Astronomy, Photography and Weather

It was the finest era of modern rocketry the Apollo craft with its five massive J-1 engines was without a doubt a true beast. The engine itself produced more power that every river in North America combined. All we have left are movies of this fine era. Which dont due justice to the chest rattling thunder it produced during launch. My hat goes off to the people that worked on Apollo. It was the most complex machine of its time. However I would have enjoyed watching a Apollo - Nova launch. And a special congradulations for Gene Kranz. He didnt ask what the "Aquarius" module was designed to do, he asked what can it do. Bringing the astronauts home in a life boat and what a life boat, and that was truly nasa's finest hour. ;D ;D ;D

I'll second that one! My interest in the whole space/astronomy field was sparked by Apollo 8 - I was a 7 year old schoolboy at that time and remember all of it as if it were yesterday, and now the 40th anniversaries of those events of 1968/69 are coming around, it brings it all back!

As I became more interested in the history of Project Apollo one mission seems to have become forgotten - none of the TV documentaries even mention it - Apollo 4. This launch took place on Nov 9th 1967 and was the first (unmanned) launch of the mighty Saturn V vehicle. Apollo 4 introduced the concept of "all-up testing", that is, it was a mission that achieved many objectives in one go, not  just verifying that that the three stages of the vehicle all worked, but then using the final stage to fake a 25,000mph lunar return, re-entry the capsule and land it in a pre-determined place. Although no men were on board, it was just as audacious a mission as Apollo 8 and without that innovation it's unlikely that JFK's deadline would have been met.

And as for Gene Kranz, well we could do with him now - "Let's work the problem and not get confused by guessing!". There would be no credit crunch with clear thinking like that!

Paul. 

Not without its problems - the sound from the first stage engines was so loud that it almost demolished the studio from which Jules Bergman was broadcasting, several miles away. Another problem which showed up on this launch was the power suddenly drawn by the TV crews tripped out the launch control power supply, this could very easily have been disastrous, but fortunately the Saturn V (on its first flight) behaved perfectly. From then on, NASA insisted that TV crews provide their own power feeds, and the concept of "battle short" was introduced to Launch & Mission Control centres - the circuit breakers were jammed in so that power supply was guaranteed - it was considered less dangerous to have a single circuit melt than potentially lose the lot because a circuit breaker popped out.

Hey Brian, thanks for that additional info - I knew about the noise issue and the rare video I have makes a great play on that - later Saturn Vs were water damped as are the shuttles using the very same launchpads to this day. But the "battle short" concept is new to me - see, you learn something new every day here :)

Paul.

And for those who haven't seen this before, I've bunged it up to YouTube :)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tAjmoHDTEoA

P.

Thanks for posting the video Paul. Good job.  :)

I simply like these photos...
(http://s59.radikal.ru/i164/0811/00/355893ea8890.jpg)
it worth to watch the NASA photography archive of Apollo missions

Thanks for sharing the video Paul It was awesome.

I also have a gallery of shots taken during a visit to the Kennedy Space Center last year - an awesome place!

http://www.pevans.me.uk/ksc2007/index.htm

Enjoy!

Paul.

Wow!  :) I need to spare a bit of time to watch through all that amazing stuff.

 If you guys are out and about, look for a 3 dvd set called the mighty saturns. It goes into details of the engine and a lot of raw launch footage. great sounding to.