Some photos of the Apollo Spacecraft you might not have seen. *Dial-Up warning/VERY Pic heavy*

[A HERETIC I AM]

In light of all the Apollo 11 threads and the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing coming up, I thought some on DU might enjoy this.

I've always been fascinated by our spaceflight programs and came across these images today. They offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the assembly process of "the stack". Bear in mind while you look at these photos that all of this was built before the age of complex computers and CAD/CAM by engineers whose most capable calculating device was the slide rule. (Link added for those younger DU'rs who have never seen one)


Apollo 11 S-IC first stage in the Vehicle Assembly Building transfer aisle.


A crane lifts the Saturn first stage.


Workers prepare the S-IVB for mating of the Instrument Unit (pictured left), which houses guidance, control and other Saturn V systems. The ring is the same diameter as the stage the workers are standing on, but it is closer to the camera, thus distorting the perspective.


The S-II second stage is moved into position for mating with the S-IC first stage


This photo shows the S-IVB third stage being hoisted into position for mating with the second stage.


The S-IVB third stage is moved into position for mating


Apollo 11 CSM (Command Service Module) being moved from its work stand for mating


The Apollo 11 Command/Service Module (CSM-107) being readied for transfer to the Vehicle Assembly Building.


This photo shows the Apollo 11 Command-and-Service Module being mated to the spacecraft adapter.


Apollo 11 Saturn V rollout from the Vehicle Assembly Building. 20 May 1969.


Aerial view of the Apollo 11 Saturn V rollout from the Vehicle Assembly Building. 20 May 1969


This photo is a ground-level view of the Apollo 11 Saturn V during transport. The vehicle is 363 feet (111 meters) tall.


Apollo 11 Saturn V on the Crawler as it begins to go up the ramp to Pad 39-A. This photo clearly shows the hydraulic jacking capabilities of the Crawler, keeping the vehicle perfectly straight up as it climbs the grade. Note the diesel smoke as the crawler moves it's multi-million pound load up the hill.


This photo is an aerial view of the Apollo 11 Saturn V moving to the firing position on the pad at the Kennedy Space Center.

Many MANY more photos of this series and the Apollo 11 mission as well as technical data, video, audio and transcripts can be found here

Similar image libraries and data for all the Apollo missions can be found here

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. Awesome.

The people who built that, the most powerful machine every built, have every reason to be proud.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. what is insane is what happened later.

NASA DESTROYED ALL FUCKING BLUEPRINTS. For no reason at all.
NASA then destroyed all extra parts, including an entire Saturn V that could have been reverse engineered and rebuilt.

Why? Who knows? I have my suspicions.

[tinrobot]

7. Urban legend

We still have the plans.

http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_five_000313.html

We also have 3 fairly intact Saturn V rockets in Houston, Cape Kennedy, and Huntsville.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

11. many thanks for that.

All that time, I assumed the story to be true.

[nashville_brook]

9. NPR reported that NASA destroyed the original video recordings of the Apollo 11 mission, b/c they

needed to reuse the magnetic tape.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106637066

Houston, We Erased The Apollo 11 Tapes

by Nell Greenfieldboyce



Morning Edition, July 16, 2009 · An exhaustive, three-year search for some tapes that contained the original footage of the Apollo 11 moonwalk has concluded that they were probably destroyed during a period when NASA was erasing old magnetic tapes and reusing them to record satellite data.

"We're all saddened that they're not there. We all wish we had 20-20 hindsight," says Dick Nafzger, a TV specialist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, who helped lead the search team.

"I don't think anyone in the NASA organization did anything wrong," Nafzger says. "I think it slipped through the cracks, and nobody's happy about it."

NASA has, however, offered up a consolation prize for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission — the agency has taken the best available broadcast television footage and contracted with a digital restoration firm to enhance it, so that the public can see the first moonwalk in more detail than ever before.

But the lost tapes mean that the world will probably never again see the original images beamed back to Earth by the lunar camera that is now resting on the moon's dusty Sea of Tranquility, right where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left it.

Lunar Camera Tapes Were Higher Quality

That special lunar camera recorded in an odd format that was incompatible with the format used for broadcast TV. So when the footage was received on Earth back in July of 1969, it had to be converted for the live television broadcast.

The conversion degraded the images, and hundreds of millions of TV viewers saw dark, murky pictures.

