THE SHUTTLE A.L.T.; First Free Flight, August 12, 1977

The following is an excerpt from my book,

Click HERE for your copy

Just a year and a half after the ASTP, the orbiter test bed Enterprise was flying at Edwards AFB on the back of the 747 carrier aircraft. At first, the media did not see this as much of a story, but by August 12, 1977, when the first free flight of the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) took place, at least for the moment the media came back, and so did many folks in America. Coverage began early in the morning and ABC News nearly covered the event from wheels up to wheels stop. After all, the network brass at that moment saw the Shuttle as new and somewhat exciting. TV rating points may be gained. For me, ALT blended both of my passions: aviation and space. The first ALT free flight took place just 14 days before I left home to attend the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida to begin my aviation career. That day would introduce the world to the Space Shuttle and an orbiter by the name of ENTERPRISE.

To me as well as a lot of other space-buffs, somehow the Space Shuttle was pie-in-the-sky compared to what Apollo had been. After all, spaceflight had to be done with giant tall rockets and capsules, didn’t it? A big glider that was boosted piggy-back into orbit and then simply sailed back to Earth to land on a runway seemed to be more like science fiction. All of that changed for me on the morning of the first ALT flight.

Leading the news on the morning of August 12, 1977, was not the news of the Enterprise and the ALT. Although that was the largest story of the day, the lead story was the fact that the court had ordered New York City’s “Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz to undergo psychological evaluation; gee, there’s a shocker. Oddly, in that same day’s local news, my cousin Paul was also featured because he had served in the Army with Berkowitz. Paul even displayed a baseball glove that the killer had loaned to him, but never reclaimed. The news then went back to national subjects and the Enterprise.

 

All three networks were giving saturation coverage to the ALT in their morning news programs and at least two had gotten their star spaceflight anchor crews out to the desert at Edwards Air Force Base to announce the event. CBS had stationed their long time space reporter Morton Dean to sit at a desk in the desert and broadcast the flight, aided by technical advisor Leo Crupp from Rockwell International, which had constructed the Enterprise. Similarly, ABC’s Frank Reynolds and Jules Bergman also were in position. NBC, however, came up with a somewhat different angle on coverage. Of course, they had Roy Neal, a veteran TV space reporter who had been covering flights since the first Mercury missions, standing next to what looked like a night-stand that had been “borrowed” from his hotel room. That piece of furniture was now being used to hold up a model of the Shuttle and 747 carrier aircraft.

But back in the NBC New York studios they had anchored the coverage with Jack Perkins, aided by a big-screen projection TV and seven “high school science students.” The premise being that if the ALT’s moment in history was to have any meaning at all, it would have the most meaning for the “youth of America.” A valid point considering that most adults in the country at that time were indifferent toward the Space Shuttle program, including those who were running NBC. In the end, after the Enterprise had landed, and Jack Perkins asked what they thought of the flight, those “high school science students” mercifully contributed less than a minute of adolescent stammering and interjections that decades later still remain somewhat painful to listen to.

The mechanics of the ALT were fairly straightforward. Using a Boeing 747 aircraft that NASA had purchased from American Airlines and heavily modified to carry Shuttle orbiters on its back, the Enterprise would be taken aloft and then released to glide down and land on the dry lake runway at Edwards. Of course nothing in NASA can ever be that simple. In the case of the ALT a great deal of data was to be obtained and thus a great deal of planning, organization and practice had been involved. There had to be check points and calls in the mission profile to ensure that absolutely everyone was on the exact same point, on the exact page, at the exact same moment. Even this straight forward drop-test would be handled by Mission Control in Houston and thus was treated more like a lunar landing than an unpowered flight test from the Right Stuff days at Edwards.

Aside from the actual flight testing and data crunching, there was also an element of “show” added to the first ALT. NASA had been under fire from the usual gang of spaceflight haters both in the government and in the media. Critics were constantly after NASA to prove that the Shuttle program was “worth it.” So, it became important to put the best public face on the ALT. Stylized tents for VIPs were erected where a good view of the runway could be had. Invitations to all sorts of guests who would be spaceflight friendly were sent out and huge numbers of cars and campers were allowed onto the base to witness the event.

Enterprise crew members, astronauts Fred Haise, commander; and Gordon Fullerton, pilot; were not allowed to eat breakfast at home and then just come to work at the flight line. Instead they were corralled into a special room adorned with historic aerospace photos and a pot of flowers and made to eat the “astronaut’s breakfast”  in front of the cameras. Haise, the spaceflight veteran, just casually jumped through that traditional hoop; Fullerton appeared obviously uncomfortable. Of course the cameras then followed the crew all the way up the mate/de-mate structure’s ladder to the Enterprise itself. Again, Haise waved and smiled; Fullerton appeared obviously uncomfortable.

