Transcript of How did NASA get to the Moon without refuelling?

Hello everybody. Hope you're doing well and thanks for joining us for another video. Now recently, for some unknown reason, I've started to be inundated with comments from people seemingly suddenly catching on to this claim made by Bartell. We're talking about Elon was saying that he would need nine fuel stops to get to the moon. with a taller rocket than the Saturn 5, he's going to take at least minimum eight fuel trips to go to the moon. Right. So, Von Braonn, he said originally to go to the moon and one rocket is impossible. We're going to show a clip of that in just a second. And the minimum you could do would be three rockets each weighing 800,000 tons. Now, I did do a video a while back that addressed similar claims regarding the amount of fuel that Apollo needed, but those seem to be from people who were under the impression that they needed enough fuel to propel themselves up to 24,000 mph, then decelerate themselves by 24,000 m an hour to land on the moon, then accelerate themselves back up to 24,000 mph to get back to Earth. This particular claim, however, seems to focus around a SpaceX talking about needing multiple refueling trips to get to the moon. What does the headline say? Yeah. Elon Musk says it could take eight Starship launches to fuel up a single moon trip. And this is with a rocket that's slightly taller than the Saturn 5. He's going to say it's going to take eight of them. and B ver Veron Brawn saying that getting to the moon would require three rockets each far larger than the Saturn 5 that was used on Apollo. And the minimum you could do would be three rockets each weighing 800,000 tons. So the first basic thing that needs to be understood here is that more payload that you're trying to move means more fuel will be required to move it a given distance. I.e. let's say you want to travel 100 km in your car and the only thing in your car is you. You would need X amount of fuel to travel that distance. But if you wanted to travel the same distance whilst carrying a ton of bricks in the car with you, you will obviously then require more fuel. And also consider that then to change the speed of a larger mass will require more force. So if you wanted to move several tons of bricks, your car engine likely would not be powerful enough. So you would need a larger engine like say an 18-wheeler. and a larger engine is then going to need even more fuel to run as well. So with that in mind, before we delve into the comparisons of SpaceX to the Saturn 5 or what Vera von Braun was talking about, let's get some context by running through the sequence of the flight of a Saturn 5. The Saturn 5 consisted of three main stages. The S1 stage, the S2 stage, and the S4B stage. Inside the S4B shroud was where the lunar module was stored and above that was the command service module and then right at the very top was the launch escape tower. Now the total stack on the pad weighed in the region of just under 3 million kg or about 6 12 million pounds and the vast majority of that weight was fuel. The first stage the S1C had a gross mass at launch of 2.2 2 million kg and 2 million of that was propellant. The S2 stage accounted for 480,000 kg of the Saturn 5 launch mass of which 443,000 was propellant. The S4B weighed 123,000 kg with 109,000 kg of that being fuel. The Luna module totaled 15,200 kg with 10,334 of it being the descent stage and the remaining 4700 kg being the ascent stage. Then the command service module totaled about 29,000 kg with approximately 17,000 of that being fuel. So at launch the full 2.9 million kg is being lifted just by the first stage which burned for about 2 1/2 minutes and lifted the Saturn 5 to only about 35 miles in altitude but its speed to more than 6,000 m an hour. with it now above the thickest part of Earth's atmosphere and the first stage propellant depleted. That stage was jettisoned and the second stage took over. So now at this point, what started off as 3 million kg of a Saturn 5 is now only around 800,000 kg. The S2 burnt for six minutes, taking the Saturn 5 to more than a 100 miles in altitude and its speed to about 15 and a half thousand miles an hour before it too was jettisoned. So now what remains of the Saturn 5 is only about 168,000 kg and it's almost in orbit. The S4B stage would burn for about 2 and a half minutes to bring its speed up to the 17.5,000 mph required to stay in orbit where it remained for about 2 hours until they reached the right point to perform the trans lunar injection burn which increased their speed to 24,000 mph that was required to reach the moon. after which the command service module separated docked with the lunar module and then that stack continued on its way separately from the S4B. So now we have around 44,000 kg of spacecraft that is already at the speed required to reach the distance of the moon, but it's still fully fueled. And as I covered in a previous video, once they'd reached that 24,000 mph and the engines were cut off, the speed was constantly fading away during the coast towards the moon due to Earth's gravity. So by the time they reached the point of circling the moon, their speed had naturally dropped to about 4,000 m an hour. Apollo 11 is 966 mi from the moon. velocity 6,511 ft pers, but that was too fast to hold an orbit around the moon. And if it was left unchecked, they would have just looped around the moon and began heading back to Earth. So when they reached the backside of the moon, the SPS engine on the service module performed a 6-minute lunar orbit insertion burn, which dropped their speed to just over 2,000 mph. That would leave them circling the moon with a fully fueled lunar module weighing 15,000 kilos then ready to descend to the surface and only the ascent stage returned back to lunar orbit to meet the CSM. That ascent stage was then jettisoned before