I'm going to sound like a drama queen and weirdo, but what the space program did in this era is probably one of the best, most pure things our Country has ever done.
Me too, I remembered someone mentioned it in a documentary and came here it to hear it. While a documentary made with the voices of the era and this kind of editing is really interesting, the use of AI upscaling is really noticable; most of the images feel washed out, and you loose details instead of gaining them. I would have preferred the raw footage, maybe with a less heavy noise reduction algorithm applied. Those white and purple rockets, those faces that look like paintings, the drawing board with unrecognizable drawings, my eyes couldn't handle it.
Just discovered this posting of Saturn I history! Fabulous, thank you! I can add a little backstory. My father was Launch Director for SA’s 8, 9, and 10. The Pegasus launches. Normally Von Braun was the LD. But the data needed from the Pegasus was so critical to Apollo that N.A.S.A. HQ removed VB and sent my dad down to the Cape from HQ in DC. He trained under Kurt Deebus who was Director of operations there. VB was not happy and insisted on being present. He was, but on a visitor pass. During launch countdown there was a problem getting Pegasus battery to full charge. During the long “Hold” VB began pressuring that it was good enough and to launch. Dad refused, saying he would not launch a dead satellite and reminded VB he was there as a visitor. The team decided to try something we all know today but was new back then. They drained the battery of all charge and started a new charge cycle. It went to full charge. The Hold was released, count resumed, launch successful of the working satellite. I have a picture collection made by mom from the official photographs telling the story of the activity at Launch Control in the blockhouse. After that launch VB never interfered again. I believe at 46:45 that is VB congratulating Dad on the completion of the successful launches.
@@hakangustavsson3538 Welcome! Later this month I’m starting a Substack with title “Tales from the Space Age”. A family level view of the 1950s through early 1970s, from NACA to NASA. A childs perspective growing up in an inner Space Agency family.
Great stuff, I was familiar with these early Saturn rockets but knew next to nothing about their tests and history and all they did to make the Saturn V a success. Thank you!
Am working at the Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville Alabama. We have a Saturn 1 standing up in the Rocket Garden in the back of the Museum. I learned more about that rocket in this video than I learned working as a Guide over there for a year.
To this day, I'd say the Saturn SA-5 is the best looking, sexiest Saturn vehicle ever. Great footages and rundown on the Saturn history! Thanks for sharing.
Great footage as always! Thought I’d read and knew everything about the Saturn vehicles, but then you go and find yet more ~60 year old footage and I’m back to square 1 ;)
Me as well. I knew about Saturn I coming before V (which my dad worked on as a physicist) but I had no idea the magnitude of the program and how advanced it was just a decade or so after WWII.
So, the last Apollo command module in orbit was apparently July 8th, 1989 !! Saturn 1, SA-8, mission AS-104. The Apollo BP-26 craft was launched into orbit on May 26, 1965 and ended with its reentry on July 8th, 1989. A 24-year flight! It was a derelict boilerplate CM for most of that time. The longest Apollo flight. 🙂
Just imagine if SpaceX was around back then, lol my email would come to me on the Moon or Mars. Space exploration is one of the best things that happend to this World, (besides the 20K + peices of garbage in LEO). I hope people watch this 40 years from now, they probably wount blink, or laugh their ass off. Love the episode! - Will
Interesting how the early flights had ignition at T+0 and then launch at T+5. Later on, ignition was moved up into the last seconds of countdown and T+0 became the moment of launch.
love the thinking behind the the design of the Saturn I... can't built a rocket big enough? Take 1 Juno rocket, strap 8 Redstone rockets around it, add a support structure to the base.. add 8 RL-10 engines and you have the basis of the Saturn I!
It's interesting how they used TV cameras on these uncrewed rockets to monitor events in real-time, but the U.S. didn't broadcast live TV from a manned spacecraft until Apollo 7 in 1968.
The U.S. SPACE PROGRAM in a short period of time did a lot from Mercury,Gemini,and finally Apollo. Now it's Artemis, and God Bless Those Brave Astronauts.
The Saturn S-I block I and block II rockets were missed opportunities for NASA, once they'd finished their contributions to project Apollo they could've been continued as satellite launchers with Saturn I block II with a live Centaur third-stage would've made an excellent interplanetary space-probe launcher.
