I Don’t Need These Russians 132
so difficult to reuse that the cost of the Space Shuttle was
four times more compared with an expendable rocket with
equivalent payload capability.^305
The second question the team had to answer was
whether they should rebuild an existing rocket or design
a new rocket from a clean sheet. What if SpaceX could
rebuild the old Saturn V rocket that launched the craft used
when we landed on the Moon. Elon argued the Saturn
V was a great rocket and its design was much better
compared with the Space Shuttle.^350 “The holy grail of
SpaceX would be to build the Saturn VI,” Elon said.^365
Finding old Saturn V blueprints wasn’t an issue. A
rumor circulated that the blueprints for the Saturn V rocket
were lost, or rather destroyed by the US government so they
wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. But the rumor proved
to be false. The blueprints for the Saturn V rocket exists
and are stored at the Marshall Space Flight Center and at
the Federal Archives. Rocketdyne, the manufacturer of the
large F-1 and smaller J-2 engines used in the Saturn V, have
also saved their blueprints.^279
The problem with rebuilding the Saturn V rocket is that
it was designed in the 1960s. It’s impossible to reproduce the
rocket because the parts are not manufactured anymore. To
rebuild the Saturn V, it has to be redesigned with modern
parts, and in the end it’s easier to design a completely new
rocket.^279 And that’s what the engineers at SpaceX set out
to do.
The rockets designed by SpaceX had to be cheap. We
want to explore and expand beyond Earth and have a