This is the beginning of a voyage only fantasied
when most of us were born, a voyage of exploration
into space.
Saturn, sailing down river to a Florida cape,
a chapter of a legend in the making even now,
a legend being made by many dedicated Americans
in all businesses and professions by the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, the
Marshall Space Flight Center, other NASA centers,
and American industry, such as the Chrysler
Corporation, manufacturer of the Saturn I
first stage, and the Douglas Aircraft Company,
who developed and built the second stage.
This structure, the vertical assembly building,
stands on an island off a Florida cape once
called Canaveral, but since renamed for John
Fitzgerald Kennedy.
“I believe that this nation should commit
itself to achieving the goal before this decade
is out of landing a man on the Moon and returning
him safely to the Earth.”
Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center
is one of many launch sites developed, built,
and used by NASA to launch manned and unmanned
peaceful explorations of space, a complicated
business which presents scientific and engineering
problems unheard of a few years ago.
The liftoff of Saturn V and later rocket-launched
journeys into space from this launch pad will
one day seem almost commonplace events to
some who are living even now.
This seems strange, considering how little
time has passed since we began the rocket
research and development program that will
make these journeys possible.
On launch Complex 34 at Cape Kennedy, not
far from the Apollo Saturn V spaceport, the
first Saturn I countdown began not too long
ago on October 27, 1961.
Ten unmanned flights have been made by Saturn
I launch vehicles.
Each of Saturn I’s ten missions took another
cautious, necessary step toward extensive
manned space exploration, not just to the
Moon, but even deeper into space.
Only sixteen years before, the research and
development program responsible for Saturn
I’s success was just beginning in this country.
And so before the drama of the first Saturn
launch begins, it might be well to understand
its full significance, to see how deeply the
roots of Saturn lie in the history of rocket
flight.
In these early years, there were several groups
doing research to develop useful rocket vehicles.
Even as today, the information gained was
freely exchanged, rapidly expanding the base
of our knowledge, developing new technology,
creating experience and skills from which
we might ultimately move to space flight.
From one of these groups came the first true
spaceflight in the world.
On February 24, 1949, a WAC corporal placed
a payload outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.
As these groups continued to expend this country’s
rocket technology, more room was required
and rocket researchers began to spread over
the United States.
In 1950, the Army research group moved to
Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama.
Here, the successful Redstone and Jupiter
missiles were developed by the United States
Army.
The Redstone and Jupiter, the grandfather
and father of the Saturn, for during their
development, the scientific base a technological
knowhow necessary for Saturn I were obtained.
In 1957, this knowledge was already being
used as men were sketching a vehicle, designed
from the ground up, for lifting the tons of
payload required for scientific space exploration.
Predicting the need for a booster with a million
and a half pounds of thrust, these rocket
scientists said this need could be met with
a cluster of existing Redstone and Jupiter
tanks and Jupiter rocket engines, plus many
hours of engineering work to tie them together.
In the fall of that year, the Soviets launched
Sputniks I and II.
Long-range projects were temporarily shelved.
On January 31, 1958, only six weeks after
Sputnik II, the first American satellite,
Explorer I, was placed in orbit by Juno I,
a modified Redstone with a thrust of 83,000
pounds.
Its payload discovered the van Allen Radiation
Belt.
With our own capability in space, an established
fact, on July 26, 1958, ARPA, the Advanced
Research Projects Agency, approved the program
for a clustered engine booster with 1.5 million
pounds of thrust.
A single engine powerful enough to produce
this thrust was under development by American
industry in 1958, but neither this engine
nor its tanks would be available in time.
Besides, with eight well-proven, properly
clustered smaller engines, the failure of
one would not mean the failure of the booster
to lift its heavy load.
The clustering of already designed Jupiter
and Redstone hardware would save both time
and money as we moved ahead.
On August 15, 1958, the Saturn Project was
assigned to the experienced group that had
developed Redstone, Jupiter-C, Juno I, and
launched the Explorer satellites.
It was a team geared to conduct its own research,
development, and production.
Its highly successful products were literally
custom-made in its own laboratories, shops,
and offices, or produced to specification
by a relatively few major industrial contractors.
