A few seconds after liftoff, a fin-vane at the base of the booster stuck and started the 13-meter-tall spacecraft-booster combination spinning like a bullet. Twenty-six seconds into the flight the vehicle started coming apart. The abort-sensing system signaled the launch escape tower rocket to fire and pull the spacecraft away…
Saturn 1, SA-6 was the first orbital launch of an Apollo Spacecraft by a Saturn Launch Vehicle and also the first flight utilizing an active ST-124 Stabilized Platform.
Max Faget’s position was that considering the difficulty of the job, if each mission was successful half the time, it would be well worth the effort. But Gilruth thought that was too low. He want a 90% mission success ratio and a 99% ratio for Astronaut safety. Walt Williams who was currently running the Mercury program believed that astronaut safety needed to be limited to only 1 failure in a million which was 99.9999%.
Launch Escape Vehicle Configuration
Jettison of the Launch Escape System after a Successful Launch
Full-Scale Mockup of the Service Module with Panels Off
The CM Probe Slips into the LM’s Dish-shaped Drogue, and 12 latches on the Docking Ring Engage
The Cabin Section of the Command Module being Assembled at North American Aviation
…From the information they gathered on the existing technical problems, Disher and Tischler concluded that prospects were only one in ten that Apollo would land on the moon before the end of the decade….
The “big dish” at Canberra Australia
11/16/63 Blkhouse 37, NASA new Manned Space Flight chief George Mueller briefed. JFK there 6 days before his death