At about the 40 minute mark a camera just below the S-IV stage shows the Rl10-A3 engines. Upon staging, you can see what look like 'stools' that were beneath each nozzle? Were these part of the precooling process? Or some other reason? They certainly weren't structural in nature (I don't think)
All flights of Saturn were successful as compared to Atlas, Titan, others which were common to have explosions. While Saturn had its problems but nothing like the others. Which I wonder if Von Braun's team laid out a design that allows component and subsystem testing, along with resources (money and manpower) to test each item and combined systems. Maybe other rockets had certain inherent designs that didn't allow for that. Or maybe it's because Jupiter, Redstone, Atlas, Titan were urgent wartime rockets pressed into service. While Saturn was not intended as a weapons carrier so not the schedule pressures. Any comments about this?
Saturn was designed for human flight from the start, so it had to be very reliable. The previous rockets were basically mass-produced missiles with much higher failure rates (acceptable for military purposes).
So much had been subsequently learned from the early development of the MX-774 program (the father of Atlas) and Thor/Jupiter programs, Redstone, so this gained technical experience and insight certainly helped guide Saturn development. It's truly amazing what had been learned from these earlier programs when knowledge was sparse and everything was a "first try" kind of progress.
@@765kvline good mention, I read Atlas program was something like $40 billion (yes a B) in 1959 dollars. With that kind of money you can hire all sorts of engineers to do all sorts of stuff. Then take what worked.
@@wrightmf I'm old enough to remember how the Titan program was criticized as a "duplication" of the Atlas ICBM program. However, the Titan program offered new experience in missile design, especially with the advance of being able to start and re-start a second stage in the vacuum of space. The young of today, have no concept of how everything was a pioneering effort with little experience. By the time the Saturn and (short-lived) Nova launch vehicle programs were inaugurated, technology was considerably advanced by Redstone (1953), Thor, Jupiter, Atlas and Titan vehicles, not to mention Agena and Centaur series (1962).
@@765kvline There is a short YT video of film footage from 1960s showing collapse of an Atlas missile on a launch pad at Vandenberg, I don't remember details in description but it looked like pressurization of fuel tanks failed. As you know, that missile held its shape like a pressurized balloon. I was thinking a general would tell an airman to get a truck and drive down to the Convair plant in San Diego to get another Atlas. They were making them like sausages on an assembly line back then. So you lose a missile, just buy another one.
The difference between the Saturn I and Saturn IB lies in the second stage where the Saturn I had eight engines on the second stage whereas the Saturn IB had a single J-2 engine.
Aside from the single J-2 instead of the six RL-10 engines, the S-IVB second stage on the Saturn Ib was also far larger than the S-IV in terms of propellant capacity. Also, the first stage was stretched (and the fins reduced) and the engines, that were made more powerful, were rearranged, with the turbopump exhausts of the inboard engines, that previously were on the side of the rocket, repositioned on the bottom. You can see the difference at launch: all Saturn I had those fancy "fountains of fire" externally to the main exhausts, while the Saturn Ib (except, I believe, for the first) didn't have them. The result was a launch vehicle that had over twice the payload of the previous version, though an hypotetical, current day, Saturn-Ib (if the production was never halted) would have probably returned to the RL-10 on the second stage, because of the higher efficiency of those engines.
Most of the early rocketry work was designed to launch thermonuclear warheads at the enemies of the superpowers. Mercury used Redstone and Atlas rockets. Gemini us modified Titan rockets. The Soviets used their Vostock rockets but their inability to build something like Saturn doomed their Lunar missions.
But their R7 rocket booster system is far, FAR more successful than anything we've ever launched. It launched Sputnik, and it's still sending crew and supplies to the International Space Station. They had their early problems, but they just kept improving their design instead of trying to design something new every few years.
Ah... the heady early days of spaceflight where mistakes made, were lessons learned and applied. SpaceX is recreating that atmosphere once more with their Starship/Super Heavy work.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver In 1944. The US also conducted numerous spaceflights with captured V-2s prior to 1949, including taking the first photo of Earth from space in 1946 and first panorama in 1947. 1947 also saw the first animals sent into space (fruit flies).
