NASA's development of the F-1 engine made landing on the moon possible. This book chronicles the history of this amazing engine, from its design and manufacture to its eventual discarding at the conclusion of the Apollo program.

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 bookcontains 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 publishedis 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.

The first book devoted to the development of the Rocketdyne F-1 engine and its integration into the five-engine cluster that would power the first stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle Includes many never-before-published photographs, both color and black and white, during the development and testing of the F-1 engine Draws on original documents and highlights interviews with some of the engineers and managers who worked on the programme The author includes development of the hydrogen-burning J-2 engine thus bringing rocket engine development up to the present

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.

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.