Saturn V, the United States’ largest and most powerful launch vehicle, was designed to hurl American astronauts in an Apollo capsule to the Moon. Composed of three stages and an instrument unit, it stood 111 meters (363 feet) tall, had a liftoff weight of 2,812 metric tons (6,200,000 pounds), and developed 34.5 million newtons (7.7 million pounds) of thrust at liftoff. Its explosive potential was 453,600 kilograms (1,000,000 pounds) of TNT. Thirteen Saturn Vs were launched between Nov. 9, 1967 and May 14, 1973. All were erected in the Vehicle Assembly Building and moved vertically to the launch pad atop massive crawler transporters.