The
Saturn V (pronounced "Saturn Five") was a
multistage liquid-fuel
expendable rocket used by
NASA for
Apollo and
Skylab missions between 1967 and 1972. In total NASA launched twelve Saturn V rockets, plus one derived
Saturn INT-21, with no loss of payload. It remains the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever brought to operational status, in terms of height, mass and
payload capacity. The Soviet
Energia, which flew two test missions in the late 1980s before being cancelled, had slightly more takeoff thrust.
The largest production model of the Saturn family of rockets, the Saturn V was designed under the direction of Wernher von Braun at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with Boeing, North American Aviation, Douglas Aircraft Company, and IBM as the lead contractors. The three stages of the Saturn V were developed by various NASA contractors, but following a sequence of mergers and takeovers all of them are now owned by Boeing.
Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalyov (
Russian: Сергей Константинович Крикалёв, born August 27, 1958) is a
Russian cosmonaut and
mechanical engineer. As a prominent
rocket scientist, he has been veteran of six space flights and currently has spent more time in space than any other human being. He transliterates his name in English as
Sergei Krikalev.
On August 16, 2005 at 1:44 a.m. EDT he passed the record of 748 days held by Sergei Avdeyev. He now has spent a total of 803 days and 9 hours and 39 minutes in space.
Krikalev was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. He enjoys swimming, skiing, cycling, aerobatic flying, and amateur radio operations, particularly from space (callsigns U5MIR and X75M1K).
On February 15, 2007, Krikalev was appointed Vice President of the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (Russian: Ракетно-космическая корпорация "Энергия" им. С.П.Королева) in charge of manned space flights.
Krikalev was dubbed by many "the last Citizen of the USSR " as in 1991–1992 he spent 311 days, 20 hours and 1 minute aboard the Mir space station while, back on Earth, the Soviet Union collapsed. A fictional account of how Krikalev may have felt about this is described in the song "Casiopea", written by Cuban songwriter Silvio Rodríguez.