The many amazing technological feats boasted by the Apollo programme that got man to the moon, perhaps the most impossible was the creation of the incredible Saturn V rocket.
The Saturn V remains to this day the largest, most powerful, rocket ever launched by man.
It was an almost miraculous machine that stood taller than a 36-story building, boasted the power equivalent of 543 jet fighters and was made up of three million parts.
One of - if not the - greatest feats of 20th Century engineering.
Feast your eyes on the Saturn V Weird Science Factoid special!
The man behind the rocket was Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi 'rescued' by the Americans as Germany fell. He was the man behind the V-2 missile.
Its launch weight was 3,000 tons.
The Saturn V could put a 120-ton payload into Earth orbit or a 45-ton payload near the moon.
With the Apollo mission on top, it was 363ft high.
How mighty was it? 160,000,000 horse power mighty.
An average mission used the rocket for a total of just 20 minutes.
The Saturn V's first-stage rockets - five F1s made by Rocketdyne - are the most powerful single-nozzle liquid fuelled rocket engines ever to see service.
To get Saturn V off the ground, 5,800,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen, 3,500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen, 2,000,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 87,000 gallons of liquid helium were required.
But 94 per cent of the fuel carried by the Saturn V was used to get just 100 miles above Earth. The other six per cent took the Apollo space ship nearly 250,000 miles to the Moon, landed it, relaunched and returned the crew home.
Saturn V has 6 million components. Even if they achieved NASA's target 99.9 per cent success, they might expect 6,000 components to fail on a good launch.
The Saturn V was assembled upright, inside the biggest shed in the world - NASA's Vertical Assembly Building - on a Mobile Launcher Platform, which is an engineering marvel in itself.
It was the Saturn V which really put the Russian's out of the space race. Their N-1 alternative was as safe as dressing up as a gazelle and repeatedly poking a hungry lion with a sharp stick.
Fifteen Saturn Vs were built.
From 1964 until 1973, a total of $6.5 billion was appropriated for the Saturn V, with the maximum being in 1966 with $1.2 billion. Allowing for inflation this is equivalent to roughly $32-45 billion in 2007 money. This works out at $2.4-3.5 billion per launch.
But each of its 13 main Saturn V launches was successful. Two of them suffered in-flight problems including engine cutoffs, but the on-board computers were able to compensate, resulting in a successful mission.
It's final mission put Skylab into orbit.
Nasa is working on Ares V rocket for its next moon rocket which would be even more powerful than the
The Saturn V remains to this day the largest, most powerful, rocket ever launched by man.
It was an almost miraculous machine that stood taller than a 36-story building, boasted the power equivalent of 543 jet fighters and was made up of three million parts.
One of - if not the - greatest feats of 20th Century engineering.
Feast your eyes on the Saturn V Weird Science Factoid special!
The man behind the rocket was Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi 'rescued' by the Americans as Germany fell. He was the man behind the V-2 missile.
Its launch weight was 3,000 tons.
The Saturn V could put a 120-ton payload into Earth orbit or a 45-ton payload near the moon.
With the Apollo mission on top, it was 363ft high.
How mighty was it? 160,000,000 horse power mighty.
An average mission used the rocket for a total of just 20 minutes.
The Saturn V's first-stage rockets - five F1s made by Rocketdyne - are the most powerful single-nozzle liquid fuelled rocket engines ever to see service.
To get Saturn V off the ground, 5,800,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen, 3,500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen, 2,000,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 87,000 gallons of liquid helium were required.
But 94 per cent of the fuel carried by the Saturn V was used to get just 100 miles above Earth. The other six per cent took the Apollo space ship nearly 250,000 miles to the Moon, landed it, relaunched and returned the crew home.
Saturn V has 6 million components. Even if they achieved NASA's target 99.9 per cent success, they might expect 6,000 components to fail on a good launch.
The Saturn V was assembled upright, inside the biggest shed in the world - NASA's Vertical Assembly Building - on a Mobile Launcher Platform, which is an engineering marvel in itself.
It was the Saturn V which really put the Russian's out of the space race. Their N-1 alternative was as safe as dressing up as a gazelle and repeatedly poking a hungry lion with a sharp stick.
Fifteen Saturn Vs were built.
From 1964 until 1973, a total of $6.5 billion was appropriated for the Saturn V, with the maximum being in 1966 with $1.2 billion. Allowing for inflation this is equivalent to roughly $32-45 billion in 2007 money. This works out at $2.4-3.5 billion per launch.
But each of its 13 main Saturn V launches was successful. Two of them suffered in-flight problems including engine cutoffs, but the on-board computers were able to compensate, resulting in a successful mission.
It's final mission put Skylab into orbit.
Nasa is working on Ares V rocket for its next moon rocket which would be even more powerful than the
