The
Saturn V (pronounced "Saturn Five") was a
multistage liquid-fuel
expendable rocket used by
NASA for
Apollo and
Skylab missions between 1967 and 1972. In total NASA launched twelve Saturn V rockets, plus one derived
Saturn INT-21, with no loss of payload. It remains the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever brought to operational status, in terms of height, mass and
payload capacity. The Soviet
Energia, which flew two test missions in the late 1980s before being cancelled, had slightly more takeoff thrust.
The largest production model of the Saturn family of rockets, the Saturn V was designed under the direction of Wernher von Braun at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with Boeing, North American Aviation, Douglas Aircraft Company, and IBM as the lead contractors. The three stages of the Saturn V were developed by various NASA contractors, but following a sequence of mergers and takeovers all of them are now owned by Boeing.
Gerard Kitchen O'Neill (February 6, 1927 – April 27, 1992) was an
American physicist and space activist. A faculty member of
Princeton University, he invented a device called the
particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments. Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the
mass driver. In the 1970s, he developed a plan to build human settlements in outer space, including a
space habitat design known as the
O'Neill cylinder. He founded the
Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into
space manufacturing and
colonization.
O'Neill began researching high-energy particle physics at Princeton in 1954 after he received his doctorate from Cornell University.
Two years later, he published his theory for a particle storage ring. This invention allowed particle physics experiments at much higher energies than had previously been possible. In 1965 at Stanford University, he performed the first colliding beam physics experiment.
While teaching physics at Princeton, O'Neill became interested in the possibility that humans could live in outer space. He researched and proposed a futuristic idea for human settlement in space, the O'Neill cylinder, in "The Colonization of Space", his first paper on the subject. He held a conference on space manufacturing at Princeton in 1975. Many who became post-Apollo-era space activists attended. O'Neill built his first mass driver prototype with professor Henry Kolm in 1976. He considered mass drivers critical for extracting the mineral resources of the Moon and asteroids. His award-winning book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space inspired a generation of space exploration advocates. He died of leukemia in 1992.