the CSM performed the trans earth injection burn to return them home. And as I covered in my other video, this burn did not need to reach 24,000 mph like the one on the way to the moon because it only needed to escape the much weaker gravity of the moon and then having the stronger gravity of Earth helping them return home rather than the outbound journey which was fighting against Earth's gravity. And for anyone doubting the numbers about the mass of the Saturn 5 and wondering if that would be enough fuel to achieve what was done, I highly recommend checking out this video from the Everyday Astronaut. It's arguably the single most comprehensive video taking down moonlanding conspiracy arguments and it includes a section where Tim uses the rocket equations to go through all the numbers and confirm that the Saturn 5 indeed was large enough and had sufficient fuel to get a lunar module to the moon and back. So, let's now address this comparison of Apollo versus SpaceX. Mhm. And then he said with a taller rocket than the Saturn 5, he's going to take at least minimum eight fuel trips. What does the headline say? Yeah. Elon Musk says it could take eight Starship launches to fuel up a single moon trip. And this is with a rocket that's slightly taller than the Saturn 5. He's going to say it's going to take eight of them. And there are a few fundamental differences which point to why they need to refuel it. Firstly, they're talking about a variation of Starship landing on the moon called the HLS. It's more than 50 m high and has a mass of about 100,000 kilos. The current plan is that one of those will be in orbit around the moon waiting and it will be met by a crew on board an Orion capsule. The crew will transfer to the hls, descend to the moon, then return back to orbit to meet with Orion, and the crew will use that to return home. So, we're looking at about 100,000 kg of lander that's going to need to be slowed down to a stop on the lunar surface while still having enough fuel on board to get back into lunar orbit. And all of that needs to get to lunar orbit in the first place. And Starship only has two stages to it. The main Starship craft itself, which sits on top of the Superheavy booster. The Superheavy booster acts very similar to the first stage of the Saturn 5. It gets the Starship to about 45 miles in altitude, but the Starship itself is then left needing to get its own way to Earth orbit. And you've probably already seen the Starship test flight to know that by the time they get that thing to orbit, there's not a huge amount of fuel left on board it. Even if we consider that they probably didn't fully fuel it and that later models will probably be able to carry more fuel to begin with, there still would not be a huge amount of fuel left once they reached Earth orbit. And bearing in mind that craft then needs to perform its own trans lunar injection burn to get to the moon, an insertion burn to put itself into lunar orbit. Then a descent burn to get to the surface and a burn to get back off it again. Not also forgetting that the big driving force behind SpaceX at the moment is reusability. Well, if they only put enough fuel in to get the HLS to the moon, land, and then get back up to lunar orbit, it would then be completely empty and just become space junk. However, they could fly it all the way back to Earth, back into Earth orbit to be refueled again. But that would obviously need a lot of fuel to do the return journey and slow themselves down into Earth orbit when they get there. And that fuel has to be landed on the moon and then took back off again. So, it's absolutely going to need to be refueled. But here in lies the problem because to refuel the moonbound Starship is going to require another Starship bringing the fuel up. The Starship's fuel capacity is roughly 1.25 million kg. The current Block Two ship that they're testing at the moment is slated to be able to carry about 150,000 kgs of payload to low Earth orbit. So, if that entire payload capacity was made to be just fuel for the HLS, it would still take 8.3 block 2 Starships to fully ferry up the 1.25 million kg of fuel needed to completely refuel the HLS in orbit. That's apples to oranges compared to Apollo because A, the Starship that's landing on the moon is significantly larger than the Luna module. And B, the section of the Apollo craft which flew to the moon did not need to use any of its own fuel to get to space to begin with. And this ties us into Bart's claims about what Bernavon Brawn said. To go to the moon and one rocket is impossible. We're going to show a clip of that in just a second. And the minimum you could do would be three rockets, each weighing 800,000 tons, being taller than the Empire State Building. The Saturn 5 only weighed 2,500 tons. Now, this seems to just be another classic case of Bart twisting things. Those quotes came from the 1950s when space rocketry was still in its infancy. And at that time he considered there were two methods of getting to the moon. Direct descent and earth orbit rendevous. Now like SpaceX both of those ideas involved landing a craft on the moon far larger than the twoman Apollo lunar module. And direct descent would have had it all happening with one single rocket lifting everything in one go. Essentially, imagine SpaceX trying to launch a fully fueled Starship without actually using any of the Starship fuel in the first place. Imagine the size that the booster would need to be to do that. Hence, it would have required a rocket that dwarfed the Saturn 5. There were actually plans drawn up for a direct descent rocket, but it had a lander much smaller than Starship or anything else that we're going to look at. That rocket was called the Nova. It would have been larger than the Saturn 5. It was slated to need around 50% more thrust than the Saturn 5 at launch, but the main drawback to the design was that