THE ALT:

AN EVOLUTION TO THE ERA OF LIMITS

NASA had the high hopes that this fairly simple mission would place a successful face on the Space Shuttle and that it would at least mute the critics for a short time. As the morning news shows signed off they announced their times for the start of their ALT coverage. Although the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) would release brakes for takeoff at 11:00 in the morning Eastern Time, the actual separation of the orbiter was planned for 45 to 50 minutes later. Thus, CBS and NBC would start their coverage at 11:30. ABC, however, would be starting their coverage with the SCA’s takeoff at 11:00. So I sat in my basement bedroom and glued myself to the local ABC station; WJRT channel 12 in Flint, Michigan. Cable TV was still five years into the future for my little farm town community and I was forced to use an antenna to snag the signals out of the air. How primitive!

One of the little lesser-known facts about the departure of the SCA and Enterprise is that when Haise and Fullerton were sitting in the cockpit, they could not see any hint of the huge 747 that was carrying them.

“It was kind of like riding a magic carpet ride,” Haise would later recall “You’re just moving along the ground and then you take off.”

 Following the takeoff of the SCA and Enterprise, ABC news had little to do other than “fill” because the picture was simply the SCA, the orbiter and a chase planes with blue sky and clouds as a backdrop. Thus there were clips of the “new” Shuttle EVA space suit, the “rescue ball” for emergency crew transfer, and the launch manifest. That manifest, it was said, would one day achieve 56 Shuttle flights per year. And finally there was the new type of astronauts called “Mission Specialists.” The jobs speculated for the Shuttle included building a solar power station in orbit that could beam back energy and one day provide as much as 25% of America’s electrical energy. Then there was the building of a space station to provide a permanent presence in space. Of course, only half of those predictions ever came true.  ABC even filled several minutes with clips from “Buck Rogers,” “Star Trek” and the hit movie of the summer of 1977: “Star Wars.”

 There also were the interviews with the politicians who were on hand to watch the event. Foremost among them was California Governor Jerry Brown. He had joined the 1976 presidential race on the motto that the United States was entering an “era of limits.” That tag line became his campaign motto as he lost in the primaries to Jimmy Carter, who then took on the same motto to a somewhat lesser degree. When Brown failed to be nominated, he held on to his “era of limits” ideal and took it with him back to California. The problem was that an era of limits directly conflicted with the concept of a Space Shuttle. Reporters were keen to stick a microphone in Brown’s face and pose that question. Considering that billions dollars in Space Shuttle funding were being sent to California and that state was set to hugely benefit from the program, the reporters were in the hope that Brown would squirm. Yet Brown, the pure politician, simply circle talked and turned the question on its heels.

Brown said that the Shuttle was “…marking an evolution in the era of limits. The planet is limited and that’s why it’s so important that we expand beyond.”

 Fortunately, Brown was speaking far from the Enterprise’s touchdown zone, because if the aircraft had gotten some of that stuff on its main landing gear it may have slid off the end of the 15,000 foot runway, or even off of the seven-mile-long dry lake.

While the mission climbed toward its designated release altitude, I am sure that most folks who were not directly involved with the Shuttle program had little clue as to just how complex the orbiter’s systems were. In Apollo, both the Lunar Module and the Command Module had computers to support their share of functions. Those computers combined had less computing power than a common calculator that grade school kids would carry in their backpacks 35 years later. The Enterprise, however, had a set of five computers, four of which worked as redundant units controlling nearly every aspect of the vehicle. Yet a safe landing could be made with just one computer. The fifth computer acted as a back-up in case something happened to the four primary units. A fly-by-wire system that manipulated the aerodynamic control surfaces completely depended on those computers. In 1977, the use of computers to completely control anything, let alone a flight vehicle, was close to science fiction.

If you enjoy this... why not get the books?

THE ALT:

GO FOR SEP.

Reaching their pre-release altitude of 26,500 feet above the ground, the SCA and orbiter were placed on their launch heading. At the controls of the 747, designated “905,” was the most experienced drop pilot on the planet: Fitz Fulton. Acting as his “co-pilot” was Tom McMurtry, who, with flight engineers Lou Guidry and Vic Horton, made up the rest of the crew. At the designated Moment Fulton would “push over” into an eight degree dive and once the speed of 270 knots was reached the Enterprise would be released by Fred Haise. CAPCOM “Bo” Bobco in Houston was working the flight with the Enterprise crew with a snap and manner that made you think the vehicle really was coming back from space. Haise and Fulton, however, could not avoid a bit of Edwards test flight banter.

