Today, those engineers are part of a vanishing generation, the junior members in their 70s.
Stangeland, now 73, and two other Rocketdyne vets who played key roles in the development of the Saturn V -- Bob Biggs, who worked on the F-1, and Paul Coffman, assigned to the second-stage J-2 engine -- recently reflected on the thrill and exhaustion of the moon race.
Space race
The space race was inaugurated in May 1961, when President Kennedy announced that by the end of the decade, the U.S. would land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth.
It was an audacious gamble. The Soviets held a clear early lead in space. In October 1957, they had launched the first piece of space flotsam, the beeping Sputnik satellite. America's space program had gotten off to a sputtering start with the failure of its first space rocket, Vanguard, dubbed "Flopnik" by a jeering press.
The nation united behind Kennedy's bold gamble, investing $25 billion (about $180 billion in today's dollars) and employing 400,000 workers in 20,000 companies across the United States.
"The Apollo program had a tremendous impact on the United States," Space Foundation Chief Executive Elliot Pulham said in a recent statement. "It built national pride and, more importantly, it influenced a whole generation of children to study hard to become scientists, engineers and astronauts."
The Saturn V design called for five first-stage F-1s to burn kerosene for 2.5 minutes, after which five second-stage J-2 rockets, using a brand-new fuel, liquid hydrogen, would propel the spacecraft to 15,600 miles an hour and an altitude of 109 miles.
The third stage, consisting of a single J-2 engine, was to burn for 2.5 minutes, placing the craft in a parking orbit around the Earth. Several hours later, the engine would ignite again and burn for six more minutes, setting the linked command and lunar modules on course for the moon at 25,000 miles an hour.
Everything about the Saturn V was big, including its appetite. Fueling it required 89 truckloads of liquid oxygen, 28 trailer-loads of liquid hydrogen, and 27 rail cars full of kerosene.
But envisioning a monster like the Saturn V and making it work were two different things. The greatest challenge was the biggest engine, the F-1. Eighteen feet tall and weighing 9 tons, it was designed to be 10 times as powerful as any previous rocket.
