Mar 12

Space Rocket History #104 – Saturn’s First Flight – SA-1 – Part 1

Posted on March 12, 2015 by spac9750

Just as launch complex 34 dwarfed its predecessors, Saturn’s checkout represented a new magnitude in launch operations. The Saturn C-1 stood three times higher, required six times more fuel, and produced ten times more thrust than the Jupiter. Its size, was only a part of the challenge to the Launch Operations Directorate at Cape Canaveral…

Early Concepts of C-1 and C5

First Horizontal Mating of Saturn

Configuration of Saturn Block 1 and 2

Test of the Palaemon Barge

Booster Movement around Wheeler Dam

S-I & S-IV Stages Aboard Compromise Barge

S-I & S-IV Stages Aboard Barge

Route of the Barge from Tenn. to Fla.

Unloading Barge in Florida

Lifting Saturn SA-1 First Stage

Hoisting Saturn SA-1 First Stage

Erecting the Upper Stages of Saturn SA-1

Launch Complex 34 from the Air

Mar 05

Space Rocket History #103 – Saturn Development 1957 – 1960

Posted on March 5, 2015 by spac9750

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Many historians agree, the U.S. took its first step toward the moon in the spring of 1957, four years before President Kennedy declared the national goal of landing a man on the Moon, and returning him safely to the Earth. While still preparing for the launch of its first Jupiter (May 31 1957), the Army rocket team at Huntsville, Alabama, began studies of a booster ten times more powerful than the 150,000-pound thrust Jupiter…

Clustered Booster

Thor-Jupiter Engine

Early H-1 Engine

Launch Complex 34 Cape Canaveral

Proposed Saturn B Rocket

Proposed Saturn C Rocket

Saturn with Titan & Atlas Upper Stages

Saturn C-1 and Earlier Vehicles

Proposed Saturn C-2 Rocket

Booster Stage (S-I)

Second Stage (S-IV)

Jul 11

Space Rocket History #20 – Tiros 1 and Echo 1 – The First Weather and Communications Satellites

Posted on July 11, 2013 by spac9750

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“Who can say what contraption the future will bring?
There can be not a doubt, some more wonderful thing.

And if anyone ventures the future to scan,
Why indeed should it not be your old Weather Man?

Have you noticed how often in times that are past
We have used new inventions to improve the forecast?

Television is coming, it is not far away;
We’ll be using that too in a not distant day.

Photographs will be made by the infra red light
That will show us the clouds both by day and by night.

From an altitude high in the clear stratosphere
Will come pictures of storms raging far if not near

Revealing in detail across many States
The conditions of weather affecting our fates….” By George Mindling (Weather Bureau), 1939

Thor-Able

TIROS -1

First Picture From TIROS-1

Echo-1

Echo-1 Mockup

May 30

Space Rocket History #14 – US Space 1958 – Explorer, Vanguard, Pioneer, and NASA

Posted on May 30, 2013 by spac9750

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In late March, 1958, President Eisenhower publicly announced the United States’ intention to launch a spacecraft to the Moon. He assured the nation that this was not science fiction. It was an achievable goal presented by leading scientists. The announcement came less than 2 months after the first US satellite had reached orbit. The President was committing the nation to a space race to the moon with the Soviets. If all went well the country would have a spacecraft in orbit around the moon before the summer was over.