In this topic, I choose Saturn V vehicle which is the largest rockect that human ever built in the history. The Saturn V vehicle is used during the moon exploration program in the 1970s.
The Saturn V (pronounced 'Saturn Five', popularly known as the Moon Rocket) was a multistage liquid-fuel expendable rocket used by NASA's Apollo and Skylab programs.
In all, NASA launched thirteen Saturn V rockets between 1967 and 1973, with no loss of payload. The design payload was the manned Apollo spacecraft used by NASA for moon landings, and the Saturn V went on to launch the Skylab space station.
three stages of the Saturn V were developed by various NASA contractors, but following a sequence of mergers and takeovers all of them are now owned by Boeing. Each first and second stage was test fired at the Stennis Space Center located near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The facility was later used for the testing and verification of both the Space Shuttle Main Engine and the newer RS-68 rocket engine currently used on the Delta IV EELV rocket and in the future, on the Ares V rocket.
On all but one of its flights, the Saturn V consisted of three stages — the S-IC first stage, S-II second stage and the S-IVB third stage — and the instrument unit. All three stages used liquid oxygen (LOX) as an oxidizer. The first stage used RP-1 for fuel, while the second and third stages used liquid hydrogen (LH2). All three stages also used small solid-fuelled ullage motors that helped to separate the stages during the launch, and to ensure that the liquid propellants were in a proper position to be drawn into the pumps.
S-IC first stage
The S-IC was built by The Boeing Company at the Michoud Assembly Facility, New Orleans, where the Space Shuttle External Tanks are now constructed. As with almost every rocket stage, most of its mass of over two thousand metric tonnes at launch was fuel, in this case RP-1 rocket fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer. It was 42 meters tall and 10 meters in diameter, and provided 34.02 MN of thrust to get the rocket through the first 61 kilometers of ascent. The five F-1 engines were arranged in a cross pattern. The center engine was fixed, while the four on the outer ring could be hydraulically turned to control the rocket.
S-II second stage
The S-II was built by North American Aviation at Seal Beach, California. Using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, it had five J-2 engines in a similar arrangement to the S-IC. The second stage accelerated the Saturn V through the upper atmosphere with 5 MN of thrust. When loaded, 97% of the weight of the stage was propellant. Instead of having an intertank structure to separate the two fuel tanks as was done in the S-IC, the S-II used a common bulkhead that was constructed from both the top of the LOX tank and bottom of the LH2 tank. It consisted of two aluminium sheets separated by a honeycomb structure made of phenol. This had to insulate against the 70 °C (125 °F) temperature difference between the two tanks. The use of a common bulkhead saved 3.6 metric tons in weight.
S-IVB third stage
The S-IVB was built by the Douglas Aircraft Company at Huntington Beach, California. It had one J-2 engine and used the same fuel as the S-II. This stage was used twice during the mission: first for the orbit insertion after second stage cutoff, and later for the trans lunar injection (TLI) burn. The S-IVB also used a common bulkhead to insulate the two tanks. The S-IVB was the only rocket stage of the Saturn V small enough to be transported by plane, in this case the Super Guppy. Apart from the interstage adapter, this stage is nearly identical to the second stage of the Saturn IB rocket.
圖片參考:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b2/Saturn_v_schematic.jpg
A Saturn V is ready to launch
圖片參考:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Ap10-KSC-69PC-110.jpg/753px-Ap10-KSC-69PC-110.jpg