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Because it was not the first spaceflight and they knew it, they themselves had conducted spaceflights prior to that. The only potentially unique thing they could have been referring to is first flight to space, or first scientific flight, using a domestically designed and built rocket. By calling it "the first true spaceflight" when the origin of the rocket is the only major milestone conveys the message that earlier spaceflights using foreign rockets or by foreign countries "don't count" as spaceflights. A government production knowingly marginalizing historical facts and inserting its own interpretation of history which attributes a historical event solely to its own efforts rather than efforts made by foreigners can quite reasonably be labeled as propaganda.
The entire space program was based upon military defense - the programs were marketed as exploration/science for the public and easier funding, but in reality we were testing (as we still do today) the delivery systems for bombs. The program has grown into a Multi Billion dollar business for satellite communications and other surveillance deployment.
The Redstones and Titans used in Mercury and Gemini were repurposed ICBM rockets... the military didn't learn much from those programs as they were the ones that did the major development of the rockets in the first place. The multi stage version of the Titan used for Gemini didn't really offer any useful capability for military purposes. The Saturn rockets were far beyond useful for military purposes when they already had perfectly good ICBMs that could reach their targets at much lower cost and with much quicker launch times. You don't need to reach orbit to get wherever you need an ICBM to get to, never mind another stage on top of that. The Saturn program is completely useless for the military. A debate could be had about if the space program was backed more for the actual, stated, goals, or if it was just a good way to pump a lot of money in to companies that also provided for the military, but the Saturn/Apollo programs them selves didn't provide much of use for the military.
No. The military space program didn't use anything shown here, and the Titan II/Titan III/Titan 34/Titan IV were used instead of the Saturn1/1b, with similar capabilites but much less expensive.
@@robertoroberto9798 SLS....well everything said still applies , but the SLS has only launched once with crazy delays and cost over runs...Space X is killing it
@@lazynow1 Delays are needed if you want to launch successfully 100% of the time. So far, Starship had 3 failed engines from the start because Musk didn’t think adding a water deluge or fire ramp was needed.
I'm going to sound like a drama queen and weirdo, but what the space program did in this era is probably one of the best, most pure things our Country has ever done.
Destroying the Empires of Japan and the German Reich and standing up to Global Communism wasn't bad either.
agreed
It was mostly motivated by politics, as it is today.
@@RWBHere At least Ike made it non military
Minus employing NAZIs to get it done... but yeah It's pretty... 'Americana'
I always love the excited whoops of joy from the controllers when the Saturn 1 flew for the first time
Me too, I remembered someone mentioned it in a documentary and came here it to hear it.
While a documentary made with the voices of the era and this kind of editing is really interesting, the use of AI upscaling is really noticable; most of the images feel washed out, and you loose details instead of gaining them.
I would have preferred the raw footage, maybe with a less heavy noise reduction algorithm applied. Those white and purple rockets, those faces that look like paintings, the drawing board with unrecognizable drawings, my eyes couldn't handle it.
Just discovered this posting of Saturn I history! Fabulous, thank you! I can add a little backstory. My father was Launch Director for SA’s 8, 9, and 10. The Pegasus launches. Normally Von Braun was the LD. But the data needed from the Pegasus was so critical to Apollo that N.A.S.A. HQ removed VB and sent my dad down to the Cape from HQ in DC. He trained under Kurt Deebus who was Director of operations there. VB was not happy and insisted on being present. He was, but on a visitor pass. During launch countdown there was a problem getting Pegasus battery to full charge. During the long “Hold” VB began pressuring that it was good enough and to launch. Dad refused, saying he would not launch a dead satellite and reminded VB he was there as a visitor. The team decided to try something we all know today but was new back then. They drained the battery of all charge and started a new charge cycle. It went to full charge. The Hold was released, count resumed, launch successful of the working satellite.
I have a picture collection made by mom from the official photographs telling the story of the activity at Launch Control in the blockhouse. After that launch VB never interfered again. I believe at 46:45 that is VB congratulating Dad on the completion of the successful launches.
Thanks for sharing!
@@hakangustavsson3538 Welcome!
Later this month I’m starting a Substack with title “Tales from the Space Age”. A family level view of the 1950s through early 1970s, from NACA to NASA. A childs perspective growing up in an inner Space Agency family.
I love the sixfold symmetry of the original S-IV, and the shots of its engines firing up are beautiful.
