The NOVA Project

Bayourat Rocketry talks about the NOVA Project. It's way cool. It's like the super-Apollo Project. Rockets as tall as 137 meters (450 ft) [the Saturn V was 363 ft], capable of delivering 459,000 kg (over a million pounds / 500 tons) to escape velocity*.

Once we had gone to the moon, the next logical step was to send astronauts to Mars. That requires a lot of cargo, because you have to feed and house a crew of perhaps ten for a year, rather than three for a week. The Saturn V, with 5 F-1 engines and capable of lifting 45,000 kg (100,000 pounds / 50 tons) to escape velocity, was simply not capable. Enter such rockets as the GD-B, with 16 F-1 engines, and the GD-F, with 4 larger motors. 450 feet tall, lifts a million pounds. It would have used the gigantic M-1 motor.


(image from Bayourat; of unknown ancestry)

On Wikipedia