“Thanks for the lift, Fitz,” Haise casually quipped.

“You bet,” Fulton replied, “any time.”

 Finally, the crew aboard 905 counted down the final seconds to pushover. They called the maneuver.

 “Houston copies pushover,” Bobco dutifully replied.

 

Upon reaching 270 knots in the eight degree descent, Fulton called “Launch ready.” Almost simultaneously Haise hit the button and fired a series of explosive bolts that held the Enterprise to the SCA. Separation took place at 22,800 feet; slightly higher than planned.

At the Moment of separation, Fulton pulled 905’s throttles to flight idle and opened the speed brakes while banking. Aboard the Enterprise, Haise was holding in a five degree, nose-up attitude command. The two aircraft cleared one another nicely.

Also at the instant of separation, however, the orbiter’s Master Alarm went off. One of the four main computers, General Purpose Computer (GPC) number two, had dropped off line. Fullerton went through the procedure to isolate that GPC and the flight continued. This failure was later traced to a crack in a poorly soldered joint on the “queue” circuit board. The result was that the manufacturing method used to build those boards was later changed, as was the inspection process. Then all orbiters had their computers retro-fitted with boards made with the new process.

Haise’s first maneuver was to conduct a “practice landing” at altitude. In other words he put the orbiter into something similar to a pre-flare attitude and checked its handling. It handled fine, but on my TV set at home I kept hearing Haise and Fullerton talk about a “sideways lurch” being there. The “lurch” was the result of the pilots being seated substantially above the orbiter’s center of roll axes, as well as the short wingspan of the vehicle. When a roll input was placed into the controls, the nimble orbiter snapped into the roll and the seated pilots, rather than feeling rotation, instead felt as if they were being tossed sideways.

 

So sure were the engineers that this lurching event would be present that NASA had special vertical stabilizers added under the Shuttle Training Aircraft’s (STA) wings to help simulate the lurch. The STA was a modified Gulfstream II corporate jet whose controls and airframe had been altered to allow it to approach like a Shuttle orbiter.

 Flying the Enterprise, the crew found that the orbiter controlled very well. The orbiter was pitched down to an attitude that would maintain 207 knots of airspeed. Although the vehicle’s tail cone allowed it to pitch down less than the -22 degrees that would be needed for orbiters returning from space, the descent was still plenty steep. Haise quipped that it flew better than the STA. Houston, however, thought that they spotted a discrepancy. It was reported to the crew that it looked to Mission Control as if the Enterprise’s lift to drag ratio (L/D) was “perhaps” slightly low, meaning the Enterprise could come up short of the runway. Haise was cleared to start his base leg turn early to correct the problem.  Fullerton, who was then at the controls, began the base turn, but Haise slowed him down. Eyeballing out the window and checking his own instruments, Haise knew that Houston was wrong and they were in fact high on the L/D. When he passed that thought to Mission Control, they replied with an order to apply 30% speed brakes. Apparently, they saw that Haise was correct. A heartbeat later, Houston recommended 50% speed brakes. Houston’s misevaluation about the L/D and the early start of the base leg had added a bit of energy to the Enterprise’s flight path.

Haise had plenty of landing surface to aim at on the dry lakebed; in the neighborhood of seven miles worth. The little added energy did not bother him at all.  He simply lined up and guided the Enterprise down. Per the flight plan, the speed brakes were retracted at 2,000 feet above the ground as Fullerton armed the landing gear. Exactly 1,100 feet later, Haise entered into the pre-flare and raised the nose up from the dive-bomber descent to an easy -1.5 degrees, and at an airspeed of 270 knots Haise commanded the gear down. Fullerton simultaneously pushed the landing gear deployment button. Planned gear-down speed had been 250 knots, but considering that Haise had picked up some extra energy in Houston’s botched L/D call, he used the gear deploy as an approved method for scrubbing off speed. The landing gear fully deployed at 265 knots, prompting its three cockpit indicators to go from a tiger-tail indication to the “DN” indication. Unexpectedly, there was no sound heard in the cockpit when the landing gear deployed, but the chase planes confirmed what the gear indicators had read. Haise guided the Enterprise gently toward the runway, and with a bit of float, caused by the excess energy, the orbiter settled gently onto the runway.

