When the mighty Rocketdyne F-1 engine was conceived in the late 1950s for the U.S. Air Force, it had no defined mission and there was no launch vehicle it could power. It was a bold concept to push the technological envelope of rocket propulsion in order to put massive payloads into Earth orbit. Few realized at the time that the F-1 would one day propel American astronauts to the Moon. In The Saturn V F-1 Engine, Anthony Young tells the amazing story of unbridled vision, bold engineering, explosive failures during testing, unrelenting persistence to find solutions, and ultimate success in launching the Saturn V with a 100 percent success rate. The book

• contains personal interviews with many Rocketdyne and NASA personnel involved in the engine's design, development, testing and production;
• is lavishly illustrated with black-and-white and color photographs, many never previously published
• is the first complete history of the most powerful rocket engine ever built.

The F-1 engine remains the high point in U.S. liquid rocket propulsion - it represents a period in American history when nothing was impossible.

Autorentext

Anthony Young's first automotive book, published in 1984, became the best-selling automotive title sold in America within three months of its publication, according to Auto Week magazine. His first Springer-Praxis book, Lunar and Planetary Rovers: The Wheels of Apollo and the Quest for Mars will be published in the fall of 2006. He is a regular contributor to Space Times magazine and the online weekly website, The Space Review.

Zusammenfassung

The book focuses on the design, testing and manufacture of the F-1 engine, but also covers its incorporation into the first stage of the Saturn V and in-flight record. It concludes with an examination of what might have been, if the F-1 had not been discarded, together with the Saturn V, at the conclusion of the Apollo program. The account draws on original documents and interviews with engineers and managers, and is illustrated by many never-before-published photographs, both colour and monochrome. The intention is for this to be the definitive account of the development of this most powerful of rocket engines. As NASA is developing an evolved version of the hydrogen-burning J-2 engine for use in the forthcoming Ares launch vehicles, the author includes development of the J-2 engine within the context of the Saturn V development, thus bringing rocket engine development up to the present and thus provide this book with a long shelf life.

Inhalt
Foreword.- Author's Preface.- Acknowledgements.- List of Illustrations.- Origins and F-1 Engine Development.- From Nova to Saturn: Evolution of the Moon Rocket.- Manufacturing the F-1 Engine at Rocketdyne.- Boeing and the Saturn V S-IC Stage.- Testing the F-1 and S-IC Stage.- The Apollo Saturn V Launches.- The Engine that Might Been: the F-1A and its Legacy.- Appendix.- Index.