This Canceled NASA Rocket Would Have Made The Saturn V Look Like A Firecracker – SlashGear

When the Apollo program was still in its infancy and a successful crewed moon landing was anything but assured, there was a sentiment shared by many at NASA that the mission profile should be kept as simple as possible. Getting humans safely to the Moon’s surface would be a difficult task. Getting them back home again, however, seemed impossible. There wasn’t any infrastructure on the Moon: no launch pads, no refueling stations, and no rockets. The key to success would be eliminating all unnecessary complications.

The Nova rocket was an ideal solution. The reason for its gargantuan size and power was its intended use in what was called the “direct ascent” plan for a lunar landing. This was the most straightforward of the proposed mission plans, favored by NASA officials early on. Using the Nova, the mission would fly a single rocket directly to the Moon, land on the surface, and then reuse it to launch from the Moon back to Earth without the need for going into orbit. Many iteration were considered, and the most notable proposal included a “five-stage vehicle using eight F-1 engines in the first stage,” according to NASA records.

As time went on, it became clear that such an enormous rocket would be too costly and wouldn’t be capable of achieving then-President John F. Kennedy’s goal of getting boots on the moon before 1970. In 1962, NASA decided to proceed instead with the smaller Saturn V rocket, on which astronauts would to perform an orbital docking procedure a quarter-million miles from Earth before they could return home. Even so, NASA still manages to hold the biggest-rocket record ever since, though that may be about to change courtesy of SpaceX.