 

I sat there stunned, gazing at my TV set with my mouth hanging open. There may have been a bit of drool on the floor, I don’t really recall. The Shuttle was REAL. The darned thing could really fly like an airplane! It was the most fantastic thing I had seen in spaceflight since Conrad and Kerwin had deployed the SAS wing on Skylab. Yet some in the mass media had a different outlook on the ALT. After all it had not flown like pair of pliers, as some had predicted, and there had been no spectacular crash, or unforeseen emergency. So the if-it-bleeds-it-leads news media simply began to shrug the day’s event off. Closing out his 26 minutes of live coverage on NBC, Jack Perkins finished with his mumbling group of “high school science students” and, in a hollow attempt to link the ALT to current pop-culture and the red-hot movie “Star Wars,” looked into the camera and said that this means that,

“…today we’re a little closer to Wookies than we were yesterday.”

 Famed radio broadcaster Paul Harvey led his daily “News” broadcast with the flight of the Enterprise and then in the same breath stated that this day was also the one in which,

“…a man in Oklahoma set a world record by throwing a cow chip 179 feet.”

 So it was that August 12, 1977, would pass into the pages of history with the headlines of the day documenting a mass-murderer, the ALT and cow chip throwing.


(AUTHOR's note: Sep was at 11:48:20 Eastern time and touchdown of the mains was at 11:53:51. That information I neglected to place into the manuscript)

At the time of the ALT missions, NASA’s Public Affairs Office had told the news media that they predicted the first Shuttle launch could take place in “the spring of 1979,”  two years after the first ALT. Watching the event, it struck me that I would be down in Florida getting my degree in aviation during that time. NASA also predicted that flight rates would eventually reach more than one launch per week! Surely I would be there to witness some of that myself. It was a very exciting thought. Of course neither the folks in the news media, nor myself bothered to talk about that 1979 date with the folks at the National Space Technology Laboratory (later know as the Stennis Space Center) who were testing the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) during that time period. The SSMEs would not be de-bugged and flight capable at 100% rated thrust until the spring of 1980, and would not be flight ready at 104% until early 1981.

I also had no idea that the Enterprise herself was far from being an orbital vehicle. In fact, she was in reality little more than an engineering test bed. Her SSMEs and RCS engines were mock-ups, as was her thermal protection system. Her mid-deck did not exist and there was no plumbing for operational SSMEs. Fiberglass made up a good deal of her components as well as her Orbital Maneuvering System pods. She was more of a flying mock-up than an actual orbiter. Yet, sitting there in Michigan that August morning in 1977, and watching the Enterprise fly that first ALT, I was blissfully unaware of any of those shortcomings. All I saw was the future for me and the future for America’s space program. I immediately set to work building a small balsawood flying model of the Enterprise. In a way, it became a metaphor for both my dreams of my immediate future in aviation and for the Shuttle program itself. That is because when it was done, I stored it in the hanging ceiling of my basement bedroom as I shipped off to college; over the years mice dragged it off into a corner and chewed it to pieces.

NOTE: The rest of the full story of the complete ALT program is in "the Space Shuttle" volume of "Growing up with Spaceflight."

Click HERE to get the print version of Wes' books autographed and personalized.

Or... click on Emmett to get the e-books

If this was a "good read" listen to Emmett... get the books!

Also see these videos...

NBC "The Flight of the ENTERPRISE

CBS' ALT coverage... commercials and all.

And my personal FAVORITE...

Go For Sep.!

All material on this page is Copyright 2017 Wes Oleszewski. None of the material in part or in whole may be reproduced in any form by any person other than the copyright holder.

S-II/S-IVB staging was NEVER videoed

Is this the video of a Saturn V's third stage separating? The answer is NO, the staging of the S-II and S-IVB was never "videoed"

and here's why...

This is another of those social media/internet-based misconceptions that seems to always pop up and frankly, spaceflight "documentaries" produced by contractors who know little or nothing about the actual hardware are mainly at fault. The primary culprit in this myth is the scene shown above. It is a dramatic and eye-catching film of a Saturn S-IVB stage separating from its booster and igniting on the edge of space. This remarkable sequence is used over, and over, and over again by the creators of  spaceflight documentaries to represent the staging between a Saturn V S-II second stage and its S-IVB third stage, most often this image is attributed to Apollo 6... there's just one problem... that is NOT what you are seeing.

In fact what the video (which was actually film when it was captured by the onboard cameras and not magnetic "video") is the separation of an S-IVB from a Saturn IB- most likely AS-202. Now... how do we know that? you may ask. I mean, it's all over YouTube, that amazing internet source for reliable factual history, as being Apollo 6! And if it's on YouTube it must be true... right?

