Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Thirty Seconds of Fury

 


The above video is of the first 30 seconds, from the ignition of the engines to the rocket clearing the tower, of the launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969.  Slowed down it takes 8 minutes to watch (the video is narrated).

was the mission that landed men on the moon for the first time. The film was shot at 500 frames per second and focuses on the base of the launch pad. As such, it is not so much a film of the launch as film of the tremendous punishment the launch pad took when the rocket's engines were lit.

There were assemblies called Hold Down Arms that held the rocket in place until its engines had fully fired up. The Hold Down Arms had to unlatch and retract to allow the rocket to leave the pad. Needless to say, the heat the engines put out punished the launch pad and those assemblies. They had to pour huge amounts of water on the pad to try to cool it down and minimize damage. 

It is an interesting view of a small piece of the engineering that went into putting men on the moon.   

From PetaPixel.

2 comments:

Luther said...

It was, and is, a tremendous locus of engineering. Done mostly with slide rules and intuition.

Our politics have devolved to making happy the least among us, when we should be focusing on the greatest for the really 'greater good'.

It's all back asswards now.

chuck said...

It's amazing how that video holds my attention, I've viewed it three times.