Sure, although those RL10s sure were underpowered.
Great stuff, I was familiar with these early Saturn rockets but knew next to nothing about their tests and history and all they did to make the Saturn V a success. Thank you!
Am working at the Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville Alabama. We have a Saturn 1 standing up in the Rocket Garden in the back of the Museum. I learned more about that rocket in this video than I learned working as a Guide over there for a year.
To this day, I'd say the Saturn SA-5 is the best looking, sexiest Saturn vehicle ever. Great footages and rundown on the Saturn history! Thanks for sharing.
I completely agree! Finally I'm not alone anymore!
@@andreabindolini7452 what Saturn rocket you like.
@@maxwellwalcher6420 Generally speaking, the 1/1B family is very handsome
I'm partial to the 1B myself :) though nothing will ever top the sexiness of Gemini-Titan, that is the most beautiful LV/spacecraft combo of all time
@@harbingerdawn Is neat. And those hypergolic exhausts are fascinating, albeit a little too toxic ;-)
Wicked cool! I've never seen such in-depth detail about the early Saturn rocket family.
Great footage as always! Thought I’d read and knew everything about the Saturn vehicles, but then you go and find yet more ~60 year old footage and I’m back to square 1 ;)
It takes a lot of time to sort the footage, but it's worth it. There's enough to recreate most of the flight in detail!
Me as well. I knew about Saturn I coming before V (which my dad worked on as a physicist) but I had no idea the magnitude of the program and how advanced it was just a decade or so after WWII.
🏆🏆🏆👍🇺🇲🙏
I lived thru this time and missed school every morning if each launch.
Thank you for sharing
Saturns were amazing. Had not seen much of this footage before. Thank you.
My dad got to witness the entire Apollo program on TV, now he gets to watch us go back to the moon with his grown 40 year old son!
Just a wonderful compilation, carefully done and with fascinating insights. Thank you!
Funny seeing Eisenhower alongside Von Braun. Great video 😉
Very useful light research for my rp-1/RO play through on kerbal space program. Thank you!
SA-5 was a beauty.
Out of this world again excellent video as always
My all time favorite rocket = The Saturn.
Great job in bringing some history and video never before covered but still very interesting to us out here. Thank you
So, the last Apollo command module in orbit was apparently July 8th, 1989 !!
Saturn 1, SA-8, mission AS-104. The Apollo BP-26 craft was launched into orbit on May 26, 1965 and ended with its reentry on July 8th, 1989. A 24-year flight! It was a derelict boilerplate CM for most of that time. The longest Apollo flight. 🙂
This is just fantastic!!!! Thanks!!!
I did laugh how the reference to ICBM rockets are related to the Saturn, well let's not forget the actual daddy, THE WW2 V2 German rocket weapon.
41:12 that film of the astronauts watching the launch while leaning against the car with the top down is so cool.
Cooper, Shepard, White, McDivitt, Schweickart, Slayton. Perhaps others
Outstanding upload, thanks
Just imagine if SpaceX was around back then, lol my email would come to me on the Moon or Mars.
Space exploration is one of the best things that happend to this World, (besides the 20K + peices of garbage in LEO).
I hope people watch this 40 years from now, they probably wount blink, or laugh their ass off.
Love the episode!
- Will
Interesting how the early flights had ignition at T+0 and then launch at T+5. Later on, ignition was moved up into the last seconds of countdown and T+0 became the moment of launch.
Bellissimo🤩!!
love the thinking behind the the design of the Saturn I... can't built a rocket big enough? Take 1 Juno rocket, strap 8 Redstone rockets around it, add a support structure to the base.. add 8 RL-10 engines and you have the basis of the Saturn I!
22:20 SA-1 Launch. "Go man! Go!"
5:40 I had no idea the satellite was spun up before it even launched!
Very good doc. Keep the good work!
It's interesting how they used TV cameras on these uncrewed rockets to monitor events in real-time, but the U.S. didn't broadcast live TV from a manned spacecraft until Apollo 7 in 1968.
this was amazing!
Saturn I and Saturn V are two different systems, the V is much larger, but the Saturn I just looks so cool.
Not entirely different. The S-IVB, Instrument Unit and the upper shroud were common to both Saturn IB and Saturn V.
