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Apollo 4


GordonD

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Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the flight of Apollo 4, the first (unmanned) launch of the Saturn V.

 

Following the loss of the Apollo 1 crew in the pad fire in January, NASA needed a major success and took a big gamble by arranging an "all-up" test in which the entire launch vehicle was live and flight-capable, rather than being tested incrementally. While this approach eliminated several unmanned tests, it required everything to work first time. The S-IC and S-II stages were being flown for the very first time; only the third stage had previously flown on the smaller Saturn IB.

 

Only the LM was missing, but a dummy flight test article was included to simulate the mass.

 

When the first stage engines fired, the sound pressure was greater than expected, and TV reporter Walter Cronkite was showered with ceiling tiles from his press booth, and he and his producer had to hold the window in place to stop it vibrating.

 

Link to YouTube here

 

It was worth the gamble: everything worked perfectly, including the first restart of the third stage engine, which would later become routine on lunar missions. Then the Apollo CSM separated and used the big Service Module engine to fire itself back towards Earth, simulating a Command Module re-entry at lunar return velocity. The CM splashed down just 16km from the recovery vessel to complete a highly successful mission and get the Apollo programme moving again.

 

There's a famous film clip showing the interstage ring dropping away from the S-II second stage. Less commonly seen is the first stage itself separating - both of these were filmed on Apollo 4, from camera pods which were later jettisoned and recovered. Here's that footage.

 

Fifty years on, the Saturn V remains the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever flown.

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Even today, everything about the Saturn V is awe inspiring. 

Thanks for the links, watched both - one of the few occasions the word 'awesome' is appropriate.

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1 hour ago, GordonD said:

Fifty years on, the Saturn V remains the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever flown.

Yep - and massive it is, too! The example at the Kennedy Space Centre is awe inspiring. I can't wait to see Orion - it is planned to be half as big again as the Saturn V!!

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It's always an impressive sight to see the Saturn V powering away from earth.  Strikes me as odd that we've been planning to go back to the moon now for longer than we took to plan and go to the moon a number of times in the 60s :hmmm: We also don't fly passengers faster than supersonic speeds anymore either. :(

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1 hour ago, Mike said:

We also don't fly passengers faster than supersonic speeds anymore either. :(

The concept of passenger supersonic flight was flawed, as it thought that that what people wanted it, in reality folk wanted cheap mass transport and still do.

 

Concorde and the B 747 maiden flights were seperated by days, which was commercially the most succesful?

 

Thomo.

Edited by The Tomohawk Kid
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Many years ago, my son was given an assembled Estes 1/100 Saturn V.  It has hidden in our garage for years but I thought it appropriate to take a snap of it today.  I'm thinking of titivating it up with some RealSpace spares.

 

26537662259_0491297d08_c.jpg

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