Well, there is one dead giveaway... if you look closely at the image or the video again, you'll see 3 little thrusters firing during the separation. Those are known as "Ullage Motors" and they were used to add some forward thrust during staging and help fully "seat" the liquid propellants in the stage. They are jettisoned shortly after they finish firing. The Saturn S-IVB ullage motors began firing 0.1 seconds prior to the stage separation command and burned for a total of 3.9 seconds. Approximately 15 seconds after stage separation a signal was sent to a series of explosive bridge wires which in turn ignited detonator blocks, frangible nuts and confined detonator fuse assemblies that released the spent motors as a series of springs cast them off away from the S-IVB.

ALL Saturn IB S-IVB stages were what was known as "200 series" and were different from the "500 series" S-IVBs used on the Saturn V. The most outward difference (other than their paint job) was the fact that all 200 series S-IVBs were equipped with 3 ullage motors as shown in the drawing here.

ALL Saturn V S-IVBs, or 500 series, were only equipped with 2 ullage motors.

More Apollo facts can be found HERE! 

Or get it in e-book by clicking HERE

How do we know that was true of Apollo 6? You may ask... because, of course, a "NASA" documentary video on YouTube says this is Apollo 6. Well, the answer comes right out of Apollo 6's documentation...

In this report we find charts and verbiage documenting the flight in great detail- including the following...

This chart details the "Separation Events" on Apollo 6. Notice the highlighted area where it lists 2 ullage motors and not 3.

And from that same document the details of the TWO ullage motors firing are given.

From another Apollo Saturn V document we have this graphic intended to represent ALL Saturn V vehicle's "Ordnance Components" for the 500 series S-IVB. Note again that there are ONLY 2 ullage motors.

Thus, we can safely conclude with 100% certainty that the YouTube scene depicts NOT a Saturn V, but a Saturn IB.

There are additional factors involved for those of you who made need to have your convincing furthered. 

Consider, if you will, the mechanics behind how these onboard movies were obtained. The cameras were carried aloft in tubes and ejected after staging as camera pods. 

Camera Pods

A Saturn IB, AS-202 for example, staged at ~34 miles in altitude- which is well below "space" and at a velocity of  4,059.82 miles per hour. This allowed for a distance down rage where the U.S. Navy could recover the pods and a speed that would provide a reentry heating that the camera pods could survive. A Saturn V S-II stage would normally stage with the S-IVB at ~180 miles in altitude (Apollo 6 experienced a 2 engine failure and thus staged far lower at 125 miles up) and ~14,385 miles per hour. Those distances would bring a camera pod down somewhere after about an orbit and a half- but it would make no difference as at that velocity the pod would burn up on reentry... just like the S-II stage itself. So, there was no way to recover the film from the staging.

If you like what you've read here, check out Wes's books such as APOLLO PART ONE
You can also get it in e-book by clicking HERE

Of course now some may ask, "Well, what about live TV being broadcast." Indeed some live TV from orbit was broadcast from the Pegasus micro meteorite satellite, but it was in black and white and never color. In 1968, when Apollo 6 was launched, there was no color TV camera that NASA could employ to be used in such a manner. (Apollo 10's small color TV camera would not even be created for nearly a full year yet.) Color TV cameras of the day were very large and heavy- too heavy to be used for sending staging images from an S-II stage.

The last Apollo launch vehicle to carry ejectable cameras was AS-503 which launched Apollo 8. That vehicle had cameras that were set up to film the departing S-II second stage after separation. Unfortunately, the cameras were lost at sea after ejection, or never ejected at all because the US Navy was never able to locate them. Thereafter, the added weight of the Lunar Module on all other Apollo flights caused the cameras to be deleted from the launch vehicles. The Saturn IB launch vehicles that flew the Skylab missions did not have cameras for two good reasons. First, there was no new engineering data to be gained as the characteristics of the launch vehicles was well known and telemetry covered all points of engineering interest. Second, there was no budget in either the Skylab or ASTP programs to pay for the logistics of handling the cameras. Thus, the era of the Apollo ejectable cameras and their fantastic images came to an end with Apollo 8 and the S-II/S-IVB stage separation was never... ever... filmed. 

Visit my six book spaceflight series HERE

Or... check out the e-books...HERE

DID THE SATURN V NEED FINS?

Very often the question comes up, "Did the Saturn V really need those great big fins?" When this is asked on internet forums there follows assorted postings from people who really do not know what they're talking about. Here's a word of advice- beware of any comment that begins with or contains the following phrases: "I heard" or "I think" or "I seem to remember" these are dead giveaways that the person posting is sitting at their keyboard with no real factual knowledge and simply wishes to make it look as if they have some knowing of the subject.

