[formerly What’s That? (#106) Puzzle Series: What is this, or what do you want it to be?]
20 responses to “Apollo Saturn V F-1 main engine valve flexline”
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Apollo era self-aligning support (chrome plated) and tubing connector (I think titanium), probably for propellants. Or what they said… 😉
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flickr folk are spooky… Makes you believe in the wisdom of crowds. Bingo jerryft and Rev PJ
Yes, this is a F-1 main engine valve flexline from the Apollo Saturn V rocket., which pumped 413 gallons of liquid oxygen through it per second, at -183°C.
Manufactured in 1964, here are the detailed stamps:
A 5" bellowed, flexible line section, 9.25" in diameter and 11 lbs in weight. These were placed in the main liquid oxygen and fuel lines going from the LOX/Fuel turbo pumps to the thrust chamber oxidizer dome/fuel manifold. It is made of high-alloy stainless steel rated at 3000 PSI and comes with a highly-polished cover made to keep the bellows from over-expanding and for structural and thermal isolation. This part has eight chemically etched inspection stamps: the Rocketdyne part number NA5-26831-2 and serial number 89 of Lot V.
From the world’s most powerful rocket engine, the F-1 pumps push fuel with the force of 30 diesel locomotives.
You can see the placement here:
taken from the bottom right of this big picture view:
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"It’s a silly apparatus that takes the bones out of fish; and, if you prefer (although there’s no point to it) it puts bones in fish."
either that, or something to do with space.
😉
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"the F-1 pumps push fuel with the force of 30 diesel locomotives.
So that’s about 4.5 million pounds of force, a goodly fraction of the Saturn V’s 6.2 million pounds.
In USA Today units that’s, like, enough to power 4,000 homes per year!
(Or, in Rational Units, about 40 MW each, 200MW total)
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and from a total thrust perspective, "The five F-1 engines equal 160,000,000 horsepower, about double the amount of potential hydroelectric power that would be available at any given moment if all the moving waters of North America were channeled through turbines.” (from Apollo Facts)
and the aspirational guesses seem to be converging on a Martian worm hole boner.
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Interesting. So at 160 hp each, it would only take a single modest city’s automobile engines to equal the entire potential North American hydroelectric power output.
That’s pretty damning.
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Yeah, it’s kinda surprising how LITTLE of the country’s energy consumption is actually electric. 🙁 It also makes me wonder why we waste so much fuel with internal combustion engines. 🙁
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A bit off topic but… Max power from a car engine might be 160 hp (120 Kw) but average fuel consumption is only about 2600 watts. Still quite a bit when you consider average electric consumption for a house is around 1000 watts, and many houses have more than one car.
Back on topic, I was going to guess this was part of the headset for an expensive bicycle.
and I took another artsy 
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