Those pictures were still thrilling — after all, it was "Live from the Moon!" and a human was walking on another celestial body for the very first time — but some experts knew that the lunar camera was capable of doing better.

"It was better. We knew it was better," says Stan Lebar, who worked at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and led the team that designed and built the lunar camera.

He knew that engineers on the ground did preserve the lunar camera's odd-format footage by recording it onto tapes. So a few years ago, Lebar and some colleagues decided to go back and look at those tapes, to see if today's digital technology could use them to produce a higher-quality video.

"The whole thing started with the idea that this is the one piece of television footage that's going to be played for the next 50 or 100 or 300 years," says Lebar. "Those that follow us deserve better than what we had."

The Search

But, as NPR first reported back in 2006, the tapes were missing — no one had any idea where they were stored. That report helped trigger a massive search by NASA.

"We had hundreds and hundreds of leads coming to us during this period," says Lebar. "Every one of them was investigated."

Lebar and others spent hours and hours in a vast government storage facility known as the Washington National Records Center, a place that Lebar compares to the giant warehouse at the end of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The search team combed through "racks of documents, tapes, all kinds of things from NASA and other agencies," says Nafzger.

The search wasn't limited to that one place — the searchers went everywhere from storage businesses to private homes. They pored over logbooks, memos and all kinds of 40-year-old handwritten records.

"We went through old file cabinets that would have little record cards and give you an idea if a shipment went in with the name Apollo on it, and did it have 'Apollo' or 'tape'?" Nafzger says. Or did it have anything on there that could be a tape? So it went to the point of being able to look at anything Apollo-related or tape-related that wasn't distinctly not a possibility."

An Unsettling Discovery

They returned again and again to that vast government warehouse. But then they discovered something disturbing.

Over the years, NASA had removed massive numbers of magnetic tapes from the shelves. In the early 1980s alone, tens of thousands of boxes were withdrawn.

It turns out that new satellites had gone up and were producing a lot of data that needed to be recorded. "These satellites were suddenly using tapes seven days a week, 24 hours a day," says Lebar.

And the agency was experiencing a critical shortage of magnetic tapes. So NASA started erasing old ones and reusing them.

That's probably what happened to the original footage from the moon that the astronauts captured with their lunar camera, says Lebar. It was stored on telemetry tapes, and old tapes with telemetry data were being recycled.

"So I don't believe that the tapes exist today at all," says Lebar. "It was a hard thing to accept. But there was just an overwhelming amount of evidence that led us to believe that they just don't exist anymore. And you have to accept reality."

Still, Nafzger says, they didn't want to give up completely on their mission. "Our goal was to provide to the world the best possible video of a historic event we could for the future," he says.

[unc70]

25. This story doesn't quite make sense.

I will need to check with some other sources, but my memory is that the tapes and their formats used by Apollo would have made overwriting them impossible using tape drives being used in the 1980's. The tapes could have been moved elsewhere or destroyed because they needed somewhere to store the new tapes.

I remember reading recently of the effort it took to find and make operational a drive that could read these strange tapes and all the conversion of the data to a modern format. That story said that many of the tapes involved had been recently discovered somewhere and to the great relief of many who feared they had been destroyed or overwritten.

I will check on this and post back.

[nashville_brook]

48. yeah -- it really doesn't make any sense.

i'll check back. or, start another thread and PM me.

[krispos42]

35. Fuck shit piss hell!

Don't they have a goddamn tab to pop out so they couldn't be recorded on???

:cry:

[unc70]

37. Some more info about the Apollo video and telemetry tapes

The data tape story I remembered was about the images from the lunar orbiter missions which were used to select the lunar landing sites. Here are a couple of links to stories describing the efforts to recover the data from these tapes:

www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/2517.pdf

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3168568

NASA has now release enhanced video of the moonwalk based primarily on a recently found video tape recording of the images displayed live from the telemetry feed. From what I can tell, the tapes containing the raw telemetry are still missing and these are the ones that might have been overwritten and lost.

The reports that the telemetry tapes had also been found were apparently based on a hoax, but there is still hope of finding at least one of the copies made at the groundstation in Australia before the original would have been sent to the US.

