Aug 242012
Sometimes plans go awry. For example… in 1963, NASA was well on the way to building the Saturn V. The Saturn V was a giant of a rocket, far bigger than what was actually available at the time. But there was no reason to believe that development of ever bigger and more capable launch vehicles would stop with the Saturn V. And so plans were in place for the “Nova” rocket. While a vast number of wildly different designs were produced, in general they were all capable of putting about a million pounds of payload into Earth orbit.
I’ve seen a number of conceptual designs for the Nova launch vehicle, but nothing as massive as the brute shown here . . . wow, what a monster!!
This was a pretty standard-sized post-Saturn booster.
Hi there,
Great post, thanks for sharing. I have one question – where did you find this image? Is it from a NASA film or in their archives? Would love to see the full film/presentation!
Thanks again.
I found it in a NASA presentation at the NASA-MSFC archive, years ago, although I’ve seen it a number of places over the years.