Additionally, watch out for the myths... such as...

MYTH: "The Saturn V really didn't need those fins, they were just for decoration."

FACT = The fin decision came about in early 1961 before the first Saturn I ever flew. You can find the explanation of their purpose in NASA, MSFC document MPR-M-SAT-61-5 published July 17, 1961, Page 208, Section 13.1, which reads in part, "The actual fins were not optimized for aerodynamic properties alone  but were designed  in conjunction with control output of the swivel engines  and the environment  that the vehicle  would encounter.  With four 188K  engines  swiveled to 10°  control angle,  various amounts of wind  and sheer gradients can be tolerated.  A highly unstable vehicle in the high dynamic pressure region  of flight  is severely  restricted  unless a very large control  torque  is available.  This might have been  designed into the system;  however,  this would have created another  undesirable situation . That is,  in case of shutdown  of the engines  high divergent rates  would exist, a condition which is not desirable  for a manned vehicle."

Now, let me translate that... the key in the statement is, "a condition which is not desirable  for a manned vehicle," and the term "torque control." The concern, even early on was one of torque vs arm. By arm I mean the distance between the center of the vehicle's rotation and the point where the astronaut's hand grips the abort handle. It was concluded that if one of the gimbaled engines should go hard-over or somehow fail while thrusting in an undesirable direction, which was common in the early 60s, the Saturn was so tall that the torque applied to the upper area where the crew were located would be so great that it would pull the astronaut's hand away from the abort handle and not allow for a manual abort. Additionally, the above cited document goes on to explain that the fins add to the stability assurance in the clustered engine configuration in the case of engine failure. Keep in mind that this was the first time that an entire family of vehicles were designed totally based on the clustered concept, which, up until October 27, 1961, when SA-1 successfully flew in spite of being nick-named "Cluster's Last Stand" many so called rocket "experts" believed clustering would never work.

Thus, the fins had a real and practical purpose on the Saturn vehicles, including the Saturn V. If one of the F-1 engines went hard-over, especially in the lower atmosphere, the fins would provide a counter to the resulting torque just long enough for the CDR to turn the abort handle.

Additionally, the fins added stability during the transition through the area of maximum aerodynamic pressure as well as in the altitudes where jet stream winds could cause significant wind sheer. The ideal was to have those gimbaled F-1 engines actually need to move as little as possible.

And now some common myths about the fins...


MYTH: "von Braun was really in love with fins, so he insisted that they have them on the Saturns."

FACT = This one is so silly it actually made me laugh out loud. People who write such thing simply demonstrate that they know very little about Dr. von Braun and little about the design efforts of the several thousand people who created the Saturn V. The MSFC team that designed the original Saturn C-1 for the ARPA and were led in large part by von Braun, designed a booster with no fins and the early Saturn C-5 (predecessor to the Saturn V) designs also had no fins.

MYTH: "The Titan II didn't have fins."

FACT = Apples and oranges- two very different rockets with different initial purposes, engine configurations and most of all arm lengths.

MYTH: "The first Saturns didn't have fins, so there was really no need for the later ones to have fins."

FACT = Read the above and you'll see how silly this statement is.

MYTH: "I believe in the end they were more for show than anything; the gimbaling motors kept the rocket stable. the fins as stabilizers were pretty useless I think at the velocities used." 

FACT = Note the term "I believe" used here, on par with "I think." This person is dealing from no hard research or knowledge. But, let's take a look at the "useless" contention. During the Apollo missions weight was so critical that NASA was doing everything in their power to scrub un-needed weight of ANY kind. They went as far as offering $10,000 for every pound that could be scrubbed from the LEM! There is the famous legend that they were also limiting the number of band aids in the first aid kit (a legend that I've heard 3 Apollo astronauts restate, but have yet to find the paper work to prove it) Now, in that environment, if the Saturn V fins, which weighed in the neighborhood of 1,000 pounds,  were in fact "useless" would not they be the first thing scrubbed?

MYTH: They did offer some stability but mostly it was habit. All rockets had fins so the Saturn V should too."

FACT = This was another one that actually made me laugh out loud. "ALL rockets had fins..." Hummm... the Saturn I, Block I, SA-1,2,3 and 4) had no fins. So there goes the "All rockets" part of the statement. Here's the fact- solid ENGENEERING got us to the moon with the Saturn V. Period! Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING was done out of "habit."

In fact, in the September 1964 issue of popular science, Dr. Wernher von Braun spoke specifically about rockets and fins including the Saturn V.