What were only pounds had been lifted before,
tons of weight would be blasted into orbit
to explore space, in which we had only begun
to pioneer.
The lightweights were having their day.
Soon, it would be time for the heavyweights.
It was time for Saturn I, and in July 1958,
NASA was born.
Six months later, the Saturn Project, along
with other Army space-related missions became
part of the NASA program.
The size and complexity of Saturn I, the size
of the booster alone, and the complexity of
its components presented an enormous technical
and scientific challenge.
Another challenge would be presented by the
larger complexity of the management and organization
required to sustain a number of other space
projects already underway in 1958, and yet,
move on beyond the frontiers of science and
engineering.
To produce a series of huge Saturn I rocket
boosters in a mere handful of years and to
ensure success would create a revolution in
both management and engineering development.
Early in 1959, it was decided to use the liquid
propellant H-1 engine, an improved version
of the S-III Jupiter and Thor engine developed
by Rocketdyne as the basic element in the
Saturn engine cluster.
Fabrication and assembly of a ground test
first stage to prove out the cluster tank
and engine concept was started in mid-1959.
Translating this concept into a working vehicle
required proving out new ideas, for there
were many engineers and scientists who had
doubts that eight rocket engines could be
fired at the same time in close proximity
or that nine propellant tanks could be fastened
together so they would not shake apart during
flight.
The second stage, designed and developed by
the Douglas Aircraft Company, would be powered
by six liquid hydrogen-oxygen engines.
Selected for its greater thrust per pound
of fuel, the super cold liquid hydrogen would
require NASA and industry to develop a new
technology.
Much is always made of space technology, the
hardware is glamorous, but little is known
of the management program that makes a number
of complex projects simultaneously possible.
Three main projects ran like nerves through
the Saturn Program, development of the launch
vehicle, development of ground support equipment,
and the development of launch facilities.
Each demanded sustained and intensive effort.
Each was a separate project, yet interrelated
with the other two.
Through 1960 and into 1961, the Saturn Program
continued, developing not only the first flight
vehicle, its engines, equipment and instrumentation,
its plumbing, and its circuitry, but also
providing for support and launch facilities.
While the booster was being developed, modification
began to a static test stand at Huntsville,
Alabama to captive fire the first stage.
It took a year to convert the 177 foot high
structure.
When it was finished, a mockup was installed
to check the fit and test out methods for
servicing the booster during static tests.
These static tests began in March 1960, first
with two,
then with four,
finally, many weeks later, with all eight
engines running.
Then came another change in the management
of the Saturn I Program.
In September 1960, that part of Redstone Arsenal
transferred to NASA was formally dedicated
as the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center.
President Eisenhower had long ago stated his
belief that outer space should be used for
peaceful purposes.
Aeronautical and space scientific activities
sponsored by the United States should be,
he said, under the direction of a civilian
agency.
Now this was an accomplished fact, and the
president had this to say, “We are propelled
in these efforts by ingenuity and industry,
by courage to overcome disappointment and
failure, by free-ranging imagination, by insistence
upon excellence.
In this fact is proof again that hard work,
toughness of spirit, and self-reliant enterprise
are not mere catchwords in an era dead and
gone.
They remain the imperatives for the fulfillment
of America’s dream, not pushbuttons, nor
electronic devices, but superlative human
qualities have brought success and fame to
this place.”
In that fall of 1960, the planning and construction
continued, new test stands at Marshall and
at contractor’s facilities, launch and ground
support construction at the Cape.
Meanwhile, transporters to haul the bulky
boosters from place to place, aircraft to
ferry the bulging second stage and other cargo
from coast to coast, barges to float the first
stage down the river and through the Gulf,
these and thousands of other items large and
small had to be provided for Saturn I.
With so much happening, new information flowed
almost constantly into the Saturn project.
New technical fields were explored, new techniques
devised for assembly, fabrication, and other
processes, new decisions were made.
In early 1961, the Saturn I prime mission
was changed from launching scientific satellites
to supporting the growing manned spaceflight
program.
The first stage, therefore, had to be redesigned
to include fins for additional stability,
larger propellant tanks and uprated engines
for heavier payloads, payloads of about ten
tons as compared to the twenty pounds of Explorer
I. Guidance and control instrumentation was
also moved at this time from the separate
stages and combined into a single instrument
unit.
