Took a road trip on the C14 last week and found myself at the New Mexico museum of space history in Alamagordo NM. Was looking at the mighty F1 rocket engine used in the Saturn V as well as many other smaller engines including the German V2 engine. All of them are "regenerative" engines where the cones are made of tubes and the fuel (kerosene for most of them) is pumped to the front of the cone and the fuel flows backward up to the combustion chamber. This cools the engine while heating the fuel for better combustion. All of them except the V2 engine used turbo pumps for this purpose as well as pumping liquid O2 into the engine. The V2 engine pre pressurized the fuel and oxidizer tanks with hydrogen peroxide to push the fuel and O2 into the engine. Each F1 engine produced 1,500,000 pounds of thrust and burned 2000 pounds of fuel every second. The Saturn V used 5 of these engines on the first stage. 10,000 pounds of fuel every second.
Was also a personal experience for me because my dad was an engineer for Bell Labs in NJ and worked on the guidance systems for many of the early Army missiles including the Nike series. He would travel to Alamagordo regularly while I was growing up to observe test firings at the White Sands missile range. On display was a Nike Ajax missile that he worked on. He had a tie tack of that missile and I remember him wearing that every day when he went off to work.
I and 3 of my brothers standing by a Nike Ajax missile.