Word: saturns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...spacecraft travel, this was surely the slowest trip on record-nine hours to cover all of 3½ miles. But as it moved from NASA's Vertical Assembly Building to launch pad 39-A at Cape Kennedy last week, the mammoth Saturn 5 rocket, an engineless version of the vehicle that will take the first U.S. astronauts to the moon, crawled through an impressive catalogue of superlatives. This was the largest rocket in the world, emerging from the largest building in the world, to travel on one of the largest self-propelled land vehicles in the world...
...Launch Complex 34 of Cape Kennedy stood Saturn IB, the mightiest rocket the U.S. - and most likely the world - has ever known. The 224-ft.tall bird, with a fantastic initial thrust of 1,600,000 lbs. to hurl its 650-ton bulk into space, was ready for its first crucial test. Atop Saturn's nose sat the payload: the 33,800-lb. Apollo three-man command capsule and service module that will transport U.S. astronauts to the moon and back. If the U.S. is to achieve its goal by 1969, now was the time to start ironing out the bugs...
Roar & a Crackle. Its eight booster engines spitting a 150-ft. tail of flame, Saturn 1B burned for 2 min. 26 sec., at which point it was 35 miles up and moving at 5,400 m.p.h. Next came the tricky second stage, a single 225,000-lb.-thrust engine powered by an exotic combination of liquid oxygen (lox) and liquid hydrogen (LH2). While lox boils off at a difficult -290° F., LH2 boils at -423° F., thus requires extreme pressurization to keep cool. Moreover, in weightless space, LH2, like mercury, tends to gather into a ball or spin...
NASA has scheduled at least six additional Saturn IB tests over the next year, including two or more manned missions to orbit the earth. By then Saturn V, the actual moon rocket towering 364 ft. and with 7,500,000 lbs. of initial thrust, will be ready for its first flight. After last week's triumph, NASA's Dr. George Mueller was saying that "a major step toward the moon" had been made. More enthusiastic officials were even talking about landing an American on the moon in early 1968, a full year ahead of schedule...
...spacecraft, whether the experiment was concerned directly with travel to the moon or with lengthy earth orbit, whether an attempt would be made to bring the dogs back-all such matters remained a secret. Clearly the Russians were putting on the dogs to steal headlines from the Saturn IB launch, but beyond that Western experts were barely able to guess what was up with Veterok (Breeze) and Ugolyok (Little Lump of Coal). But they made an effort...