space@mit-mc (03/11/85)
From: <bang!crash!bwebster@Nosc> Peter - > I presume(probably wrong) that some of the booster sections of > the saturn V rocket are still kicking around in mothballs. You presume correctly. Three Saturn Vs were built (for Apollos 18, 19, and 20) and never used. One is on display (on its side) at the Johnson Space Center, and I believe the other two are at Kennedy and Huntsville. I might question the structural integrity, though, after 15 years of sitting around outside. ..bruce webster.. bang!crash!bwebster@nosc {ihnp4, sdcsvax!bang}!crash!bwebster
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (03/14/85)
> You presume correctly. Three Saturn Vs were built (for Apollos 18, 19, > and 20) and never used. One is on display (on its side) at the Johnson > Space Center, and I believe the other two are at Kennedy and Huntsville. Almost right. One of the three left-over flight-ready Saturn Vs was used to launch Skylab, or rather the bottom two stages of it were so used. I believe the Huntsville Saturn V is actually a non-flying test article. The KSC and JSC ones are/were real flight-ready boosters. > I might question the structural integrity, though, after 15 years of > sitting around outside. Especially at the Cape, where salt-water corrosion has already damaged some of the old launch towers beyond repair. I believe the Huntsville Saturn V has been designated for special preservation efforts, as a national historical object or something like that. But it's most unlikely that any of them will ever be flyable again. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry