🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ewright.726434023@convex.convex.com> ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes:
[Stuff about Saturn V deleted]
>
>In fact, there were plenty of missions that could have justified
>its expense: the follow-on Apollo missions, additional Skylabs,
>Space Base, nuclear-powered space tugs, and the manned Mars mission,
>to name a few.  The Saturn was cancelled because Congress didn't
>want to do those missions and NASA didn't want anything to compete
>with Shuttle.
>

The Urban/Orbital Legend that Will Not Die!

BZZZT! 50% wrong. The Saturn V production line was closed down well
before the shuttle became anything other than one of a number of
competing ideas for later launchers (including SSTOs derived from the
Saturn Ib).  The S-V line was terminated in either CY or FY 68 as I
recall.  STS was seriously started a few years later.  

Congress did make the decision to kill S-V and all the later projects
you mention, although several (such as manned Mars missions) were more
along the lines of wish lists and paper studies.

-- 
Edmund Hack - Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co. - Houston, TX
hack@aio.jsc.nasa.gov - I speak only for myself, unless blah, blah..
"You know, I think we're all Bozos on this bus."
"Detail Dress Circuits" "Belt: Above A, Below B" "Close B ClothesMode"