The Saturn V F-1 Engine

NASA's development of the F-1 engine made landing on the moon possible. This book chronicles the history of this amazing engine, from its design and manufacture to its eventual discarding at the conclusion of the Apollo program.

---

When the mighty Rocketdyne F-1 engine was conceived in the late 1950s for the U.S. Air Force, it had no defined mission and there was no launch vehicle it could power. It was a bold concept to push the technological envelope of rocket propulsion in order to put massive payloads into Earth orbit. Few realized at the time that the F-1 would one day propel American astronauts to the Moon. In The Saturn V F-1 Engine, Anthony Young tells the amazing story of unbridled vision, bold engineering, explosive failures during testing, unrelenting persistence to find solutions, and ultimate success in launching the Saturn V with a 100 percent success rate. The book





contains personal interviews with many Rocketdyne and NASA personnel involved in the engine’s design, development, testing and production;
is lavishly illustrated with black-and-white and color photographs, many never previously published
is the first complete history of the most powerful rocket engine ever built.


The F-1 engine remains the high point in U.S. liquid rocket propulsion – it represents a period in American history when nothing was impossible.