September 1964 Popular Science

Where he said in part: "Suppose a large vehicles such as the Saturn five has a serious autopilot (IU) failure at the most critical part of its ascent through the atmosphere (MaxQ). When the speeding rocket bucks the most severe aerodynamic forces. A failure in a swivel actuator (engine gimbal) may throw one of the five booster engines into a "hard over" deflection. In such a case, if I inherent aerodynamic instability assisted in rapidly increasing the angle of attack, structural overload might break up the rocket before the astronauts in the Apollo command module triggered their escape rocket…”

“…in the Saturn V booster, fins are not to provide perfect aerodynamic stability under all conditions-that would take fins of excess size. But the fins reduce the aerodynamic instability enough to make sure that the astronauts can safely abort, no matter what technical trouble may afflict their space vehicle. Our aim is to reduce the turning rate rotational speed at which the aerodynamically unstable Saturn V, when stricken by an autopilot failure, would turn into an angle of attack at which its structure would be bound to fail. One might say the purpose of the fins is to extend the period of grace that the astronauts have to push the "panic button."

My thanks to all of the arm-chair rocket people who made and those who will continue to make these silly remarks and internet posts- I really love you folks. This was fun.

Get any of my six books on spaceflight delivered to you signed and personalized- Click HERE

OR... check out the e-book HERE

A TRIBUTE TO TOM MINTIER

Today I was reading the Space Hipsters Facebook page and saw that CNN journalist Tom Mintier has passed away. He is best known to space buffs as a spaceflight announcer, yet he covered many other subjects world wide. He had the unfortunate duty of being on the TV, live, when the CHALLENGER was lost in January of 1986. I did get the chance to meet him several months after the 51L accident and wrote briefly about it in my book "Growing up with Spaceflight- the Space Shuttle" and here is that excerpt...

"Later that summer I was back up in Michigan, working a summer job at Tri-City Airport, when I happened to meet CNN’s science/space anchorman Tom Mintier in the lounge at the executive terminal. He was there to cover would-be presidential candidate Pat Robertson, who was arriving and being greeted by a throng of… exactly nobody. We started chatting about STS-51L and soon everyone nearby was listening. I told him my story and he talked about being live on the air at that moment.

“There’s a few million people listening,” he said glumly, “what do ya’ say? There’s just nothing you can say, the camera tells it all. There is simply nothing you can say.”

Even six months after the accident you could see that both of us were still a bit lost by the event."

Tom Mintier broadcasting STS-51L and about to toss to the live NASA cameras for that fateful launch. Only a hand full of ATK engineers expected disaster and they were silenced by management and told to "Put on your management hat.".

APOLLO15; STAGING ANOMALY

A little-known staging anomaly took place on Apollo 15 (AS-510). When I read about it in the AS-510 launch report I nearly fell out of my seat and recently while watching news video of the launch I saw another piece of the puzzle. The following is an excerpt from my book, “Growing up with Spaceflight-Apollo Part Two” concerning the launch anomaly plus a lot of details not included in the book, especially that final piece of the puzzle; the secondary plume!

The whole story is in HERE

“Boosting Apollo 15 was a Saturn V quite a bit different from the vehicle that had boosted Apollo 14. Nearly all of the changes in the launch vehicle monikered as AS-510, had been made to save weight and add payload capability. Most apparent from the external perspective was the absence of the four ullage motors that had previously been located at 90 degree intervals around the skirt that attached the S-IC first stage to the S-II second stage.

“Those four solid propellant rocket motors were designed to fire .5 seconds after shutdown of the first stage as triggered by the Saturn V’s Instrument Unit (IU). Then .2 seconds later the IU commanded the firing of the shaped charges that would separate the first and second stages. The Ullage motors would continue to burn for a total of about 3.87 seconds producing about 22,900 pounds of thrust each. The objective of the motors was to apply a continued acceleration to the S-II stage and thus seat the fuel and oxidizer in the bottoms of their tanks. Data from past flights indicated that those four Ullage motors were not needed, so they were deleted from all future Saturn V launch vehicles beginning with AS-510. Internally, the S-II stage had another ullage system change when fixed orifices replaced its ullage pressure regulators.

“Meanwhile, down on the huge S-IC first stage, four of the eight solid-fuel retro rockets were deleted. The retro rockets aided the separation of the stages by countering any residual impulse from the spooling down of the F-1 engines and helped to counter the stage’s inertia. Data indicated that four retro rockets could do the job as easily as eight. Additionally the F-1 engines were “reorificed” beginning with AS-510 bringing the Saturn V’s total thrust up from 7.5 million pounds to 7.68 million pounds. All of these changes, although sounding somewhat large, only increased AS-510’s payload capability by 1,410 pounds, but 400 of those extra pounds allowed the Lunar Rover to ride to the Moon.