[nashville_brook]

50. here's an obvious inconsistency -- the drives went obsolete in 75. the Apollo 11 tapes would

have still been in use at least at late as 1970 in order to analyze the data. Maybe they went into archival storage as early as summer of 1970.

The official NASA story is that there was a scarcity of magnetic tape for new satellite data -- but, you'd think that there'd be a notion that the refrigerator-size drives would be obsolete soon, and new satellites wouldn't be using that technology for downloading data. So, the way to fact check this is to pin down what data storage method was used for satellites between 1970 and 1975. Of that set, I would be that there's a subset that had moved on to new storage methods. So that leaves the subset that would have still used the old tech. This story could be confirmed by verfying the satellite missions that would have used Apollo's tapes.

[rhett o rick]

10. And we as a people with misplaced objectives, should be ashamed.

With thousands dying every year in this country for the lack of adequate health coverage, with millions in poverty, with families including children living in cars and tents, etc., we should be ashamed of our misplaced priorities.

[Captain Hilts]

13. You obviously have NO CLUE the technological advancements that came from this program in terms of

medicine, communication, manufacturing, safety, etc.

[conscious evolution]

14. My favorite advance-- WD40

The stuff is amazing.

[Captain Hilts]

26. And it smells good too! nt

[rhett o rick]

15. Ah yes, but I do have a clue. And I even support those advancements. But those technicalogical

advancements are not worth the life of one single child that dies from hunger. Maybe you and I have different priorities.

And I resent the fact that you state that I have no clue. As if you are the only one to judge. Just because we have different priorities about life doesn't mean I don't understand the difference.

It discourages me to know that a fellow DU'er would place technological advancements above human suffering.

[fujiyama]

40. I think the anger is misplaced

Had we not gone to the moon, we likely would have spent the same resources on something else that would have been MORE destructive.

The same minds that dedicated many years of their lives to designing and building a vehicle that could make it to the moon may just as well have ended up working on building weapons systems all those years.

It is true that resources are finite - but our intellectual capabilities as a species are not. If we were really serious about solving malnutrition and all the millions of problems that plague us, I think we would have - especially when realizing through the NASA Apollo photos of earth - that we really are one.

Scientific exploration and wonder are not taking away resources from solving society's ills. Society's greed and need to solve problems with violence are.

[Lochloosa]

23. Don't forget Velcro

I'm not making light of your response. The advances in science were amazing.

[Brother Buzz]

29. Don't forget the pocket caculator, too

Yet, the Saturn rocket would never have taken off without the slide rule. That's a fact, Jack.

[lumberjack_jeff]

16. There are many things for which humans should be ashamed.

Going to the moon isn't one of them.

[rhett o rick]

21. I agree. But what about priorities? nm

[gtar100]

34. Do you really think if we stopped funding NASA those funds would go to social aid programs?

Science programs, technology, and well-supported clean energy innovation hold great hope in make it possible for us to survive as a species. What other alternative is there, besides the mass destruction of 9/10ths of our population. It's not our funding of NASA that is bringing us down. It's greed, massive corporate structures with the one goal of making money at any expense. It's people willing to take the natural resources out of foreign countries and leaving behind destroyed, polluted habitats, environments, lakes and rivers all in the name of the bottom line for a corporation and for their own extravagance. These are misplaced priorities. Juxtaposing poverty and our space programs may look as if the finger of blame is on the latter, however, if we would overcome our environmental and economic abuses, then our science, engineering, craft, and artistic disciplines hold an open door for as many as would want. What's standing in the way is the concentration of the world's wealth in only a few hands and those few hands being willing to enslave and abuse the populations for their own personal gain.

[rhett o rick]

42. Of course not. How absurd. I didn't suggest such a thing.

I merely stated that our priorities are misplaced. We've had wonderful advancements in technology and I am lucky enough to benefit. Now let's focus on ending poverty.

[gristy]

44. You did say something similar

"But those technicalogical advancements are not worth the life of one single child that dies from hunger."

That seems pretty absolute.

[rhett o rick]

45. Ok so maybe I did overstate. I feel that ending poverty in this country is important. nm

[Warren DeMontague]

36. Wait a minute. Why are you sitting there, using the internet ?

Right now, shouldn't you be in a soup kitchen, helping the disadvantaged? Doesn't every second you spend doing something -anything- else DIRECTLY lead to children getting sick and poor people starving? Do you have any money in your wallet? Yes? Why haven't you gone out and given every last cent that you're not using for your immediate food and shelter to homeless people?

