Apollo 11: The Saturn V rocket blasted off almost 51 years ago.
Almost 51 years ago, the huge Saturn V rocket took off from Cape Canaveral and brought three men to the Moon. The Apollo 11 mission began.
At Cape Canaveral, Wednesday, July 16, 9:32 a.m. local time. The Apollo 11 mission is ready for departure. The Saturn V rocket sits on the Pad 39-A launch pad.
It is truly gigantic, with more than 110 meters in height (more than twice that of Ariane 6 ). At the top, a small conical capsule in which are installed three men, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.
Far from the rocket, at the Kennedy Space Center, almost a million people have been waiting there for hours. On the planet, the number of spectators, suspended on radio or television, is estimated to be nearly 600 million.
Never before has an event gathered so many witnesses.
A colossal noise is heard
A colossal noise is heard when the five Rocketdyne F1 engines unleash their thrust of 680 tonnes each.
The ground resonates with a seismic wave which propagates up to eight kilometers. Slowly, the 3,000-ton rocket rises in the middle of a vast cloud, mainly formed by the condensation of water. The engines then consume every second 1,800 kilograms of liquid oxygen and 1,700 kilograms of kerosene.
As the rocket moves away from the ground, his body is lighter and faster increases. It quickly becomes enormous. Two minutes after takeoff, Saturn V is just a tiny point at the top of a high white trail, more than 50 kilometers above sea level. Now the whole planet is aware: Men are on their way to the Moon.
So, unlike Professor Tournesol’s rocket, much more advanced and to which nuclear fuel gave enormous autonomy and the possibility of ensuring acceleration of 1 g during the whole trip (with the inversion in the middle), the rustic Saturn V cannot ship its charge only in low orbit and at the cost of successive abandonment of large pieces called “stages.”
Apollo 11 is on the way to the Moon
Two and a half minutes after takeoff, the approximately two thousand tonnes of fuel contained in the first stage has already gone up in smoke, and the enormous cylinder, 42 meters high and 10 meters in diameter, is dropped.
The five J-2 engines (also signed Rocketdyne) light up. The Apollo 11 astronauts then undergo an acceleration of 4.5 g (they, therefore, weigh four and a half times their weight).
The second stage (24.8 meters high) maintains this acceleration for five and a half minutes and ensures the exit from the atmosphere. Its short mission will soon be over, and it detaches itself.
And the three men Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, are then in space.
With its unique J-2 engine, the third stage, almost 18 meters high, continues to accelerate and puts it into orbit, 190 km above sea level. The engine is off. Earth’s gravity counterbalanced by centrifugal force, weightlessness (or weightlessness, or, for purists, microgravity) reigns in the capsule.
Saturn V leaves its orbit
Time to make some checks, some adjustments, to disconnect the oxygen supplies from the spacesuits and to breathe a little, the spacecraft made more than two turns of the Earth, at 8 km/s compared to it.
Everything is fine. During the third orbit, at 12:16 p.m., the J-2 engine was turned on again (a possibility that is not obvious for a rocket engine), and the spacecraft leaves its orbit by accelerating.
It exceeds 11 km/s. At this speed and this (low) distance from Earth, a projectile escapes from Earth’s attraction. The third stage is switched off, and the spacecraft is now traveling at around 40,000 km/h towards the Moon (unlike the rocket of Professor Tournesol, which continued to accelerate to 1 g, i.e., almost 10 m/s more every second).
The crew of Apollo 11 then ordered the release of protective panels, which hid the LM ( Lunar Module ), baptized the Eagle. The four-legged machine, intended to land on the Moon, is between the third stage and what was the top of the rocket.
That is to say, the service module (a cylinder with an engine) and the conical capsule (the control module). The Lunar Module is in the wrong place.
In total, NASA launched 13 Saturn V’s.
Now bring it where it should, nose to nose with the capsule. Michael Collins is on the move. The service module is detached and pivots on itself to bring the tip of the capsule facing the upper part of the Lunar Model. A small impulse from the attitude motors and the two machines fit into each other.
The third stage can now be released at 12:47 p.m., and a small attitude control motor pushes it away from the rest of the craft. The space train now has its final configuration, the Lunar Module (Earthside) attached to the control module, itself secured to the service module (Moon side).
The airlock between the Lunar Module and the capsule is open, and astronauts can circulate between the two vessels. They are then 800 kilometers from the surface of our planet. They only have 350,000 kilometers to go.
In total, NASA launched 13 Saturn V’s. They took off between November 1967 and May 1973.
The final flight of the booster lifted a modified S-IVB stage into orbit to become Skylab, the first U.S. space station.
Check out this article that reveals the inside of the Apollo Saturn V rocket and its significant components. See for yourself these fantastic drawings. You will be amazed.