Very well put together!
all the Saturn rockets cool.
would you do all Saturn 5 launches.
Don't forget about Saturn IB as well.
It's on the to-do list ;)
It's on the to-do list, but Saturn V test flights deserve their own video ;-)
@@RetroSpaceHD what Did you like on the Saturn rockets.
Excellent!
The U.S. SPACE PROGRAM in a short period of time did a lot from Mercury,Gemini,and finally Apollo. Now it's Artemis, and God Bless Those Brave Astronauts.
The Saturn S-I block I and block II rockets were missed opportunities for NASA, once they'd finished their contributions to project Apollo they could've been continued as satellite launchers with Saturn I block II with a live Centaur third-stage would've made an excellent interplanetary space-probe launcher.
Good work. My only minor criticism is that the up-scaling was a bit harsh in some spots.
IMO the BIGGEST step in rocketry was to go from 10k ..100K and then create > 1.25M thrust !!
this is great
At about the 40 minute mark a camera just below the S-IV stage shows the Rl10-A3 engines. Upon staging, you can see what look like 'stools' that were beneath each nozzle? Were these part of the precooling process? Or some other reason? They certainly weren't structural in nature (I don't think)
Thank you.
Amazing to think that precisely one week after Kennedy's visit, he be dead.
If You are impressed with spacex pace, just look at this footage. What was possible if we only commit.
All flights of Saturn were successful as compared to Atlas, Titan, others which were common to have explosions. While Saturn had its problems but nothing like the others. Which I wonder if Von Braun's team laid out a design that allows component and subsystem testing, along with resources (money and manpower) to test each item and combined systems. Maybe other rockets had certain inherent designs that didn't allow for that. Or maybe it's because Jupiter, Redstone, Atlas, Titan were urgent wartime rockets pressed into service. While Saturn was not intended as a weapons carrier so not the schedule pressures. Any comments about this?
Saturn was designed for human flight from the start, so it had to be very reliable. The previous rockets were basically mass-produced missiles with much higher failure rates (acceptable for military purposes).
So much had been subsequently learned from the early development of the MX-774 program (the father of Atlas) and Thor/Jupiter programs, Redstone, so this gained technical experience and insight certainly helped guide Saturn development. It's truly amazing what had been learned from these earlier programs when knowledge was sparse and everything was a "first try" kind of progress.
@@765kvline good mention, I read Atlas program was something like $40 billion (yes a B) in 1959 dollars. With that kind of money you can hire all sorts of engineers to do all sorts of stuff. Then take what worked.
@@wrightmf I'm old enough to remember how the Titan program was criticized as a "duplication" of the Atlas ICBM program. However, the Titan program offered new experience in missile design, especially with the advance of being able to start and re-start a second stage in the vacuum of space. The young of today, have no concept of how everything was a pioneering effort with little experience. By the time the Saturn and (short-lived) Nova launch vehicle programs were inaugurated, technology was considerably advanced by Redstone (1953), Thor, Jupiter, Atlas and Titan vehicles, not to mention Agena and Centaur series (1962).
@@765kvline There is a short YT video of film footage from 1960s showing collapse of an Atlas missile on a launch pad at Vandenberg, I don't remember details in description but it looked like pressurization of fuel tanks failed. As you know, that missile held its shape like a pressurized balloon. I was thinking a general would tell an airman to get a truck and drive down to the Convair plant in San Diego to get another Atlas. They were making them like sausages on an assembly line back then. So you lose a missile, just buy another one.
Only thing that comes close is space x bosters landing
The difference between the Saturn I and Saturn IB lies in the second stage where the Saturn I had eight engines on the second stage whereas the Saturn IB had a single J-2 engine.
Aside from the single J-2 instead of the six RL-10 engines, the S-IVB second stage on the Saturn Ib was also far larger than the S-IV in terms of propellant capacity. Also, the first stage was stretched (and the fins reduced) and the engines, that were made more powerful, were rearranged, with the turbopump exhausts of the inboard engines, that previously were on the side of the rocket, repositioned on the bottom. You can see the difference at launch: all Saturn I had those fancy "fountains of fire" externally to the main exhausts, while the Saturn Ib (except, I believe, for the first) didn't have them.
