Saturn V Cameras
Documentaries often use footage of a Saturn V launch, and one of the most used pieces shows the interstage between the first and second stages falling away. This footage is usually mistakenly attributed to the Apollo 11 mission, when it was actually filmed on the flights of Apollo 4 and Apollo 6. A compilation of original NASA footage shows the jettisoning of the first stage (S-IC) and the interstage, filmed from the bottom of the second stage (S-II), both from Apollo 4. This is followed by footage of the separation of an S-IVB second stage from the first stage of a Saturn IB. The glow seen on the jettisoned stages is due to the hot, invisible hydrogen-oxygen flames of the J-2 engines used by the S-II and S-IVB. The footage also shows the more conspicuous plumes of the solid ullage motors as they pull the stages apart before the main engines are fired.
The cameras ran at four-times normal speed to show the events in slow motion. The camera capsules were jettisoned soon after the first stage separation and though at about 200,000 feet in altitude, were well below orbital velocity. They then reentered the atmosphere and parachuted to the ocean where they floated waiting for recovery. Both S-II cameras from Apollo 4 were recovered so that there is footage from both sides of the vehicle.
Read more about this topic: Apollo 4
Famous quotes containing the words saturn and/or cameras:
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been—what people needed protection from. Now nature tamed, endangered, mortal—needs to be protected from people.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)