{"id":63536,"date":"2026-08-01T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/?guid=32df9d5f2d511e5f05026236255c97f1"},"modified":"2026-08-05T21:17:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T21:17:39","slug":"on-this-day-in-space-aug-1-1968-nasa-ends-production-of-saturn-v-moon-rocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2026\/08\/01\/on-this-day-in-space-aug-1-1968-nasa-ends-production-of-saturn-v-moon-rocket\/","title":{"rendered":"On this day in space! Aug. 1, 1968: NASA ends production of Saturn V moon rocket"},"content":{"rendered":"\n                            \n                            <article>\n                                <iframe src=\"https:\/\/content.jwplatform.com\/players\/SJ4Wwhxa.html\" id=\"SJ4Wwhxa\" title=\"OTD in Space \u2013 August 1: Saturn V Production Ends\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"auto\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><p>On Aug. 1, 1968, NASA canceled the production of its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.space.com\/16698-apollo-spacecraft.html\"><u>Saturn V moon rocket<\/u><\/a>. At the time, the giant rocket was the only launch vehicle to have ever carried astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, and it was then the largest, most powerful rocket ever. <\/p><p>NASA built 15 of these rockets but only flew 13 of them. When NASA made the decision to stop building the Saturn V, it was almost a year before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/16758-apollo-11-first-moon-landing.html\"><u>Apollo 11 astronauts<\/u><\/a> would walk on the moon for the first time. <\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/38720-nasa-saturn-v-rocket-surprising-facts.html\"><u>10 Surprising Facts About NASA's Mighty Saturn V Moon Rocket<\/u><\/a><\/li><\/ul><figure class=\"van-image-figure  inline-layout\" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style=\"max-width:1059px;\"><p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:56.28%;\"><img id=\"foAxUi8bhVQpbGxCr7HiNT\" name=\"1785552541.jpg\" alt=\"Giant rocket stages for NASA's Saturn V moon rocket are assembled at the Michoud Assembly Facility.\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/foAxUi8bhVQpbGxCr7HiNT.jpg\" mos=\"\" align=\"middle\" fullscreen=\"\" width=\"1059\" height=\"596\" attribution=\"\" endorsement=\"\" class=\"inline\"><\/p><\/div><\/div><figcaption itemprop=\"caption description\" class=\" inline-layout\"><span class=\"caption-text\">Giant rocket stages for NASA's Saturn V moon rocket are assembled at the Michoud Assembly Facility in this undated NASA photo. <\/span><span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">(Image credit: NASA)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><p>A federal budget deficit and the rising costs of the Vietnam War led Congress to slash nearly three-quarters of the funding that President Lyndon Johnson had allotted for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/apollo-program-overview.html\"><u>Apollo program<\/u><\/a>. <\/p><p>The last Saturn V launched in 1973, and it was originally supposed to send Apollo 18 to the moon. However, that mission was canceled, and that Saturn V launched the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/19607-skylab.html\"><u>Skylab space station<\/u><\/a> instead.<\/p><h2 id=\"why-it-mattered-5\">Why it mattered<\/h2><p>From start to finish, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetary.org\/space-policy\/cost-of-apollo\"><u>NASA spent a reported $9.4 billion on the Saturn family<\/u><\/a> of rockets (which would be an estimated $118 billion in today's dollars) to develop the Saturn V. That includes the Saturn I and Saturn IB blocks. But the decision to shut production down in 1968 over those costs spelled the end of NASA's Apollo program to send astronauts to the moon a year before the Apollo 11 astronauts even walked on the moon in 1969.<\/p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/content.jwplatform.com\/players\/viDWKxaH.html\" id=\"viDWKxaH\" title=\"Apollo 4 - First Launch of the Saturn V Rocket\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"auto\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><p>Without a steady supply of heavy-lift rockets (the Saturn V was the most powerful of its day), NASA only had a limited number of moonshots left. The final Saturn V rocket to carry astronauts sent the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/17287-apollo-17-last-moon-landing.html\"><u>Apollo 17<\/u><\/a> astronauts to the moon in 1972. The Skylab mission flew a year later, with the final Saturn IB rocket launching an Apollo command module on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/20833-apollo-soyuz.html\"><u>Apollo-Soyuz flight<\/u><\/a> in 1975.<\/p><p>It would not be until 2022, when NASA launched the first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/33908-space-launch-system.html\"><u>Space Launch System<\/u><\/a> on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/artemis-1-going-back-to-the-moon\"><u>Artemis I mission<\/u><\/a>, that the space agency had another megarocket to rival the Saturn V. In April 2026, that new rocket launched NASA's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/artemis-2-humans-moon-orbit\"><u>Artemis II<\/u><\/a> astronauts around the moon. <\/p><p>SpaceX has developed a new megarocket that is even more powerful than the Saturn V, with its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/spacex-starship-super-heavy.html\"><u>Starship and Super Heavy booster<\/u><\/a>.<\/p><p>Want more space history? Check out our<a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/tag\/on-this-day-in-space\"><u><strong> full On This Day In Space Story archive<\/strong><\/u><\/a> and watch our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLCE-SVF9BSTdloyi4P9TmQVTp9Q2zTb27\"><u><strong>On This Day In Space videos on YouTube<\/strong><\/u><\/a>.<\/p><div style=\"min-height: 250px;\">                                <div class=\"kwizly-quiz kwizly-WlkG5e\"><\/div>                            <\/div>                            <script src=\"https:\/\/kwizly.com\/embed\/WlkG5e.js\" async><\/script>\n                                                            <\/article>\n                            \n                        ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Aug. 1, 1968, NASA canceled the production of its Saturn V moon rocket, one year before the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, spelling the end of the Apollo program due to budget concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":713,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-exploration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/713"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63536"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63752,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63536\/revisions\/63752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}