Farrell Mata Hari
300 years before the birth of Christ
the men of Alexandria were already
making scientific measurements of the
stars and planets and always since then
there have been those whose imagination
turned their eyes and thoughts to the
far reaches of space
and so today man is positively and truly
extending the knowledge and the control
of his environment and for the first
time is reaching effectively beyond his
own terrestrial boundaries for the first
time he is studying the sky from the sky
project Saturn is a major American
contribution to this advancement Saturn
is the largest launch vehicle at present
under development in the free world
this is a rocket with a million and a
half pound thrust it will put a 10 ton
payload into orbit around our earth to
the moon and in a deep space a later
more powerful version of Saturn will be
capable of putting up a payload of two
and a half times this amount 25 tons it
will be our first major rocket for space
exploration and is being developed
specifically as part of an overall
scientific engineering program Saturn
uses the building block principle it is
made up of various stages each of which
will drop behind in space as its fuel
becomes exhausted Saturn can be a two
three or four stage rocket depending on
the use to which it will be put and the
payloads it has to carry a three stage
Saturn will be 185 feet high as high as
an 18-story building and 22 feet wide at
its base
here is a scale model alongside the
first stage of the real thing
although scaled down to 1/10 size it
still Dwarfs a man by comparison the two
stage Saturn is planned as a kind of
utility space truck to put large
payloads into orbit around the Earth
with it larger space ships could be
refueled before moving outward on longer
journeys Saturn with additional stages
will be used for probes to the moon and
the farther planets a four stage Saturn
will land precision instruments on the
moon although other United States
rockets may get to the moon before it
Saturn will put up the greatest payloads
it can obtain information from several
areas on a single moon trip and later
return actual samples from the moon
surface most importantly Saturn will
send a three-man spacecraft the Apollo
around the moon and back to earth with
refueling in space it could at last
carry man to the moon surface
and so in the various industries and
universities under the guidance of the
National Aeronautics and Space
Administration research is planned
techniques develop materials checked out
a key word is precision
and although the Space Age has but begun
already we have accumulated a great
wealth of technical and scientific
experience basically Saturn is the
outgrowth of mechanisms that have been
tested and proven the first guidance
system to be used in Saturn for example
is an improvement on that used in the
Jupiter rocket
however the guidance system for the
Centaur developed in the Atlas centaur
program of the space administration
appropriately modified may prove much
more versatile it is hoped that it will
be capable of guiding Saturn on more
complex missions
the Saturn booster has a cluster of
rocket engines so that like a
multi-engine plane one engine may cut
out without impairing the effectiveness
of the launch vehicle and the propellant
from the inoperative rocket engine will
in some stages automatically be put to
the use of those still functioning
there are eight booster engines in the
first stage of Saturn six in the second
stage and two in the third
in trial small test models are
constructed to scale and test made to
verify in fact what has been predicted
in live the captive conditions measuring
instruments register the various thrust
stresses and responses meanwhile
full-scale production is going steadily
forward project Saturn's technical
demands are widespread and its needs
critical and so at various industrial
plants across the nation the hardware
the airframes the guidance systems the
instrumentation and the Rockets
themselves precisely take their
blueprinted shape ready for assembly
newly devised parts call for unusual
production methods undreamed of sizes
call for gargantuan frames and molds
for example this furnace needed to treat
an upper stage engine is the largest of
its kind
following manufacture and check out by
the contractor each engine for the first
stage of Saturn is shipped to Marshall
Space Flight Center for further trials
each engine separately undergoes final
exhaustive captive test before it is
approved
these gleaming metal tanks plus liquid
fuel will send man and his instruments
through space at an incredible 25,000
miles per hour
finally the uppermost stage with its two
engines will propel the payload through
space this space giant so Swift and
responsive on high is too ponderous and
bulky one earth bound to be transported
in one piece even the separate stages of
Saturn require special vehicles to carry
them from factory to launching pad
oversized trucks and barges come into
being already experienced in space
technology has the hard-headed engineers
talking about cost per pound of payload
in orbit as if it were commonplace an
example four years ago it cost between
300,000 and 1 million dollars to put one
pound of payload into orbit but past
investment is paying off now as
investment today will pay off in the
future today with advanced knowledge an
increased production cost has been cut
to about $5,000 per pound by truck and
barge now the stages will finally arrive
at Cape Canaveral
here is the water route saturn will
follow cape canaveral only a village in
a resort a few years back today it means
just one thing to every schoolboy
rockets the launch facilities at Cape
Canaveral have been constructed to
handle both present and future versions
of Saturn the erecting gantry over 300
feet high is the tallest movable
structure in the world it has direct
connection with the block houses from
which into which all signals come
signals from the electronic tools which
tell how the rocket is performing and
without which there could be no launch
for the nine hundred separate channels
of information are relayed from the
rocket through the recording and control
equipment in the blockhouse we have come
far since the men of alexandria made
their primitive observations of the
heavens our space age is just beginning
we do not yet know where it will
ultimately lead us but we do know that
project Saturn will vastly increase our
understanding of the universe and our
potential to travel into space