totm november 2019 1.5 km of fire and fury

[KSK]

Heya,

Was looking up a couple of things about the Saturn V and found this site. Thought some folks here might find it interesting anyway but mostly I'm posting it for that last picture of the first Saturn V in flight. Bear in mind that the Saturn was about 363ft or roughly 120m high.

That's a lot of fire...

Something was definitely going to space that day...

[tater]

38 minutes ago, KSK said:

That's a lot of fire...

[KSK]

Thanks @tater!

 

[magnemoe]

Impressive 
Falcon 9 tail is far shorter. 

yes is an smaller rocket but it uses the same fuel as Saturn 5. 
Yes this is low attitude who probably affect it a lot. 
It might also be that the Saturn 5 shot is a bit into IR range. 
Still the above shot is awesome, 
 

[James Kerman]

Congratulations @KSK, you have been awarded thread of the month for sharing this excellent article.

[DDE]

Quote

The “V” stood for the five giant F-1 rocket engines—still the most powerful ever built

*angry Russian noises*

[OrbitsR4Sissies]

The first two Saturn V flights were unmanned.

For those who'd like a little more history:

The first Saturn V launch, Apollo 4, was an "all-up" test.

Rather than making a launch test only of the S-I-C first stage, then the S-I-C with the S-II second stage, NASA, falling beyond in their development schedule to get a lunar landing mission in before 1970, decided to launch the whole damn thing at once.

If that's not Kerbal before KSP existed, I don't know what is.

They checked their staging, though.

Apollo 4 proved out the Saturn V's general performance and confirmed the Command/Service Module's performance, from its SPS engine to the heat shield.

The next test launch, Apollo 6, was a bit more dramatic.

NASA engineers checked their staging, but didn't use enough struts.

The first stage engines vibrated and oscillated so wildly that parts of the fairing atop the third stage, where the Lunar Module would eventually be housed, shook pieces off in-flight, leaving holes you could see from ground cameras.

Then the second stage's engines also did the POGO dance, causing the computer to shut down one engine and, because of a mis-wiring, shutting down a second engine, leaving the vehicle to limp into orbit with just three J-2 engines.

The third stage engine didn't restart either, forcing an alternate test mission that proved out the Saturn V enough for its third flight, the historic circumlunar manned mission of Apollo 8.

 

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

Cool

 

[sevenperforce]

On 11/8/2019 at 8:55 AM, OrbitsR4Sissies said:

The first stage engines vibrated and oscillated so wildly that parts of the fairing atop the third stage, where the Lunar Module would eventually be housed, shook pieces off in-flight, leaving holes you could see from ground cameras.

Then the second stage's engines also did the POGO dance, causing the computer to shut down one engine and, because of a mis-wiring, shutting down a second engine, leaving the vehicle to limp into orbit with just three J-2 engines.

I am always shocked to see how far up the first stage the exhaust plume was entrained.

[Ultimate Steve]

On 11/8/2019 at 7:55 AM, OrbitsR4Sissies said:

 

The third stage engine didn't restart either, forcing an alternate test mission that proved out the Saturn V enough for its third flight, the historic circumlunar manned mission of Apollo 8.

 

Wow. I knew that there were 2 tests before they put people on, but when I read your post it hit me. I hadn't known about the partial disintegration in flight. These guys were strapped into the world's biggest rocket that had only flown twice, and one of those flights was really close to being a failure on multiple counts.

[sevenperforce]

9 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Wow. I knew that there were 2 tests before they put people on, but when I read your post it hit me. I hadn't known about the partial disintegration in flight. These guys were strapped into the world's biggest rocket that had only flown twice, and one of those flights was really close to being a failure on multiple counts.

At least they knew the LES worked.

[OrbitsR4Sissies]

And that Little Joe wasn’t meant to destruct. 

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, OrbitsR4Sissies said:

And that Little Joe wasn’t meant to destruct. 

It was the bes abort test ever so far.
Hint to SpaceX, put an bomb on the common bulkhead for the test.  
I assume an catastrophic structural fail on the common bulkhead is the most catastrophic fail condition imagine for an liquid fueled rocket. 
 

[OrbitsR4Sissies]

6 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I am always shocked to see how far up the first stage the exhaust plume was entrained.

That's something we don't see in KSP, even in realism mods.

It's called plume recirculation, and it was normal.

[Nuke]

On 10/27/2019 at 1:16 PM, magnemoe said:

Impressive 
Falcon 9 tail is far shorter. 

yes is an smaller rocket but it uses the same fuel as Saturn 5. 
Yes this is low attitude who probably affect it a lot. 
It might also be that the Saturn 5 shot is a bit into IR range. 
Still the above shot is awesome, 
 

close to the pad like that it hasn't picked up enough acceleration yet to stretch out the tail. its still heavy and hasn't picked up much speed. when the first stage starts running on fumes and acceleration peaks, thats when the tail stretches out. ive had rockets in kerbal jump up to 5 or 6 gs before the tank goes dry. of course i like to launch with an oversize first stage, which is pretty much the saturn v in a nutshell.

