Apollo 11 First Stage liftoff
An evening pause: This was originally posted as an evening pause in 2016. I think that today, the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, it is appropriate to repost it. As I wrote then,
Though the video is more than 8 minutes long, the actual events recorded lasted only about 30 seconds, beginning 5 seconds before T minus 0.
What struck me most as I watched this was the incredible amount of complex engineering that went into every single small detail of the rocket and the launch tower and launchpad. We tend to take for granted the difficulty of rocket engineering. This video will make you appreciate it again.
It is also mesmerizing. A lot happens in a very short period of time.
Tonight’s evening pause begins eight days of pauses dedicated to celebrating, and reliving, the Apollo 11 mission. To the Moon!
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Yes, these engineering camera’s provide exceptional views.
pivoting—
exceptionally clear tracking film of the launch for almost 3:30 minutes, including 1st stage & engine skirt separation, and escape tower jettison
https://youtu.be/t8CJWyBtHOU?t=1349
excellent on-board film of 1st stage separation
Apollo Saturn V staging (at aproximately real speed)
https://youtu.be/cpHM13897Kg
0:57
“These images were taken on the Apollo 4 and Apollo 6 Saturn V test flights. They are often mistakenly attributed to Apollo 11. They’re iconic, but when seen, they are usually played back at about 1/4 the speed of the actual event. The cameras were running at 4x normal speed (About 96 fps).”
Let us not forget that the successful launch forced The New York Times to have to publicly eat crow.
On 17 July 1969 the Apollo 11 crew was on the way to the first landing of man on the Moon. That day the New York Times had a special 20-page section on all things related to spaceflight and rocketry. There, it finally printed a sort-of apologetic correction some 34 years after Dr Robert Goddard had died:
“A Correction. On Jan. 13, 1920,”Topics of the Times,” an editorial-page feature of the The New York Times, dismissed the notion that a rocket could function in vacuum and commented on the ideas of Robert H. Goddard, the rocket pioneer, as follows:
“That Professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”
Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.”
Love this kind of stuff Bob!?
On the clip Wayne posted above, note how long the exhaust flame is.
It may be an illusion but the exhaust looks to be several times the length of the 365 ft rocket assembly.
A split screen showing the rocket leaving the pad in time with the video would enhance the true volume of heat being blow torched at the pad complex