“At 136 seconds into first stage burn, the IU commanded the center engine on AS-510 to shut down. Then, 22.56 seconds later the IU commanded the outboard engines to shut down and the staging sequence to begin. It was at this point that the concept of eliminating four of the eight S-IC retro rockets and those four ullage motors nearly bit NASA in the butt. The problem began with the “shutdown” of those new up-rated F-1 engines.

“For those of you reading who are not familiar with turbine engines (and engineers reading please excuse me for simplifying), when you shut down a high-speed turbine, you do not just stop it suddenly. Doing so would cause the turbine’s own inertia to rip itself apart and it would explode like a fragmentation bomb- sending chunks of shrapnel flying in all directions at very high velocity. The F-1 engine had at its heart ultra high-speed turbines pumping fuel and oxidizer. In order to safely shut it down, the ignition source was removed and it was allowed to “tail-off” or spool down to an eventual stop while LOX and RP-1 continued for a time to flow through it. That outflow was still at a fairly high rate and caused some residual impulse.

“In the case of AS-510 the engine tail-off of the outboards lasted longer and was of a greater residual impulse than experienced from analysis of the previous version of the F-1 by 10.8 %. To compound the problem the elimination of the four ullage motors on the interstage skirt subtracted 91,600 pounds of S-II stage posigrade thrust as well. Normally, with an eight retro rocket and four ullage motor staging, the S-IC and the S-II stages would be slightly over 100 feet apart by the time the five J-2 engines in the S-II came up to full thrust.

“Predicted separation with just four retro rockets and no ullage motors was just short of 70 feet. In reality the separation distance of the two stages on AS-510 at full S-II thrust was just short of 40 feet!

“In fact when the plume of the S-II engines contacted the S-IC it was so powerful that it knocked out the telemetry being transmitted from the departing stage. The Radio Frequency (RF) signal continued, but the antenna gain was muted. Such RF signals without gain would indicate that the cable bundles had been blown away, or that the RF canister itself had been damaged or blown away. This loss had no impact on the mission since the S-IC had already been jettisoned.

“The real alarm was sounded after the mission at MSFC when it was calculated that if one of the four S-IC retro rockets had failed to ignite the two stages could have re-contacted during the staging sequence. That would have resulted in a catastrophic failure of the S-II and a mission abort using the escape tower. It was immediately decided that the four retro rockets that had been deleted from the S-IC would be reinstated for the next mission; Apollo 16.”

Now- here is the part that I could not put into the “Growing up with Spaceflight- Apollo Part Two” book, because there is no NASA documentation to prove it, there is only my own comparison of TV video.

So violent was the close proximity ignition of the five J-2 engines of the S-II stage that not only did it wipe out the telemetry RF units but it also ruptured the LOX tank dome on the S-IC stage. This is clearly seen in the staging footage as a secondary plume erupts from the S-IC that is not seen on any other Saturn V staging. In order to prove this I watched the staging videos from all of the Saturn V stagings where the event can be seen (Apollos 9, 12 and Skylab 1 were obscured by weather and Apollo 17 was a night launch so no plume was visible) and none have the brief secondary plume.

At staging there was 31,135 pounds of residual LOX in the tank, under pressure. At that point the S-IC was ~72Km or 44 miles in altitude and well outside of most of the earth’s atmosphere. The release of 31,135 pounds of LOX could easily account for the secondary plume seen in the video. That would mean that the upper LOX tank dome was compromised by the staging event.

Presented here is a side-by-side of the Apollo 14 staging sequence and the Apollo 15 sequence. The images are matched frame-by frame so you can see the difference.

That said, the crew was not really in any danger. The departing LOX, as seen in the ground and flight tests for SA-2 and 3, simply turned to ice crystals instantaneously. It could not burn or explode, because there was no fuel to combust. Instead what it did was to expel outward and very rapidly down the side of the S-IC and away from the departing S-II and Apollo spacecraft. Although the close proximity of the staging did wake up the engineers when the post-flight data was reviewed, in aviation we have a saying about vehicles moving too close to one another: “As long as you don’t get into those negative inches, there’s no problem.”

To get an autographed and personalized copy click HERE

If you liked this- there is plenty more in the book series... so BUY my books! Seriously, I need the money to get my dog otta the pound and I have a tooth that needs a root canal.

Check out the e-book versions HERE