Q
qso1
Guest
Just a comparison of the four most powerful LVs ever built.<br /><br />Which launch vehicle had the most liftoff thrust? Which was the most powerful in terms of thrust and payload?<br /><br />I got interested in this when the only rocket with this kind of thrust known to exist for sure was the Saturn-V. As I got into writing technical information on rockets. I often referred to various sources and one handy source was the Guiness Book Of World Records. It was the only source in which a horsepower rating was documented for the Saturn-V (175,600,000 hp). BTW, the Saturn-V horsepower rating is a little more than an L-88 powered Corvette car (425 hp). <br /><br />I'd see some variation in data among different source material but mostly the data was pretty close.<br /><br />From what I recall when I examined this question. Most of the data I could find indicated a toss up between shuttle (STS) and Saturn-V. I'd see the shuttle thrust data reported vary from 6.9 million lbs to 7.7 million lbs.<br /><br />The Saturn-V generally rated at 7.5 million lbs thrust.<br /><br />Energia as high as 8.8 million and the N-1 something on the order of 11.7 million lbs. That would seem to make the N-1 the most powerful in terms of liftoff thrust. However, the N-1 did not use cryogenic propellants. It used hypergols for the most part which has an ISP of a little over half to two thirds that of cryogens. An example of this can be seen in the Titan-IV (3.4 million lbs thrust, about 40,000 lbs payload to LEO) vs Saturn 1B (1.5 million lbs thrust, about 40,000 lbs payload to LEO) payload and thrust. Both have roughly the same payload capacity but the Titan-IV has significantly greater thrust.<br /><br />Saturn-V:<br />Liftoff thrust = 7,500,000 lbs.<br />Payload capacity on the order of 125 tons to LEO although the heaviest actual payload weighed in at 85 tons (Skylab). In that role, Saturn-V was underutilized as it was on Apollo 9 as well.<br /><br />Energia:<br />Liftoff thrust = 8,900,000 lbs.<br />Payload c <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>