Page 93 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

V. Consider again its vital statistics. Its five F-1 engines delivered a mighty 7.6 million pounds of
take-off thrust and could lift 300,000 pounds into Earth orbit. Its record of reliability was matchless:
ten trouble-free lift-offs and no failures - perfect. It was - and remains - the greatest rocket ever
built. Even if NASA never returned to the Moon and brought its ambitions closer to home, the
corner-piece of its space program would surely be the Saturn V. If nothing else, it would be ideal
for carrying large satellites into space and would therefore have enormous commercial potential,
far outstripping any of its rivals for load capacity, reliability and cost. With the Saturn V dwarfing
every other rocket built by man, the USA would surely take the opportunity to recoup some of the
cost of its space research and cash in on its achievements. Well you'd think so wouldn't you?

What NASA actually did was scrap it. After the Apollo missions, the Saturn V made only one more
flight. In 1973 it was used to launch Skylab into orbit. Skylab itself was made out of a section of a
Saturn V booster. Then the Saturn became history.

Isn't there something wrong here? What on earth was NASA playing at? It had just sweated blood
creating the finest rocket ever seen, giving it almost limitless potential for the future, then decides
to scrap it and use its spare parts for a space station! It's comparable to a racehorse owner who,
having brought on the finest thoroughbred ever and seen it win every race in its first season, decides
the best plan is to turn it into dog-meat.

The official reason given for the Saturn V's demise is this. Even before the Apollo missions finished
in 1972, the costs of the whole exercise came under a great deal of public scrutiny and, despite its
success and the technological and political benefits gained, the response was not unanimously
favorable. There were those who thought the Apollo Project was a massive waste of effort and
money when there were more pressing problems closer to home. Prominent among these voices was
one William Proxmire, a US Senator from Wisconsin. Proxmire believed his country had no business
exploring space and tirelessly denounced it as a ridiculous waste of taxpayers' money. As an
influential member of Budget and Space Committees, Proxmire was apparently responsible, almost
single-handedly, for determining the drastic curtailment of the USA's space program. He
successfully campaigned for the end of the Saturn rocket program and even saw to it that the
machinery, dies and tools for building the Saturn V were destroyed. It seems very curious to me that
an unknown Senator from Wisconsin should be allowed to scupper a superpower's whole rocket
program in this way.

Having scrapped the Saturn V, NASA focused its attention on a brand new rocket system. This was
the rocket that would power its next big project, the Space Shuttle, the reusable rocket plane that
would fly into space and land back on Earth. Though not as ambitious as Apollo, the Shuttle would
certainly need a very powerful rocket system. The size and weight of the Orbiter itself demanded
that. Once such a rocket could lift the Orbiter into orbit, all the additional thrust it could achieve
would determine its all-important cargo capacity. It was crucial therefore that NASA developed the
biggest and most reliable rocket it could.

In 1981, nine years after the last Apollo mission, NASA proudly launched its very first Space Shuttle.
Its rockets' statistics were impressive. They developed a massive 6.6 million pounds of thrust at
lift-off and could lift 240,000 pounds into orbit. Well done NASA! Unfortunately, most of this was
accounted for by the Orbiter itself and cargo capacity was a rather modest 50,000 pounds.