As new technology advancements were made and
as scientific breakthroughs were achieved,
change was a constant factor all through the
years of Saturn I development and flight,
for these were the years in which valves,
pumps, tubing, turbines, tanks, engines, gyroscopes,
accelerometers, and computers all adapted
to the rocket environments were developed
and produced.
This created a vast array of instruments,
pressure and strain gauges, transducers, telemeters,
beacons and recorders.
The combination of high stress, heat, and
vibration demanded creating new alloys of
steel and aluminum, increased the use of other
metals, beryllium, titanium, molybdenum, and
tungsten.
The same physical properties making these
metal suitable for Saturn also required development
of new methods of working them.
So, new tools based on the latest engineering
theory and scientific discoveries were developed.
Magnetic forming,
chemical milling,
electron beam welding, to name a few.
Ground service equipment was developed and
produced for test stands and launch sites
springing up like wild cat wails.
Liquid fuel, some commonplace, but others
once considered rare and exotic chemicals,
were produced by tons, kerosene, liquid oxygen
and hydrogen.
Liquid hydrogen technology, the development
of techniques for the manufacturer, delivery,
storage, and use of the super cold liquid
hydrogen, with its minus 423 degree boiling
point, reached a scale never attempted before.
The engineering and research lay on the edge
of the state of the art throughout the program,
and the skills involved were more diversified
than usual.
No single government agency, or even the entire
government, could command all the knowledge
and skills needed.
Rather, a combination of government, educational
institutions, and private industry was needed.
This led to increasing industrial support
for the Saturn I program.
More and more corporate names began to appear
on tools and equipment, on containers, on
small parts and components developed in industrial
plants scattered across the United States.
More and more names appeared on office doors
and building walls, on the smocks of engineers
and technicians.
At the same time, there was another shift
in Marshall’s philosophy of vehicle development.
A shift in the basic concept of testing vehicles
in flight to the idea of testing not only
all components, but the vehicles themselves
in ground test facilities, even though these
also had to be designed and built.
The reasons for the shift from flight to ground
testing were mainly economic.
Flight testing required a large number of
expendable flight vehicles.
The Jupiter Program alone had involved almost
fifty flight test vehicles.
The high cost of each Saturn I set a definite
limit on the number of these that could be
launched simply for test purposes.
Everything happened everywhere at once.
In Florida, machinists formed parts for a
liquid hydrogen rocket engine,
While in Tennessee, wind tunnel blasts roared
past a scale model of the Saturn vehicle,
While in California, the dome of a Saturn
fuel tank turned on a welding fixture,
And in Huntsville, at the same time, a full-sized
Saturn first stage shook in its test stand.
The use of mockups, special stages, flight
stages, computers, special test stands, and
other ground test facilities reached the point
in the Saturn I program where the success
factor for any given vehicle was exceptionally
high.
Success in flight was almost guaranteed, in
fact, by the continuous growing and cumulative
effect of testing on the ground.
Research, design, develop, and test, assemble
and test and modify, test, reassembled and
test, and mate and test and modify and test
again, this was the pattern resulting in Saturn’s
reliability, a pattern that flowed through
months and even years of constant change and
growth and new research that often began the
cycle over again.
Finally, now somehow, but as the result of
management grounded in science and technical
competence, the reliable parts, systems, and
stages of Saturn I were joined.
In August 1961, the first Saturn flight vehicle
was ready for shipment from Marshall to the
Cape.
Its stages and payload body moved from Marshall
shops to docking facilities on the Tennessee
River for loads aboard the barge, Palaemon.
On August 5, the barge began its slow trip
down river, through the Gulf of Mexico, and
around the Florida peninsula to the Cape.
There, the stages were unloaded.
Assembly of the first flight vehicle began
in the middle of August, towering 162 feet
on its launch pedestal at Launch Complex 34.
Loaded with propellants, its weight on liftoff
totaled 460 tons.
Before that happened, however, other matters
were attended to.
On September 13, 1961, contracts were let
for the Army Corps of Engineers to build Launch
Complex 37, an additional Saturn I launch
complex.
