A SPECTACULAR ‘ALL UP’ TEST

The 1966 schedule had called for the first Saturn V launch early in 1967 but few people believed that this would be feasible owing to problems with the S-II, which had become the ‘pacing item’. In fact, the delivery of the first ‘live’ S-II to the Cape had already slipped from July to October 1966, and on its arrival at the Mississippi Test Facility on 13 August the inspectors found a number of cracks which delayed the start of its acceptance test firings. In November 1966 Sam Phillips revised the schedule to require the S-II for AS-501 to arrive at the Cape on 9 January 1967 for launch in April.

Meanwhile, the S-IC stage had been erected upon a mobile launch platform in the VAB on 27 October. So as not to delay the checkout of the vehicle, a bobbin-shaped ‘spacer’ was stacked in place of the S-II to support the S-IVB, and on 12 January 1967 the spacecraft comprising CSM-017 and LTA-10R in the SLA was added for its own checkout.

When the S-II arrived on 21 January 1967, several faults were found. By now the launch had slipped into May. On 14 February the spacecraft was transferred to the Operations and Checkout Building for examination as part of the investigation of the Apollo 1 fire, and so many wiring discrepancies were identified that repairs ran into June. In the meantime the S-IVB was de-mated, and on 23 February the spacer was replaced by the S-II. But when factory inspectors discovered cracks in another S – II being prepared for shipment, the S-II was destacked on 24 May for inspection and not restacked until mid-June. Once the S-IVB had been added, the revised spacecraft was installed on 20 June. CSM-017 was a Block I with some Block II modifications for certification, including a heat shield with a simulated unified crew hatch and the

CSM-101 was to fly the Saturn IB and manned CSM evaluation, and CSM-102 was to be retained by North American Aviation as a ground test article.

umbilical which crossed the rim of the basal shield from the command module to the service module. The crawler transported AS-501 to Pad 39A on 26 August. The plan was to start the 6-day countdown demonstration test on 20 September but it slipped to 27 September and a variety of issues delayed its completion to 13 October. To be fair, however, this was the first Saturn V, it was vastly more complex than any other space vehicle, and the launch operations team was on a learning curve.

The countdown for Apollo 4 began on 6 November, ran smoothly, and the vehicle lifted off on time at 12:00:01 GMT on 9 November 1967.

For the crowds, the first indication that a launch was in progress was a light at the base of the vehicle. A jet of flame passed through a hole in the launch platform to a wedge-shaped deflector, which split and vented it horizontally north and south. The water which was pumped onto the pad to diminish the acoustic reflection from the concrete was vaporised and blasted out with the flame as a roiling white cloud. It was almost inconceivable that a vehicle that weighed 6.5 million pounds could rise from the ground, but the five F-1 engines generated a total of 7.5 million pounds of thrust and as it slowly lifted from the pad the brilliance of the flame rivalled the early morning Sun. Since the Saturn V was so much more powerful than its predecessors, nobody really knew what to expect. At first it was like a silent movie, because the thunderous roar of ignition took fully 15 seconds to reach the facilities for the public and press, which were 3.5 miles from the pad because this had been computed to be as far as an exploding vehicle could hurl a 100-pound fragment. Deafening as this roar was, as the vehicle rose it was enhanced by a staccato pop and crackle that was more felt than heard. The ground shook sufficiently to register on remote seismic sensors. The effect not only rattled the tin roof of the VIP bleacher alarmingly but also threatened to collapse the lightweight booth from which Walter Cronkite was providing TV commentary. It was incredible to think that one day soon men would ride such a rocket.

