The F-1 was already being prototyped before the very concept of the Saturn
V was drafted. It could be said that the F-1 drove the design of S-V
On Dec 27, 2015 9:20 PM, "Henry Spencer" <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 27 Dec 2015, David McMIllan wrote:
...amazed to hear just how early the first dev contracts for (what
became) the F-1 and the Saturn were signed...
Of course, these days, getting the same amount of work done via the
Congress/NASA/cost-plus contract route would probably take 20 years...
Not least because of all the studies and committees and bureaucracy
involved in just getting it started. At one of the early Space Access
conferences, I met Del Tischler, NASA's first propulsion guy, who wrote the
RFP and specs for the F-1. All by himself, in one all-nighter. Three
months later, after review, RFP, proposals, evaluation, and selection, the
contract was signed and work underway. "Having never done anything like
that before, I didn't know how complex that undertaking was supposed to be,
and so I simply did it."(*)
Henry
(* "Cost reduction potential in space program management", A.O. Tischler,
Acta Astronautica v. 11 n. 12, p. 741, 1984. )