I’d love to see the infrastructure required to get that from the stage assembly sites to standing on the pad.
It would have made the stuff shown in the movie “Things To Come” or the giant “Grasshopper” rail transporter for the Soviet N-1 look minor by comparison.
Forget a crawler transporter, you are going to need major excavated canals leading into KSC and huge barges to float it into place, then giant lock doors that seal to expel the water as you settle it onto the launch pad.
The basic theory behind the transportation of the main stage was that it would be towed nose down via canals and inverted at the launch site using (appropriately big-ass) cranes. The large SSTO launchers for the space power system were also based on water transport from recovery site to refurbishment to launch site.
Actually, much of the early infrastructure development assumed that stages would grow to a size requiring water transport in what was then the very near future. The S-II facility at Seal Beach had a canal, JSC had a canal, and of course the Aerojet facility in the Everglades had the C-111 canal. Boeing bought 80,000 acres on the Columbia River in Oregon that was intended for rocket development, the Lockheed facility in Georgia intended for large solid stages was on the Intracoastal waterway, and MFSC planned a large canal network at Stennis, only a fraction of which was ever built.
Yup, forgot to mention Michoud — S-ICs and shuttle tanks all went by banana boat to KSC.
As for the water landing, there was a frangible impact structure on the nose and several million pounds thrust worth of retro rockets that would fire just above the water. Ehricke being Ehricke, he produced extensive equations on how the rocket plume would reshape the water surface for an optimized splashdown.
Whoa. I may have to give up my 40-year kitbuilding moratorium for this.
> I may have to give up my 40-year kitbuilding moratorium for this.
Yes, you will.
Ah from the days when giants roamed the drafting boards.
Damn folks felt freer to dream big back then.
I’d love to see the infrastructure required to get that from the stage assembly sites to standing on the pad.
It would have made the stuff shown in the movie “Things To Come” or the giant “Grasshopper” rail transporter for the Soviet N-1 look minor by comparison.
Forget a crawler transporter, you are going to need major excavated canals leading into KSC and huge barges to float it into place, then giant lock doors that seal to expel the water as you settle it onto the launch pad.
The basic theory behind the transportation of the main stage was that it would be towed nose down via canals and inverted at the launch site using (appropriately big-ass) cranes. The large SSTO launchers for the space power system were also based on water transport from recovery site to refurbishment to launch site.
Actually, much of the early infrastructure development assumed that stages would grow to a size requiring water transport in what was then the very near future. The S-II facility at Seal Beach had a canal, JSC had a canal, and of course the Aerojet facility in the Everglades had the C-111 canal. Boeing bought 80,000 acres on the Columbia River in Oregon that was intended for rocket development, the Lockheed facility in Georgia intended for large solid stages was on the Intracoastal waterway, and MFSC planned a large canal network at Stennis, only a fraction of which was ever built.
Saturn-Vstages were shiped to KSC on barges.
I wonder about damage after those water landings – but I expect convair could work it out.
Yup, forgot to mention Michoud — S-ICs and shuttle tanks all went by banana boat to KSC.
As for the water landing, there was a frangible impact structure on the nose and several million pounds thrust worth of retro rockets that would fire just above the water. Ehricke being Ehricke, he produced extensive equations on how the rocket plume would reshape the water surface for an optimized splashdown.
>.. Ehricke being Ehricke, he produced extensive equations on how
> the rocket plume would reshape the water surface for an optimized
> splashdown.
Didn’t Von Braun say one test is worth a thousand expert oppinions?