Hmmm. Maybe that's because even though you care -quite a bit, actually- about people in need and do what you can to help them, you also understand that it's not reasonable to expect that EVERY SINGLE AVAILABLE slice of your time and resources need to go to those issues. As a well-rounded individual, you help where you can, but you don't -you can't- spend every waking second from the moment you get out of bed (bed? you have a bed? Why haven't you given it to someone who needs it more?) to when you retire at night in selfless devotion to those in need. Right?

Well, that applies to our nation, too. The tiny sliver of the discretionary budget that NASA gets is not responsible for a lack of universal health care or a lack of universally available public housing. NASA had its budgets cut bigtime after the moon landings-- logically, wouldn't that mean that Gerry Ford should have got everyone health coverage and a roof over their head?

If I remember right, it didn't work out that way. Surely, we can look at some fucked up budgetary priorities- the trillion dollar Military Industrial Complex and $40 Billion a year to fight pot smoking spring, immediately, to mind-- but let's not be facile and pretend that somehow every social ill in this country is the fault of space exploration, and would be magically ameliorated if we merely stopped funding NASA.

And humanity must explore; that is fundamental to our nature- as much as we need to feed our bodies, we need to feed our minds as well- you can't even try to put a price tag on the scientific returns NASA has brought us in the past 50 odd years.

But, whatever. Yeah, "we should be ashamed" to spend any money on science or exploration "until we've solved all our problems down here".... which we're never, ever going to do, space program or no. Personally, I think small-mindedness and an inability to dream are the real shame. We move forward by moving forward. NASA and the space program have been a wonderful, peaceful investment and a net gain for all of us.

[rhett o rick]

41. I stand by my statement that we as the richest country on earth should be ashamed at our misplaced

priorities.

Of course I appreciate the technological advances. And I resent that you imply that I support using "EVERY SINGLE AVAILABLE slice of your time and resources need to go to those issues". I just would love to see a better balance.

We pledged to reach the moon and we did. Now let's pledge to end poverty in our country.

I am lucky to be able to use the internet. There are millions that can't. They are worried about feeding themselves and their children.

[Statistical]

49. Then cancel your internet.

Your internet connection this month is more than the lifetime per person cost of the Apollo 11 program.

Cancel your internet and feed a hungry child with the money. You should be ashamed of your misplaced priorities.

As long as one child is hungry not a single dollar should be spent on anything else.

[rhett o rick]

53. Huh? "You should be ashamed of your misplaced priorities."

Isn't that exactly what I said. But I have never said, nor do I believe that, "As long as one child is hungry not a single dollar should be spent on anything else." It doesn't have to be one or the other.

Do you think the space program should have a higher priority than feeding the hungry in this country?

[A HERETIC I AM]

47. Well said. While I think I understand rhett o rick's point....

I agree with you that the ills of society in general are in no way the fault of the space program.

If anything, we need to spend more on it. The advances and advantages to humanity that will be made available by further flights can not be known.

[rhett o rick]

54. I don't want to end the space program or technicalogical advancements.

I only ask that an equal priority be placed on ending poverty in the richest country in the world. Sad that no one supports that here.

[Name removed]

38. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rhett o rick]

43. Apparently I hit a nerve.

Rationalization is the key to happiness. You happy?

[Warren DeMontague]

51. "Rationalization is the key to happiness." ... so unless one is miserable, they're full of shit?

Wow. What a cheery outlook you have.

[rhett o rick]

55. Good grief. I get flamed for supporting ending poverty. How sad. nm

[bigjohn16]

2. Thanks for posting this.

I could only imagine what it would be like to be involved with something like that. Something so unique something never done by any other human. I wish we aimed for this type of greatness instead of the greed that rules our dreams these days.

[bbinacan]

4. I love the Saturn V

Thanks for the pics!

[Crabby Appleton]

5. Great pics, thanks. nt

[aaaaaa5a]

6. Quality thread! OUTSTANDING! Thank you

[A HERETIC I AM]

8. Glad you liked it. n/t

[leeroysphitz]

12. Faked. All faked.

:sarcasm:

[ControlledDemolition]

30. No way. The assembly actually took place on the moon!

:sarcasm:

(Edit: Different phrasing.)

