The Saturn IB (pronounced Saturn one b) was a launch vehicle used by NASA for orbital flights during the Apollo missions.
History[]
The vehicle used the same S-IVB stage for its second stage that the Saturn V used for its third stage, with a few modifications. The first stage was the S-IB and was constructed with clustered tanks built from the tooling used to construct the Redstone and Juno rockets. It had a cluster of 8 Rocketdyne H-1 engines on the first stage and a single Rocketdyne J-2 engine on the second stage.
To launch the Saturn IB from the same launch pad as the much larger Saturn V, an elevated platform known as the "milkstool" was used for later flights to accommodate the height differential between two rockets.
The Saturn IB was used for early uncrewed and crewed test flights and for Apollo 25, a mission initially planned to repair an astronomical satellite that was repurposed to deliver a new Saturn V FCC and repair the S-IVB of Apollo 24 in Earth's orbit.[1]. It would have been used for orbital Skylab missions before that program was converted to Jamestown. The last remaining Saturn IB was used for Apollo 75, the Apollo-Soyuz mission commanded by Danielle Poole mid September 1983.[2]
Gallery[]
- Real-life images
Stages & engines
See also[]
External links[]
Saturn IB on Wikipedia
References
- ↑ For All Mankind TV series, season 1, episode 9, "Bent Bird"
- ↑ For All Mankind TV series, season 2 (Episodes 9 + 10)