Edited November 15, 2019 by Nuke

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

close to the pad like that it hasn't picked up enough acceleration yet to stretch out the tail. its still heavy and hasn't picked up much speed. when the first stage starts running on fumes and acceleration peaks, thats when the tail stretches out. ive had rockets in kerbal jump up to 5 or 6 gs before the tank goes dry. of course i like to launch with an oversize first stage, which is pretty much the saturn v in a nutshell.

Thanks, that makes sense, high acceleration and speed will leave more of the buring tail visible. An larger engine will also leave an wider tail who is more visible. 

[Zeiss Ikon]

On 11/15/2019 at 6:34 AM, Nuke said:

I've had rockets in kerbal jump up to 5 or 6 gs before the tank goes dry. of course i like to launch with an oversize first stage, which is pretty much the saturn v in a nutshell.

This is actually pretty normal in RO.  Most engines before the post-Apollo era (and many after) were either on or off, no throttling.  Launch at TWR of 1.25 (still faster than the Saturn V), and by the time you've burned the fuel in your stage, the rocket (including all the following stages!) will be in the range from about 3.5 to 6G.  An A-4 (commonly known as V-2), carrying three quarters of a tonne of "payload", would top out around 7G.

One of the design issues with the Saturn family was keeping the peak G load of each stage low enough that the astronauts aboard could remain functional throughout launch.  Shuttle used throttling, both to limit dynamic pressure (hence the "go at throttle-up" call just past one minute) and to limit G load on the crew when that big External Tank was down to its last few seconds of propellants.  The only throttled engine on a Saturn stack was the LEM descent engine, which could be reined in to 50% thrust.

[magnemoe]

16 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

This is actually pretty normal in RO.  Most engines before the post-Apollo era (and many after) were either on or off, no throttling.  Launch at TWR of 1.25 (still faster than the Saturn V), and by the time you've burned the fuel in your stage, the rocket (including all the following stages!) will be in the range from about 3.5 to 6G.  An A-4 (commonly known as V-2), carrying three quarters of a tonne of "payload", would top out around 7G.

One of the design issues with the Saturn family was keeping the peak G load of each stage low enough that the astronauts aboard could remain functional throughout launch.  Shuttle used throttling, both to limit dynamic pressure (hence the "go at throttle-up" call just past one minute) and to limit G load on the crew when that big External Tank was down to its last few seconds of propellants.  The only throttled engine on a Saturn stack was the LEM descent engine, which could be reined in to 50% thrust.

As I understand they shut down the center engine on the Saturn 5 at the last part of the burn to limit the g force. 

[Zeiss Ikon]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

As I understand they shut down the center engine on the Saturn 5 at the last part of the burn to limit the g force. 

Might have, on either the S1-C or the SIV-B (second stage).  There was a serious proposal at one point to build a 1 1/2 stage version of an uprated booster, the S1-D, that  would have shed the four outboard engines like an Atlas dropping its boosters to continue on the core engine -- and put a bunch of tonnage into LEO with 80% reuse of the engines, or even recovery and reuse of the entire booster (how to recover an assembly of four uprated F-1 engines with thrust structure and fairing, ejected at 60-100 km and Mach 2-3 is left as an exercise).

[DDE]

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

Might have, on either the S1-C or the SIV-B (second stage).

The second stage would be S-II.

I'm struggling to imagine how the S-IVB would continue burning on zero engines out of one.

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

or even recovery and reuse of the entire booster (how to recover an assembly of four uprated F-1 engines with thrust structure and fairing, ejected at 60-100 km and Mach 2-3 is left as an exercise).

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited November 17, 2019 by DDE

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

On 11/8/2019 at 9:55 PM, OrbitsR4Sissies said:

If that's not Kerbal before KSP existed, I don't know what is.

You forgot the stupid flapping “flying machines” that they used to create

[magnemoe]

21 hours ago, burn boi said:

You forgot the stupid flapping “flying machines” that they used to create

Also after they stopped flapping 

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

Ahhh shoot, I forgot about that

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

23 hours ago, burn boi said:

You forgot the stupid flapping “flying machines” that they used to create

Also after they stopped flapping

 

[KSK]

On 11/19/2019 at 12:28 PM, magnemoe said:

Also after they stopped flapping 

Trust me - I'm an engineer?

On 11/15/2019 at 11:34 AM, Nuke said:

close to the pad like that it hasn't picked up enough acceleration yet to stretch out the tail. its still heavy and hasn't picked up much speed. when the first stage starts running on fumes and acceleration peaks, thats when the tail stretches out. ive had rockets in kerbal jump up to 5 or 6 gs before the tank goes dry. of course i like to launch with an oversize first stage, which is pretty much the saturn v in a nutshell.

I think atmospheric pressure also has a lot to do with it. You see it on F9 launches too from the in-flight camera - that exhaust plume really fans out at higher altitude / lower pressure. 

The fact that the Saturn V had about four times the thrust of the Falcon 9 helps a bit too.

 

[XB-70A]

Reminds me that picture I took of an F9 v1.2 in 2017 (about one minute before MECO):

 

Approx. alt. of 30 km, at a speed of around 4000 km/h.