At Marshall, designs were being drawn of bigger
and more advanced Saturn vehicles to launch
manned explorations of the Moon and deeper
space.
In October, NASA acquired Michoud Ordinance
Plant at New Orleans.
Here in this manufacturing facility, Chrysler
would build the last two Saturn I first stages,
and Chrysler and other NASA stage contractors
would build first stages for more advanced
Saturn vehicles.
Out west, an upper stage manufacturing and
assembly site for advanced Saturn vehicles
was planned for Huntington Beach, California
by Douglas Aircraft Corporation.
Such planning extended into the years ahead.
For the launch of the first Saturn vehicle
from Launch Complex 34 on October 27, 1961,
the Saturn I and advanced Saturn flight programs
were only beginning.
The first Saturn launch was almost flawless.
None of the ten flights presented significant
problems.
The prime mission of the first four Saturn
flights was to verify first stage design and
prove out launch facilities.
There was some distinctive differences, however,
between these early flights.
A secondary mission was assigned to SA-2 and
-3, Project Highwater.
Ninety-five tons of water ballasting the dummy
second stage was deliberately exploded in
space to see what effect this would have on
the ionosphere.
The explosion caused only a temporary disturbance.
SA-3 also carried the first full propellant
load of 750,000 pounds.
A secondary mission for SA-4 was the testing
of its engine-out capability.
One engine was cut off in flight to see if
the vehicle would operate on the remaining
seven.
This it did, scoring the fourth Saturn I success.
On January 29, 1964, NASA launched the fifth
Saturn I.
The liquid hydrogen fueled second stage, flight
tested for the first time functioned perfectly.
First stage engines shut off as planned.
Onboard cameras recorded second stage separation
and ignition.
The stages’ engines burned for eight minutes
with attached instrument unit and sand-filled
nosecone attained orbit as an Earth satellite.
This almost nineteen ton satellite was the
heaviest ever orbited by the free world.
SA-6, launched five months later on May 28,
1964, was the first to put into orbit an Apollo
boilerplate command and propulsion module.
The Apollo spacecraft is being developed by
the Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas.
There was another first for SA-6, activation
of a new guidance system This system, developed
at Marshall, was unique and complex, fully
exploiting the state of the art.
It was designed to constantly monitor the
flight path and compute completely new trajectories
as the flight progresses.
This guidance system, active for the first
time on the sixth flight, successfully corrected
an unexpected deviation from the planned trajectory
caused by the premature shutdown of one engine.
As a result of this kind of excellent performance,
SA-6 was the last Saturn I R&D vehicle instead
of SA-10, as originally scheduled.
The rest will be operational vehicles.
On September 8, 1964, SA-7 launched the second
Apollo boilerplate spacecraft into orbit,
testing its structure and design and demonstrating
its compatibility with the launch vehicle.
All other major test objectives of this flight
were also met.
SA-9 placed in orbit the first Pegasus, a
meteoroid technology satellite, on February
16, 1965.
Pegasus, developed for NASA’s Office of
Advanced Research and Technology by Fairchild-Hiller
Corporation under the management of Marshall,
was shrouded by the Apollo boilerplate command
and propulsion modules.
Onboard television recorded shroud ejection
after second stage shutdown.
Then, Pegasus extended its 100 foot aluminum-plated
electronic wings and, like a moth emerged
from its cocoon, moved on, its wings spread
to measure the hazards of meteoroids in space.
Data from Pegasus conferment that the Apollo
spacecraft design is adequate to protect astronauts
from meteoroids.
SA-8 launched at night, orbited the second
Pegasus satellite.
SA-10, the final Saturn I flight vehicle,
launched Pegasus 3.
The ten vehicle Saturn I Program was without
precedent in the history of spaceflight.
Each vehicle of the program established new
levels of rocket reliability far above those
of sixteen years earlier.
A program providing the foundation for the
follow-on advanced Saturn programs.
The uprated Saturn I 
and Saturn V.
That’s the story of the first ten lives
of Saturn I, each one an essential step in
the development of large launch vehicle science
and technology, each flight a vital step toward
the future of man’s extensive exploration
and utilization of the universe for the benefit
of the entire human race.
