I wrote earlier that today marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 4 – the first flight of the Saturn V rocket. This mission was designed to both test the entire Saturn V, but also the Apollo Command Module.
Previous Article – 50 Years Ago, The Launch Of Apollo 4 – The First Flight Of The Saturn V Rocket
The Saturn V would launch the Apollo spacecraft into an orbit much like that of future lunar mission of only about 100 miles up. After a coasting phase, the S-IVB stage would fire again, another first, putting Apollo on a trajectory which would carry it well away from Earth, to an altitude of about 10,000 miles – there, the Apollo spacecraft would test its engine and put itself on a lunar-return type of trajectory back to Earth, testing if the Apollo Command Module would survive the high stress of such.
Apollo 4 would turn out to be an amazing success, paving the way for another Saturn V test, Apollo 6, in April of 1968, and in December of that year, the first manned flight to the Moon – Apollo 8.
Enough of me talking about it though – if you do wish to read up I’ll provide the Wiki links below the video. Here, however, we have the 1967 film NASA produced telling the story of this amazing, and mostly forgotten, flight.
As always, enjoy!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_4
On a side note, if you look carefully, you can see on the bottom of the Saturn V 1st stage, above the black bars, areas that have been painted white – they look “off” from the rest of the white on the rocket. Those areas were originally black, but it was found that the paint caused unwanted heating of the fuel in that area, and so it was painted over on this vehicle, and not painted at all on later Saturn V 1st stages. Just a fun random fact!