it would have required the rocket to be about 50% wider than the Saturn 5. at 15 mters versus 10. The issue with that is if you look at how Boeing built the first stage of the Saturn 5, they were all built on their side at the Boeing facility. They were then transported to the Kennedy Space Center where they were then tilted vertically inside the vehicle assembly building. The issue for Nova is that being 15 m wide means during construction, even if it's on its side, it would then be at least 15 m tall inside the building, which was higher than anything the building cranes that Boeing had could facilitate. So to construct the Nova rocket would have first required a massive overhaul of the construction buildings. Hence, von Brawn initially preferred the option of Earth orbit rendevous, which would have seen multiple separate rockets launch up sections of a moon rocket into Earth orbit, where they would have all then been attached together and then flown to the moon and back. However, Bart's portrayal of what von Braw was talking about seems rather cherrypicked. Now, take a look at this clip from Von Braonn himself saying, "The largest rocket that you can build can only achieve Earth orbit." And that's exactly what Elon Musk said. It's going to take eight trips. Take a listen. Here to reveal a plan for a trip around the moon is a chief of the guided missile development at the United States Army's Redstone Arsenal, Dr. Werner von Braonn. A voyage around the moon must be made in two phases. A rocket ship taking off from the Earth's surface will use almost all the fuel it can carry just to attain a speed great enough to balance the pull of gravity. Unpowered, it will then keep circling the Earth in an orbit outside of the atmosphere. This is the first phase. However, if we can refuel the ship in this orbit with fuel brought up by cargo rocket ships, it can set out on the second phase, the trip around the moon. and back. For starters, the rocket which von Brawn is showing here is a passenger space plane idea that he had. Now, here's a model. My design for a four stage orbital rocket ship. Compared to the unmanned instrument rocket, it is quite large, but the overall size and weight of the rocket is mainly determined by the 11 tons weight of this top section. This weight dictates the amount of fuel and the numbers of motors needed to produce enough power to equalize a gravitational pull of the Earth. The payload in the top section will consist of 10 crew members plus equipment. Notice the wings, small rocket motor, and landing gears. This is a section that must ultimately return the men to the Earth safely. And this was part of a much larger idea that he had for a giant space station that was going to have already been built in orbit. And the plane could then ferry people to it. This model will show you how our future moon rocket ship might be designed. It would be 53 ft in length, has no wings or tail surfaces because it will be assembled and operated only in the vacuum of space. For the hull of the ship, we are adapting the cabin section of one of the Earth's to space station and passenger rockets. This was basically a very early concept of what became the space shuttle. Now, with regards to Bart's statement about von Brawn needing three rockets the size of the Empire State Building, and the minimum you could do would be three rockets, each weighing 800,000 tons, being taller than the Empire State Building. The Saturn 5 only weighed 2,500 tons. Some context is required for this because this is something that he talked about in his book Conquest of the Moon in 1953. And as his space plane and space station ideas should show, he did like to think big. The proposals he was making here at that time was for landing three craft on the moon as part of just one mission. Each lander was going to be about the size of the Statue of Liberty and the combined three landers were going to be carrying 50 people who would he then proposed would be staying on the moon for 6 weeks before using two of the landers to fly back to Earth. So his plans that would require rockets the size of the Empire State Building were even more ambitious than what SpaceX is currently working on for Arteimus. Obviously that was a significantly larger undertaking than getting two people onto the moon for a day. And whilst an ambitious plan realistically was never going to get the required funding from the government who were only interested in just getting somebody to the moon so that they could brag that they'd beaten the Soviets to it. So by 1962, von Brawn had not only scaled back his plans from getting a few dozen people onto the moon for weeks at a time back to just getting some people up there for a day or so that so that they can say they made it. That naturally would scale back the amount of materials required to achieve it. But he'd also opted for a third option of getting there called lunar orbit rendevous which basically took the principle of ditching dead weight. So rather than needing to carry all of the weight that was required to get back to Earth, taking that all the way down to the lunar surface and back up to lunar orbit. Instead, that bit would get left in lunar orbit and only the weight that was actually needed on the moon was taken to the moon. So therefore, the overall rocket could be kept smaller. And by smaller, I mean a monster the size of the Saturn 5. Von Brawn's original plans and SpaceX's current plans are aiming to put significantly larger landers on the moon than Apollo did. So, of course, it would require a larger rocket and much more fuel. So, hopefully that's cleared that up. As always, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments down below. If you enjoyed this video and you haven't already done so, then please do consider hitting the like and subscribe buttons. And hopefully, we'll see you in the next video. [Music]