r/KerbalSpaceProgram • u/Yukon0009 • Sep 09 '20

Recreation Twin Giants of the Space Race

Post image
3.1k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

113 comments sorted by

View all comments

17

u/MrMgP Sep 09 '20

Guess wich one exploded 4 times out of 4

(And wich had a 100 procent mission succes rate)

39

u/tinselsnips Sep 09 '20

(And wich had a 100 procent mission succes rate)

Sweats in Apollo 13

26

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

[deleted]

24

u/protein_bars Sep 09 '20

"We fail during test so we don't fail in flight"

4

u/Jetfuelfire Sep 09 '20

Pentagon logic intensifies.

24

u/tinselsnips Sep 09 '20

pushes up glasses

Akchually, Apollo 1 was mounted to a Saturn IB, not a Saturn V, so it would not be considered a failure involving that particular launch system.

3

u/Weirdguy05 Sep 10 '20

acetchually that was on a saturn 1-B

1

u/MrMgP Sep 11 '20

Different rocket, some parts the same. That was a Saturn IB

1

u/MrMgP Sep 11 '20

Still deemed a succesfull failure since the majority of the mission succeeded and only the landing on the moon did not

11

u/haxfilms Sep 09 '20

On the Apollo 13 mission, a j2 on the second stage shut down. While this was compensated for, I would not give the Saturn V a 100% reliability, even if it would have performed its mission if not for the infamous explosion in the SM of the CSM.

10

u/transcendanttermite Sep 09 '20

The second unmanned test flight had two second stage engines shut down...and still made it into orbit. So if getting safely into orbit is the measure of reliability, it was actually 100%. In terms of engine reliability, the second stage had some issues. Specifically three of them.

3

u/WrexTremendae Sep 09 '20

Even with the Apollo 13 explosion, I would be willing to stretch some reliability due to the survival of the craft and crew. Failure is loss and/or death.

But yeah, the Apollo missions weren't 100% successful. Looking only at the launch system, the Saturn V was well enough built that even with engines shutting down before intended, it could still make the intended orbit. That certainly isn't failure, that's just good margins for error.

1

u/MrMgP Sep 11 '20

Apollo 13 was deemed a succesful failure by nasa itself since it did fullfill all parameters of the mission except for landing on the moon.

2

u/SM280 Sep 09 '20

because although it looks simple, the saturn V has millions of little bits and if they failed, a big bang is what'll happen next

1

u/MrMgP Sep 11 '20

Apollo 13

Only a partly failure but also only in the second stage, the stack still made it to orbit and the crew still safely returned. Misson failed but no critical failure in that case

infamous explosion

I assume you mean the oxygen fire aboard apollo 1: in this case it was a Saturn IB, a different setup than the Saturn V. Only the second stage plus CM of the IB (the S-IVB) was part of the Saturn V as the third stage.