Mitt liv som Tobin

F-1 Rocket Engine on display at Space History Museum, Alamogordo, NM. Dec 19, 2006.

In Alamogordo we visited the Space History museum, housed prominantly up in the desert foothills on "2001 Avenue" in an imposing copper-colored monolith of a building. The best thing about the museum is actually outside: a garden of discarded rockets and rocket engines.

Pictured here is an F-1 rocket engine, the most powerful liquid-fuel rocket engine ever made, five of which powered the first stage of the Saturn V rocket (on the way to the moon!) for the first two and a half minutes of flight. Here's a Wikipedia summary:

The F-1 burned two short tons (1.8 t) of liquid oxygen (LOX) and one ton (0.9 t) of RP-1 (kerosene) each second generating over 1.5 million pounds-force (6.7 meganewtons) of thrust. During their two and a half minutes of operation, the five F-1s propelled the Saturn V vehicle to a height of 52 km (32 miles) and a speed of 8,700 km/h (5,400 mph). The combined propellant flow rate of the five F-1s in the Saturn V was 3580 U.S. gallons (13552 liters) per second. The flow rate could empty a 30,000 U.S. gallon (113,562 liter) swimming pool in 8.5 seconds. Each F-1 engine has more thrust than all three space shuttle main engines combined.

I'm not quite sure what all the plumbing is about; I think the large tube surrounding the end of the nozzle is a way of cooling the nozzle and maybe pre-warming the fuel. I was interested to see that inside the nozzle is pretty much a gigantic "burner" like you might find on a gigantic gas cooking range. Seeing these huge, space-traveling mechanical contraptions always makes me want to change my course of study to something that includes building them!

Here's a pretty impressive picture of Werner von Braun standing in front of a rocket bearing these engines. I also enjoyed the V-2 rocket remains; it seems there's something very Ray Bradbury about a crashed rocket rusting amongst cacti and red soil. Had I remembered that the U.S. Space and Rocket Center is in Huntsville, Alabama, we might have had to go through that state!