A failure? The purpose of a test flight is to look for problems; find them; and try to fix them. Better they were found on an unmanned flight, and fixed, before live crew members went up. By that stretch, this flight was a success; those problems never repeated on any subsequent Saturn launch.
I assume you were talking about the POGO issues with the first stage, and the crossed wiring that shut down two engines in the second stage? If so, you are correct. Those problems were quickly identified and fixed, and the next flight of the Saturn V was Apollo 8.
I guess the unmanned launch of Apollo 6 wasn't covered on the news because this was overshadowed by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that SAME day. Otherwise, the Big Three networks would probably have been all over this one. PS. Jack King turned in yet another splendid pre-launch commentary!! Thanks Jack for all you did!! :) :)
The launch happened at 7am Eastern. MLK was not assassinated until 12 hours later, so there was nothing to prevent the networks from covering the flight that day.
This CM is at the Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta. I went there recently to see it and it was awesome! Great to see the burn marks on the bottom … and, how small the CM really was!
Don't forget the tremendous vibrations that occured during the final minut of the S1-C burn on this flight. Had that been a manned launch they would probably have to abort.
At least nasa bothered to add a launch abort system, the soviets just shot them out of the cockpit with a chute and said good luck. 😂 And for their planned moon missions, on the return home they wouldn’t have a chutes on the capsule they just expected the cosmonauts to jump out of the cockpit and skydive.
You’re talking about the POGO. You are correct, the launch escape system would have had to pull the crew in the CM away from the stack. They also had a problem with the S-II, where, due to a crossed wire, the IU shut down two engines rather than one. But the other engines took up the slack, and kept the stack on course. The problem with the S1-C was caused by resonance, the S-II by a crossed wire (and the fact that except for Apollo 4, the stage had never been tested above the atmosphere). Both problems were quickly discovered, and were fixed in time for Apollo 8.
Jim White, Apollo 6 was not a failure. The vehicle got off the pad and successfully put the Apollo CSM into Earth orbit. However, the 2nd stage suffered problems with two engines out of the five, causing them to shut down (later traced to damage caused by pogo oscillations earlier in the flight). The remaining engines burned longer to compensate, as did the 3rd stage. Once in orbit, the third stage also did not re-start as planned, possibly due to igniter fuel line damage caused by the earlier pogo. These problems were fixed, and the next Saturn V flight was the fully successful Apollo 8 manned mission to lunar orbit.
What's really wierd was that when the first engine on the SIIC failed cross wiring caused the IU to shut it down as well an another perfectly good J2 engine. Needless to say this was an easy fix and I'm glad it happened on this flight and not a manned flight...
Apollo 6 is perhaps the most dramatic Saturn Launch. To quote from Apollo by Cox and Murray, 'It was without question the most exciting powered launch anybody in the MOCR had ever witnessed. "A fascinating flight", (Jay) Greene (FIDO) said tersely-his very first shift in the MOCR. What was he doing all this time? "Puckering."So far I have only found low quality footage and audio of the A6 launch. Surely there must be some launch camera footage and MOCR audio.Thanks again LM5.
I remember VANGUARD well. Because rocket technology was so primitive in the 1950s, the official hope was one success in 12 launches. The actual rate was 3 successes in 13 Launches.
Actually, compared to most boosters in the '50's and '60's it was great. It's startling to think the Atlas was for several years the US' primary ICBM program with as many launch failures as that program had.
Apollo 6 was a smashing success. Test flights are just that.....to test all of the components. The 1st stage shook itself silly, and subsequent engine failures required modifications. The next one visited the Moon. That makes for a successful test flight.
@ceredigio It wasn't a PAO I think it was one of the test conductors or the senior launch controllers on their loop before the public braodcast commentary resumed.
Watching this in August 2022 this was 54 years ago and Nasa still a month away from launching a similar rocket. And it's a cobbled together from shuttle parts
For STAR TREK fans, this launch is especially eerie! In the episode "Assignment: Earth" the Enterprise travels back through time to the year 1968. Mr. Spock says that along with the launch of a secret US project to put a nuclear weapons platform into space, "There will be an important assassination today." On the day this rocket was launched--April 4, 1968--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated!
The Saturn 5 launch footage used in the "Star Trek" episode "Assignment Earth" was of the first Saturn 5 launch in November, 1967. "Assignment Earth" (which was to have been the pilot for a spin-off series) aired the week prior to Apollo 6, Friday, March 29th, 1968.
Yes, due to the MLK assassination - I don’t remember seeing news about Apollo 6. I did not realize the launch occurred until later in summer. 1968 was a year of chaos ... filled with Vietnam, presidential politics, riots, and assassinations (MLK, RFK). Assignment Earth was the final episode of the second season. IF Teri Garr had accepted the series role (if NBC okayed), she may have missed Young Frankenstein. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment:_Earth
I believe you’ll find the footage of the Saturn V in that episode of Star Trek were of two different Saturn V’s. The boiler plate used only for fitting and ground testing and Apollo 4. The footage is well done and I always enjoy watching the episode. Wasn’t the Saturn great!
Dr. King was a Star Trek fan. When Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, decided to leave the show after the first season Dr. King approached her at an NAACP banquet in LA and talked her out of it. Dr. King told her he was a big fan of the show and that he and his family watched it every week. Then he told her that her role on the show was important because it was meant to portray black people as intelligent and capable of doing great things like traveling out into space. After listening to Dr. King she changed her mind and remained on the show.
This flight would go on to have some pretty serious issues with pogo and of course the shutdown of two perfectly good J-2 engines because, I'm guessing, it was Friday and someone didn't want to miss happy hour. I should add that because the thing was American made it made it to orbit anyway. In addition these issues along with their identification and the resulting corrective actions would erase any doubt that testing, testing and more testing was an absolute necessity if they were going to achieve Kennedy's goal.
@forbus56 News of the assassination of Martin Luther King broke just before 7:30 P.M. ET. In the eastern half of the U.S., the network newscasts had ended. The first network bulletins came at 7:30 ET; Walter Cronkite had left the Washington newsroom where he had anchored that night's newscast (I think he was at the Cape for the launch and had filed a report for the "CBS Morning News" that aired a few minutes later, and had flown to D.C. so he had enough time to prepare and do the "Evening News") and was about to leave the CBS News bureau when he was summoned back to the studio; a young Dan Rather did the first CBS flash from New York. IIRC, the Apollo 6 launch was not televised live by any network, but I think "Today" also showed a tape of it a few minutes later, since I seem to recall watching a tape of it there.
