[SeanPlunk]

While we were in Orlando we went by the Kennedy Space Center. Truly amazing stuff. The highlight for me was the Saturn V Rocket though. The fact that we put guys on top of a rocket that size and sent them to the moon in 1969 is simply amazing to me. If any of you ever are out that direction, I definitely recommend checking it out.

[SeanPlunk]

For a sense of scale:

[enkeivette]

Happy Baby

[Vettezuki]

There's a great Nova series on the entire space race. It's amazing. My grandpa worked in aerospace from the 50s through Apollo, designing the test equipment for the systems on the Lunar Lander. His stories about that time are fascinating. One of the things that most people don't realize is that the technology by 69 was already fairly antiquated, but the procedures for guranteeing reliability fixed it at a certain period. That's even more extreme in the case of the shuttle which up until fairly recently had some ancient stuff on it. Anyway, as for the giant rockets go look up Wherner von Braun, our first head of Nasa, whose previous employwer was the Third Reich. And finally, in some ways an even more staggering story is that of Sergei Korelev. He got to spend ten years in a gulag because Stalin was just that paranoid of smart people. And when I say smart, I mean really really smart. Where we had massive numbers of very bright people, the Soviet space program (which until he died was absolutely equal to our own and headed for the moon) was virtually carried in his head. He designed everything.

[jedhead]

Great stuff. Loved the pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Bob

[SeanPlunk]

The Saturn V's huge size and payload capacity dwarfed all other previous rockets which had successfully flown at that time. With the Apollo spacecraft on top it stood 363 feet (111 m) tall and without fins it was 33 feet (10 m) in diameter. Fully fueled it had a total mass of 6.5 million pounds (3,000 metric tons) and a payload capacity of 260,000 pounds (118,000 kg) to LEO. Comparatively, at 363 feet (111 m), the Saturn V is just one foot shorter than St Paul's Cathedral in London, and only cleared the doors of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) by 6 ft (1.8 m) when rolled out. In contrast, the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle used on Freedom 7, the first manned American spaceflight, was just under 11 feet (3.4 m) longer than the S-IVB stage, and less powerful than the Launch Escape System rockets mounted on the Apollo command module.

[Vettezuki]

It must have been something awesome to be anywhere near seeing that thing lift off.

[gsteichen]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

It must have been something awesome to be anywhere near seeing that thing lift off.

Experiencing a Saturn liftoff is near the top of my woulda shoulda coulda list. Watching the Apollo launches on tv as a kid was amazing, don't think my dad and I missed any. Great pics Sean, much envy!

[Ryridesmotox]

There is no way you could get me to strap myself onto a couple million pounds of rocket fuel... I would love to see it launch though... I would really love to hear that thing, it must sound positively amazing.

[kdracer73]

I was bored at work today and found this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Vyg...ayer_embedded#!

It is 45 min (kinda long) of slow mo shuttle launch video with 2 NASA geeks commenting. It starts out with ultra close up rocket engine shots and ends with long shots taken with a 400mm lens.