[City Lights]

17. Fantastic pics!

Thanks for posting them.

Recommended.

[A HERETIC I AM]

18. Thanks everybody!

Thanks for the recs!

I'm glad you found this interesting.

[blaze]

19. Thank you!!

I love these kind of behind-the-scene shots!!

Thanks so much for posting.! :hi:

[shireen]

20. a grand and wonderful spacecraft.

thanks for posting those photos. they were amazing!

[Codeine]

22. I think the crawler

impresses me even more than the Saturn rocket itself.

[A HERETIC I AM]

24. Something interesting to note about one of the crawler pics....

Look again at the third from the bottom, the ground level shot. In the distance, on the right side of the crawler, appearing straight up the road stands the Mobile Service Structure.

This device;



The crawler would take the Mobile Launch Platform with the Saturn mounted, out to the launch pad and set it on its pedestals. Then the crawler would go back down the ramp and pick up the Mobile Service Structure and take it back up to the pad. It would stay in place as needed and then be moved away for the launch.



In the 3rd shot from the bottom in my OP, the Service Structure sits at a parking spot on the crawlerway designed for it. You can see the layout of the crawlerway and that parking spot on this wikimapia shot;
http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=28.5952989&lon=-80.6204224&z=14&l=0&m=b

Use the zoom feature as I've centered the crosshair on that parking spot.

I agree, the crawler is one of the coolest vehicles ever built.

[progressoid]

27. Boy, they sure went tot a lot of trouble just to fake a moon landing.

Sorry, couldn't resist. :evilgrin:

[ControlledDemolition]

31. Still, a lot cheaper than actually going! n/t

[Regret My New Name]

33. Build all the stuf f and go through all the motions but don't actually follow through?

Wow, I'd fit in awesome at NASA...

[Lagomorph]

28. it made one hell of a candle

[Regret My New Name]

32. MS-PAINTED!!!!11!

[fujiyama]

39. I LOVE the photos

and I'm glad you brought up the point about having no CAD/CAM available at the time. It's impossible to imagine considering how reliant we are on it now in so many industries, especially automotive and aerospace.

No virtual models. No meshing on the computer, no CFD, no FEA - all done by hand. Crazy. Just absolutely crazy. No wonder engineers that grew up then were and are so damn good. My dad is a bit younger (he goes his PhD around '80), but damn I wish I knew even a fraction of what he does. It was just the way he had to learn it...

BTW, I've seen the Saturn rockets at Kennedy Space Center and it's amazing when you walk under them as their overhead horizontally. You walk right under them and realize the sheer magnitude and length.

I've been going nuts over this 40th anniversary thing. The moon landing remains in my mind, one of human kind's greatest achievements - and proves that if we really want to do something, it may not be easy, but with the help of science, we have a hell of a chance of accomplishing that goal.

[Confusious]

46. Slide rules

What a nightmare! I would just give up on math right here and now if I had to use those.

[BlooInBloo]

52. "most capable calculating device was the slide rule." - pure bullshit...

Cool thread otherwise, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer

"Each flight to the Moon (with the exception of Apollo 8, which didn't take a Lunar Module on its lunar orbit mission) had two AGCs, one each in the command module and the lunar module. The AGC in the command module was at the center of that spacecraft's guidance & navigation system (G&C). The AGC in the Lunar Module ran its Primary Guidance, Navigation and Control System, called by the acronym PGNCS (pronounced pings).

Each lunar mission also had two additional computers:

* A flight computer on the Saturn V booster instrumentation ring called the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC)—a serial computer built by IBM Federal Systems Division.
* A small machine in the lunar module's Abort Guidance System (AGS), built by TRW, to be used in the event of failure of the PGNCS. The AGS could be used to take off from the Moon, and to rendezvous with the command module, but not for landing."

[A HERETIC I AM]

56. I did not refer to the computers carried onboard the spacecraft

My OP says;

"this was built before the age of complex computers and CAD/CAM by engineers whose most capable calculating device was the slide rule."

Perhaps it was not a completely accurate statement, but I was speaking about the building of the craft, NOT the flight controls.

The differences between the processes and methods used to construct the Saturn V and a Boeing 787 (Designed almost entirely using current technology Computers) are night and day. That's the point I was trying to make.

[Quantess]

57. Cool photos!