or grant you were trying for.

[DonLorenzo]

It's a curious perspective that 'the past' is super backwards. Hell, even in the 1800s people were doing the same stuff as we are now. As in, going to work, making money, worrying about pointless things, politics, science. And before that much the same, and before that. Sure, many things have changed, and in big ways. But not THAT big. if that makes sense

[Andon]

Simply put, the costs of recovery, refurbishing, and reuse were more than making new ones. Maybe not entirely monetarily, but things such as weight and usable tech vs needs to be developed also played a part

[lajoswinkler]

It's a curious perspective that 'the past' is super backwards. Hell, even in the 1800s people were doing the same stuff as we are now. As in, going to work, making money, worrying about pointless things, politics, science. And before that much the same, and before that. Sure, many things have changed, and in big ways. But not THAT big. if that makes sense

No, the 20th century became a lot more different than the 19th century. Our way of life became dominant (by the number of people involved) around the World War Two.

The changes came exponentially.

[Motokid600]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Some good stuff here. I knew that trashing depleted stages for rockets was common practise, but I figured that for the more expensive manned rockets they'd go the extra length to recover as much as they could. But.. now that I think about it.. back then it just wasn't viable. I mean hell even today stage recovery is not viable ( unless they return to the pad ala SpaceX ). How costly was it to retrieve the space shuttles, SRBs and fuel tank? Then on top of having to retrieve them they had to be rebuilt.

Its just all about those F1s though which inspired this thread. I can't believe they trashed those beautiful engines.

Question.. why was there no on board video of the splash down? The first stage had no camera at all, but the second is known for that beautiful video after the SIVB separates from the second stage. GOOD quality too... Did the camera not have enough power to record its reentry? I would've loved to see that.

And get this ... I just read that there was an instance where a fisherman witnessed the debris from one of the stages... Lol.. could you imagine?

[mdatspace]

Snipped

Some RD F-1s still survive.

[LordOfTheOrbits]

-snip-

Question.. why was there no on board video of the splash down? The first stage had no camera at all, but the second is known for that beautiful video after the SIVB separates from the second stage. GOOD quality too... Did the camera not have enough power to record its reentry? I would've loved to see that.

-snip-

I think that it was more of a problem about the reentry heatings that destroyed the camera than about the power. Also it would have to have a connection to mission control fast enough to livestream the camera footage and work at sea level while traveling with several hundred m/s through the air.

[Camacha]

the scale model looks like it's using 1990s era materials or later, not 1960s, so no doubt made by someone decades later.

I have seen the original Apollo moonbug models close up and they actually look quite a bit like this. Out of occupational habit I took a long close look and it took a little while to find out they were merely made out of wood covered with primarily white paint. From even a small distance away they looked monolithic and polymer-ish. Simple, but surprisingly effective.

It would not surprise me if the model on the picture was original.