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The Americans gathered around their televisions 50 years ago today, October 11, 1968, while NASA engineers worried winds of more than 20 knots preventing the launch of the whole thing. first Saturn 5 rocket piloted.
The Saturn V rocket, higher than a 38-storey building and weighing 6.5 million pounds, was ready to take off at Pad 34 of the Kennedy Space Center. According to reports filed at the time, technicians were also nervous because it was the first time that astronauts were aboard this huge 361-foot rocket.
NASA engineers have determined that the Saturn V rocket should ultimately carry a payload of more than 90,000 kilos in space to be able to pose a man on the moon, which would require a massive two-stage rocket thrust . A Seal Beach company was awarded the contract for the construction of the second stage of the rocket and many people were now dedicated to this mission.
According to the family members of workers participating in the Seal Beach program, the excitement was particularly keen at Seal Beach, while hundreds of North American Aviation employees, now a division of Boeing, were watching and waiting to see their work elevate America into space, the last frontier.
The father of a history teacher at Los Alamitos High School High School, Rex Moses, was an engineer who helped design rocket engines that were incorporated in Stage 2 of Saturn V , built at Seal Beach.
The Seal Beach teams, which included North American Aviation, their suppliers and their subcontractors, were tasked with designing and building the huge second-stage rocket. The United States was then at war. Not a hot war with hostilities, but a cold war that fights for world domination with the Soviet Union.
The Soviets had quickly taken a lead in space with Sputnik and President John F. Kennedy had rallied the country to his famous challenge of May 25, 1961.
"I think our country should commit to this goal, before the end of this decade, of putting a man on the moon and sending him safely back to this earth."
Citizens of the country were particularly concerned because an accident had cast doubt on the future of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), which was growing. Ten months earlier, a tragic fire had killed three astronauts, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, and had put the Apollo program on its heels.
Without a flawless performance of Apollo 7, the Americans seem intrinsically to have known that the country would have easily lost their momentum for the race to space.
Since the fatal fire, the control module and the escape hatch had been completely redesigned, but they had never been tested in flight.
The giant stage was ready in time. It was shipped by truck in April through Bay Boulevard (now called Seal Beach Boulevard). She was taken with great care to the former naval station, loaded on barges and shipped by the Panama Canal to Alabama.
Once the tests were completed, the second stage of the completed Seal Beach was finally delivered to the Kennedy Space Center, where the Stage II rocket was set up, ready to be launched. Despite winds of 20 knots, the take-off order was given. At 11:02:45, the Saturn V rocket roared and the buildings trembled within a three-mile radius. The crew of the spacecraft consisted of Commander Walter M. Schirra, son, pilot of the Donn F. Eisele command module and Walter Cunningham as pilot of the lunar module.
Apollo 7 was wearing a lunar pilot module, but no lunar module.
In a matter of seconds, the first-stage giant J-2 reactors began raising the rocket off six million pounds as people around America held their breath and watched the giant fireball project itself right into the sky.
The second stage of the Saturn V, built at Seal Beach, contained five Rocketdyne J-2 engines. Once the first step was discarded, the second step was to run for 6.111 minutes. Its five engines allowed the astronauts and the craft to reach a height of 115 statute miles, 936 miles downhill and a critical speed of 15,500 miles per hour.
There were concerns about massive heat and insulation, but the engines burned effortlessly to exponentially push Saturn V and astronauts into deep space.
Once Phase II has completed its work, it has been dropped from the remaining phases, the payload then being fed by another local scene, built by workers at Huntington Beach; a single J-2 engine that would eventually propel men to the moon and back.
According to NASA, the main objectives of Apollo 7 were to thoroughly test the spacecraft systems during a mission of up to 11 days.
During the mission, the crew practiced rendezvous operations with the launcher's used S-IVB stage (built at Huntington Beach) and proceeded with eight fires of the aircraft's propulsion system. service, including the final fire in orbit to bring back spaceship and crew. to the earth.
Much of the data and information gathered in Apollo 7, which was launched fifty years ago, has contributed to the success of NASA's overall space program.
In the end, the Apollo 7 mission was a complete success because most systems worked flawlessly. Of course, NASA launched 13 giant Apollo rockets in space, which ultimately allowed President Kennedy to achieve the goal of placing the American flag on the moon.
In fact, exactly 2,969 days after President Kennedy's famous speech, astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered his famous phrase: "A small step for man; a giant step for humanity "when he planted the American flag in the sea of tranquility on July 11, 1969. The men and women of North American aviation, their salesmen, their subcontractors, etc., had done their job and had gained a place in American history. .
Unfortunately, the famous building located on Seal Beach Boulevard, where the Phase II rockets were built, will soon disappear, as authorities announced that it would be destroyed in early 2019.
Next week, we'll explain how the Phase II contract landed at Seal Beach. We will provide a detailed description of the project and talk to some of the people involved.
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