S-IVB

S IVB

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S-IVB

The S-IVB (sometimes S4b, always pronounced "ess four bee") was built by the Douglas Aircraft Company

Douglas Aircraft Company

The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace manufacturer, based in Long Beach, California. It was founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas, Sr....
and served as the third stage on the Saturn V

Saturn V

The Saturn V was a multistage rocket liquid-fuel expendable launch system rocket used by NASA's Apollo program and Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973....
and second stage on the Saturn IB

Saturn IB

The Saturn IB was an uprated version of the Saturn I, which featured a much more powerful second stage, the S-IVB. Unlike the earlier Saturn I, the IB had enough throw weight to launch the Apollo Command/Service Module or Apollo Lunar Module into Earth orbit, which made it invaluable for testing the Apollo spacecraft while the larger Saturn V...
. It had one J-2

J-2 (rocket engine)

Rocketdyne's J-2 was America's largest production liquid hydrogen fueled rocket engine before the Space Shuttle main engines , and is being revived in support of Project Constellation....
engine. For lunar missions it was used twice: first for the orbit insertion after second stage cutoff, and then for the translunar injection (TLI).
S-IVB evolved from the upper stage of the Saturn I

Saturn I

The Saturn I was the United States' first dedicated "space launcher," a rocket designed specifically to launch cargo into Earth's orbit. Most of the rocket's power came from a "clustered" lower stage consisting of tanks taken from older rocket designs and strapped together to make a single larger booster....
rocket, the S-IV, and was the first stage of the Saturn V to be designed.

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Encyclopedia

The S-IVB (sometimes S4b, always pronounced "ess four bee") was built by the Douglas Aircraft Company

Douglas Aircraft Company

Saturn V

The Saturn V was a multistage rocket liquid-fuel expendable launch system rocket used by NASA's Apollo program and Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973....
and second stage on the Saturn IB

Saturn IB

J-2 (rocket engine)

History

The S-IVB evolved from the upper stage of the Saturn I

Saturn I

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the chemical symbol H. At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a colorless, odorless, nonmetallic, tasteless, highly combustion and explosive Diatomic molecule gas with the molecular formula H2....
and liquid oxygen

Oxygen

Oxygen no O2 produced; 2) O2 produced, but absorbed in oceans & seabed rock; 3) O2 starts to gas out of the oceans, but is absorbed by land surfaces and formation of ozone layer; 4-5) O2 sinks filled and the gas accumulates]]...
. It was also originally meant to be the fourth stage of a planned rocket called the C-4

Saturn C-4

The Saturn C-4 was a conceptual American launch vehicle, originally proposed in 1960 to be used in a Lunar orbit rendezvous lunar landing.It would have consisted of three stages; an S-IB-4 first stage, a S-II-4 second stage and a S-IVB third stage....
, hence the name S-IV.

Eleven companies submitted proposals for being the lead contractor on the stage by the deadline of 29 February, 1960. NASA administrator T. Keith Glennan

T. Keith Glennan

Thomas Keith Glennan was the first Administrator of the NASA, serving from August 19, 1958 to January 20, 1961....
decided on 19 April that Douglas Aircraft Company would be awarded the contract. Convair

Convair

The Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, commonly known as Convair, was a US aerospace development and manufacturing complex of the 1940s and later....
had come a close second but Glennan did not want to monopolize the liquid hydrogen fueled rocket market as Convair was already building the Centaur rocket stage.

In the end the Marshall Space Flight Center

Marshall Space Flight Center

The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center , the original home of NASA, is a lead center for Spacecraft propulsion, Space Shuttle propulsion, Space Shuttle external tank, crew training and payloads, International Space Station design and construction, for computers, networks, and information management....
decided to use the C-5 rocket (later called the Saturn V), which had three stages and would be topped with an uprated S-IV called the S-IVB which instead of using a cluster of engines would have a single J-2 engine. Douglas was awarded the contract for the S-IVB because of the similarities between it and the S-IV. At the same time it was decided to create the C-IB rocket (Saturn IB) that would also use the S-IVB as its second stage and could be used for testing the Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit.

Douglas built two distinct versions of the S-IVB, the 200 series and the 500 series. The 200 series was used by the Saturn IB and differed from the 500 in the fact that it did not have a flared interstage and had less helium pressurization on board as it would not be restarted. (On the 500 series, the interstage needed to flare out to match the larger diameter of the lower stages of the Saturn V.) The 200 series also had three solid rockets for separating the S-IVB stage from the S-IB stage during launch, rather than the two on the 500 series, and lacked the linear APS thrusters that the 500 series required for ullage

Ullage motor

Ullage motors or Ullage engines are relatively small, independently-fueled rocket engines that may be fired to accelerate the rocket prior to main engine ignition, when the vehicle is in a zero-g situation....
operations prior to restarting the J2 engine.

The S-IVB carried 73,280 liters (19,359 U.S. gallons) of LOX

Lox

Lox is salmon Fillet that has been curing . In its most popular form, it is thinly sliced—less than in thickness—and, typically, served on a bagel, often with cream cheese and capers....
, massing 87,200 kg (192,243 lbs). It carried 252,750 liters (66,770 U.S. gallons) of LH2, massing 18,000 kg (39,683 lbs).

An S-IVB provided the hull for Skylab

Skylab

Skylab was the first space station the United States launched into orbit, and the second space station ever visited by a human crew. The 100 ton space station was in Earth's orbit from 1973 to 1979, and it was visited by crews three times in 1973 and 1974....
, the United States'

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
first space station

Space station

A space station is an artificial structure designed for humans to live in outer space. So far only low earth orbit stations are implemented, also known as orbital stations....
.

During Apollo 13

Apollo 13

Apollo 13 was the third manned lunar-landing mission, part of Project Apollo under NASA in the United States. The crew members were Commander Jim Lovell, Command Module pilot Jack Swigert, and Lunar Module pilot Fred W....
, Apollo 14

Apollo 14

Apollo 14 was the eighth manned mission in the Apollo program and the third mission to land on the Moon. The 9 day mission was launched on January 31 1971, with lunar touch down on February 5....
, Apollo 15

Apollo 15

Apollo 15 was the ninth manned mission in the Apollo program and the fourth mission to land on the Moon. It was the first of what were termed "J missions", long duration stays on the Moon with a greater focus on science than had been possible on previous missions....
, Apollo 16

Apollo 16

Apollo 16 was the tenth manned mission in the Apollo program, the fifth mission to land on the Moon and the first to land in the highlands area....
and Apollo 17

Apollo 17

Apollo 17 was the eleventh Human spaceflight in the NASA Apollo program. It was the first night launch of a United States human spaceflight and the sixth and final lunar landing mission of the Apollo program....
, the S-IVB was crashed into the Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
in order to perform seismic measurement used for characterizing the lunar core.

The proposed Earth Departure Stage (EDS) and the second stage of the Ares I

Ares I

Ares I is the crew launch vehicle being developed by NASA as a component of Constellation program. NASA plans to use Ares I to launch Orion , the spacecraft being designed for NASA human spaceflight missions after the Space Shuttle is retired in 2010....
rocket will bear some of the characteristics of the S-IVB stage, as both will have an uprated J-2 engine (J-2X series), with the former performing the same functions as that of the Series 500 version of the stage (placing the payload into orbit, and later firing the spacecraft into trans-lunar space).

Three versions of the SIV/SIVB

Stages Built

(* See List of artificial objects on the Moon

List of artificial objects on the Moon

The following table is a partial list of artificial objects on the surface of the Moon. The list does not include smaller objects such as the retroreflectors and Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package....
for location.)