The result was a launch vehicle that had over twice the payload of the previous version, though an hypotetical, current day, Saturn-Ib (if the production was never halted) would have probably returned to the RL-10 on the second stage, because of the higher efficiency of those engines.
@@andreabindolini7452 I'd guess a modern S-IVb would have big TWR issues with RL-10s
@@dubsy1026 Possibily, but with, let's say, five "Vinci" engines it would have the same total thrust with far better specific impulse.
@@dubsy1026less than one twr is okay for upper stages.
Most of the early rocketry work was designed to launch thermonuclear warheads at the enemies of the superpowers. Mercury used Redstone and Atlas rockets. Gemini us modified Titan rockets. The Soviets used their Vostock rockets but their inability to build something like Saturn doomed their Lunar missions.
But their R7 rocket booster system is far, FAR more successful than anything we've ever launched. It launched Sputnik, and it's still sending crew and supplies to the International Space Station. They had their early problems, but they just kept improving their design instead of trying to design something new every few years.
SA-1 LAUNCH 22:50
i ment 22:57
So where is the V2 from the germans.
In museums
If Chrysler built some of the engines..how come nobody asked..
THAT THING GOT A HEMI IN IT?
Ah... the heady early days of spaceflight where mistakes made, were lessons learned and applied.
SpaceX is recreating that atmosphere once more with their Starship/Super Heavy work.
i can't believe foot, miles and pounds are still being use... USE METERS AND KG MOFOS!!!!!
1:28 "First true space flight" such beautifully typical propaganda of the time :)
0:31 "free of gravity"… yeah…
When was there an intentional space flight before 1949?
@@RideAcrossTheRiver In 1944. The US also conducted numerous spaceflights with captured V-2s prior to 1949, including taking the first photo of Earth from space in 1946 and first panorama in 1947. 1947 also saw the first animals sent into space (fruit flies).
@@harbingerdawn Right, but why do you say "propaganda"?
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Because it was not the first spaceflight and they knew it, they themselves had conducted spaceflights prior to that. The only potentially unique thing they could have been referring to is first flight to space, or first scientific flight, using a domestically designed and built rocket. By calling it "the first true spaceflight" when the origin of the rocket is the only major milestone conveys the message that earlier spaceflights using foreign rockets or by foreign countries "don't count" as spaceflights. A government production knowingly marginalizing historical facts and inserting its own interpretation of history which attributes a historical event solely to its own efforts rather than efforts made by foreigners can quite reasonably be labeled as propaganda.
The entire space program was based upon military defense - the programs were marketed as exploration/science for the public and easier funding, but in reality we were testing (as we still do today) the delivery systems for bombs. The program has grown into a Multi Billion dollar business for satellite communications and other surveillance deployment.
Early launches yes, but when you reach the point where a rocket need days of preparation at the pad, it becomes useless as weapon ;-)
The Redstones and Titans used in Mercury and Gemini were repurposed ICBM rockets... the military didn't learn much from those programs as they were the ones that did the major development of the rockets in the first place. The multi stage version of the Titan used for Gemini didn't really offer any useful capability for military purposes. The Saturn rockets were far beyond useful for military purposes when they already had perfectly good ICBMs that could reach their targets at much lower cost and with much quicker launch times. You don't need to reach orbit to get wherever you need an ICBM to get to, never mind another stage on top of that. The Saturn program is completely useless for the military. A debate could be had about if the space program was backed more for the actual, stated, goals, or if it was just a good way to pump a lot of money in to companies that also provided for the military, but the Saturn/Apollo programs them selves didn't provide much of use for the military.
No. The military space program didn't use anything shown here, and the Titan II/Titan III/Titan 34/Titan IV were used instead of the Saturn1/1b, with similar capabilites but much less expensive.
Back in the days in America when they taught physics, chemistry, calculus and drafting in high school. It's all social-engineering garbage now.
HaHA...now rockets are designed by women and EEOC hires....now NASA has no rockets...its all Space X
SLS?
@@robertoroberto9798 SLS....well everything said still applies , but the SLS has only launched once with crazy delays and cost over runs...Space X is killing it
@@lazynow1 Delays are needed if you want to launch successfully 100% of the time. So far, Starship had 3 failed engines from the start because Musk didn’t think adding a water deluge or fire ramp was needed.
@@robertoroberto9798 just keep talking because you sound foolish