During the first 10 seconds of the ascent the 363-foot-tall vehicle performed a yaw manoeuvre to ‘side step’ away from the launch umbilical tower, in order both to preclude a collision with any swing arm that might be tardy in rotating clear and to resist any wind gusts that might otherwise cause it to drift towards the 400-foot-tall structure. Liftoff was on a pad azimuth of 90°E of N, but once clear of the tower it initiated a roll to align its inertial guidance system with the flight azimuth of 72°E and then it pitched over. It achieved Mach 1 at T + 61.4 seconds. Then at T + 78.4, at an altitude of 37,700 feet and a wind speed of 50 knots, it passed through the region of maximum dynamic pressure. The central engine of the S-IC was shut down by a timer at T+ 135.52, and the outer engines were cut off by liquid oxygen depletion at T+ 150.77. The separation proceeded in two phases. Firstly, at T+ 151.43, the S-IC separated from the interstage, or ‘skirt’, that extended down over the engines of the S-II; then at T+ 152.12 the S-II ignited its five J-2 engines and at T+ 181.44 the skirt was jettisoned. This scheme was designed to ensure that the S-IC could not damage the engines projecting from the base of the S-II as it separated. A small solid rocket motor on the launch escape system fired at T+ 187.13 to draw this structure clear of the spacecraft. The S-II shut down at T+519.76 and was jettisoned at T+520.53. A pair of solid rockets on the periphery of the S-IVB settled the liquid propellants prior to J-2 ignition and were then jettisoned. The vehicle attained a near-circular parking orbit at an altitude of 100 nautical miles, and the continuous-vent system maintained ullage pressure in the propellant tanks during the coast phase. At 003:11:26.6,[49] after essentially two revolutions with its longitudinal axis in the orbital plane and parallel to the local horizon, it reignited for a simulated translunar injection, although in this case the burn of almost 5 minutes was to create an elliptical atmosphere-intersecting ‘waiting orbit’ with an apogee of 9,292 nautical miles.

CSM-017 was released at 003:26:28.2, and at 003:28:06.6 the service propulsion system was briefly fired to demonstrate its ability to ignite in the zero-g environment without an ullage impulse to settle its propellants. This burn had the effect of raising the apogee to 9,769 nautical miles. The vehicle then aligned itself with its main axis perpendicular to the Sun and its hatch on the sunny side. It maintained this attitude for about 4.5 hours to induce circumferential thermal stresses and distortions on the command module and its ablator prior to entry. At 005:46:49.5 the vehicle attained its high apogee. During this coast, an automated 70-mm camera took a total of 715 high-resolution pictures of Earth at 10.6-second intervals. At 008:10:54.8 the service propulsion system was reignited to accelerate and set up an atmospheric entry which would subject the heat shield to the most severe operational conditions that a return from the Moon might impose. An inertial velocity of 34,816 ft/sec was intended, but a slight over-burn owing to the manoeuvre being controlled from the ground yielded 35,115 ft/sec.

The command module separated 2 minutes 27 seconds later, and used its thrusters to adopt entry attitude. The entry interface (an altitude 400,000 feet, by definition) occurred at 008:29:28.5 while travelling at an inertial velocity of 36,639 ft/sec and a flight path angle of-6.93 degrees. As a result of the longer than planned final burn of the service propulsion system the conditions at the entry interface were 210 ft/sec faster than nominal and the flight path angle 0.20 degrees shallower, yet still within the desired ‘corridor’. Due to the change in the entry conditions, the dynamic load of 7.27 g was less than the predicted 8.3 g. This did not affect the performance of the guidance system in achieving the target, however. The lift-to-drag ratio was 0.365 ( + 0.015) compared with the predicted 0.350. The command module splashed into the Pacific 10 nautical miles from the aim point at 008:37:09.2, and was soon recovered by USS Bennington.

With the spectacular success of this ‘all up’ demonstration flight, there was a real prospect of achieving Kennedy’s challenge of landing a man on the Moon before the decade was out. Indeed, on 20 November 1967 NASA publicly revealed that James McDivitt, David Scott and Rusty Schweickart, who had been trained to fly the dual launch version of the ‘D’ mission using the Saturn IB, were to be launched on the first manned Saturn V. They were to be backed up by Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon and Al Bean – the latter replacing Clifton Williams, who was killed in an air accident on 5 October 1967. Frank Borman, Michael Collins and Bill Anders, backed up by

Neil Armstrong, James Lovell and Buzz Aldrin, would still perform the high-apogee ‘E’ mission, but would ride the second manned Saturn V. If the lunar orbit ‘F’ mission were deleted, then the next crew would attempt a lunar landing.