🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <23DEC199220530775@judy.uh.edu> wingo%cspara.decnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov writes:
>>... The Saturn 1B could lift the CSM or the LM, but not both (i.e. it
>>could not carry the full Saturn V payload to LEO).
>
>From my information this was always the program intent of the Saturn 1B. This
>helped to lower the costs for the test program of the full Saturn V by flying
>most of the Saturn V hardware before the big bird was ready. According to 
>folks here at MSFC the 1B could lift that weight...

Dennis, please back this up with numbers.  The references say that the
1B's orbital payload was circa 18 (metric) tons, which compares rather
unfavorably with the total Apollo orbital weight of 45 tons.  (It was
closer to 50 tons at launch, with the escape tower and protective cover,
but those were shed on the way up.)  This is *not* a small discrepancy.

Could it be that someone got confused because the 1B's available payload
to orbit was circa 45000 *pounds* and the Apollo mass was circa 45000
*kilograms*?

>Remember that the ASTP payload was the full up CSM as well as the docking
>adaptor and the launch was to a 51 degree inclination orbit. This easily
>equals the weight of the Lunar Module in a 28.5 degree orbit.

Uh, Dennis, the ASTP payload was *not* a "full up" CSM; indeed, it was
the lightest CSM ever flown manned, because it needed almost no main-engine
fuel for its mission.  (In fact, it carried more RCS fuel than main-engine
fuel.)  It weighed 12.7 tons.

Furthermore, the docking adapter was tiny, weighing only 2 tons.  The
combination weighed about as much as Apollo 7's CSM, and only about 800kg
less than the Skylab CSMs (which were also launched into high-inclination
orbits, and at higher altitudes to boot).

With tanks *empty*, a CSM-LM combination might just have been able to go
up on a 1B.  But that configuration couldn't have flown a useful mission.
The Apollo 9 Earth-orbit-test CSM-LM stack weighed 36 tons, far beyond
the 1B's lift capability.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry