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Saturn: Giant Thrust Into Space 1961 NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Film HQ-36
🕑 Added 2019-08-16 19:39:36 +0000 UTCmore at http://quickfound.net/
'NASA film showing the first assembly and test processes of the Saturn rocket program.'
Originally a public domain film from NASA, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_I
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
The Saturn I (pronounced "Saturn one") was the United States' first heavy-lift dedicated space launcher, a rocket designed specifically to launch large payloads into low Earth orbit. Most of the rocket's power came from a clustered lower stage consisting of tanks taken from older rocket designs strapped together to make a single large booster...
Its major successes were launching the Pegasus satellites and flight verification of the Apollo Command and Service Module aerodynamics in the launch phase. Ten Saturn I rockets were flown before it was replaced by the derivative Saturn IB, which featured a more powerful upper stage and improved instrumentation.
President John F. Kennedy identified the Saturn I, and the SA-5 launch in particular, as being the point where US lift capability would surpass the Soviets, after being behind since Sputnik...
The Saturn project was started as one of a number of proposals to meet a new Department of Defense (DoD) requirement for a heavy-lift vehicle to orbit a new class of communications and "other" satellites. The requirements called for a vehicle capable of putting 9,000 to 18,000 kilograms into orbit, or accelerating 2,700 to 5,400 kg to escape velocity. Existing launchers could place a maximum of about 1,400 kg in orbit...
Wernher von Braun's team at the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) started studying the problem in April 1957. They calculated that a rocket with the required performance would require a lower-stage booster with a thrust of about 1.5 million pound-force (6.7 MN) thrust at takeoff. As it happened, the Air Force had recently started work on just such an engine, eventually emerging as the F-1. But the F-1 would not be available in the time frame that the DoD was demanding and would be limited to about 1 million lbf in the short term anyway. Another possibility was a Rocketdyne engine, then known as the E-1, which provided about 360,000 to 380,000 lbf (1,700 kN), four of which would reach the required thrust levels. This approach became the favorite, and in order to quickly provide fuel tankage to supply the engines, a new stage consisting of the tank from a Jupiter wrapped with eight taken from the Redstone would be used along with a thrust plate on the bottom where the engines would be attached.
Von Braun returned the design to DoD in December, 1957 as A National Integrated Missile and Space Vehicle Development Program, outlining the new design, then known simply as "Super-Jupiter". Several variations were proposed, using a common clustered first stage, and upper stages based on either the Atlas or Titan I... A Centaur would be used as a third stage, which was expected to be ready for operational use in 1963, right when the lower two stages would have completed their testing. The resulting three-stage design was much taller and skinnier than the Saturn design that was eventually built.
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was formed in February 1958 as part of DoD and was in charge of the requirements. ARPA asked for only one change to the design; concerned that the E-1 was still in early development, they suggested looking at alternatives in order to ensure the rocket would enter production as soon as possible. ABMA quickly responded with a slightly modified design replacing the four E-1's with eight H-1 engines, a minor upgrade to the S-3D engine used on Thor and Jupiter missiles. They estimated that changing the engines would save about $60 million and as much as two years research and development time.
Von Braun... changed the name of the new design to Juno V. The total development cost of $850 million ($5.6 billion in year-2007 dollars) between 1958-1963 also covered 30 research and development flights, some carrying crewed and uncrewed space payloads...
Satisfied with the outcome, ARPA Order Number 14-59, dated 15 August 1958, ordered the program into existence...
