The First Saturn V Launches on Apollo 4
On November 9, 1967, NASA launched Apollo 4, the first flight of the Saturn V rocket. The uncrewed test carried an Apollo spacecraft into space and returned it to Earth at lunar-return speed.
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The Rocket and the Test Plan
The Saturn V was designed to send astronauts to the Moon. It stood about 111 meters tall with the Apollo spacecraft on top and had three stages: the S-IC first stage, the S-II second stage and the S-IVB third stage. NASA's associate administrator for manned space flight, George Mueller, had proposed testing the whole vehicle together from the first flight, called all-up testing, instead of testing each stage separately. Apollo 4 was the first such flight.
Liftoff
Apollo 4 lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on November 9, 1967. It was the first launch from the complex. The five engines of the first stage produced about 7.5 million pounds of thrust, and the sound was felt at the press site about three miles away. After the first and second stages burned and separated, the third stage placed the spacecraft in a low orbit around the Earth.
The Flight Profile
The third stage fired a second time and raised the spacecraft's high point to about 18,000 kilometers, a height from which it could return to the atmosphere at the speed of a spacecraft coming back from the Moon, about 11 kilometers per second. The service module engine was fired as well, to test that it would start in space. The command module then separated and its heat shield was tested in the atmosphere at temperatures of roughly 2,700 degrees Celsius.
Splashdown and Results
The command module landed in the Pacific Ocean, northwest of Hawaii, after a flight of a little over eight and a half hours, about 16 kilometers from the recovery ship USS Bennington. NASA reported that the mission's objectives had been met. The flight came less than ten months after the Apollo 1 fire on January 27, 1967, which killed three astronauts on the ground. A second uncrewed Saturn V flight, Apollo 6, in April 1968 had problems with its engines, and the first crewed Saturn V flight, Apollo 8, took place in December 1968.
The Saturn V Record
The three stages were built by different companies: Boeing built the first stage, North American Aviation the second, and the Douglas Aircraft Company the third. The Saturn V was launched thirteen times between 1967 and 1973, and it carried the astronauts of Apollo 8 and of Apollo 10 to 17 to the Moon, 24 people in all. Its last launch, in May 1973, put the Skylab space station into orbit.
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