The Ultimate Machine - The Saturn V in 1:144 Scale
39As of the release of this video, it has been precisely 50 years since the launch of Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission. To discuss a little bit about how humanity's greatest accomplishment was achieved, here's a look at my 1:144 scale model of the Saturn V - this particular one exquisitely crafted by Bandai in their Tamashii Nations series.
This is by no means meant to be a comprehensive, highly-accurate, highly-researched presentation on any of the specifics of the Saturn V vehicle, the Apollo Program, or of aeronautics or astronautics; my aim here is to orient a relative lay observer with regard to the generalities of the subjects at hand from the standpoint of being a lay observer myself. One - surely one of many - error that I’ve already caught - I’ve gotten the free return trajectory dynamics a bit wrong. I say that, after TLI, the spacecraft would continue to fly away from the Earth in perpetuity if the SPS burn for lunar orbit insertion did not occur. While this is theoretically possible, I did not account for the moon’s gravity, which would, even without an additional burn, pull the spacecraft into a circumlunar trajectory. In this situation, which is essentially what did occur on Apollo 13, the spacecraft would pass around the moon once, and then leave cislunar space, maintaining its inertia, and then pass back into terrestrial space. Further engine firings would be necessary in order to ensure that the spacecraft would intercept the Earth’s atmosphere - and thereby be able to land - but inertia would dictate that, provided that the moon were where it needed to be, pure physics would send the spacecraft back to Earth.
For those of you interested in learning more about the Apollo Program and the actual flight of Apollo 11, you can watch a brilliant recreation of that mission - using actual audio from the mission and very accurate computer simulations - courtesy of Lunar Module 5. Find his Apollo 11 playlist here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC1yaZz2qeGrhndH7zOnooziqxS09MI33
Some better information on the appearance of the Rocketdyne F-1 engine, as flown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkObNfCki6M
Source videos:
Launch of Apollo 11 - tracking camera
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8fLjC3gNTk&t
Launch of Apollo 11 - pad camera E8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKtVpvzUF1Y&
Launch of Apollo 16 - pad perimeter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HNnyPpWlSQ
Launch of Apollo 8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKtH0uzg8wU&
Apollo 17 - Lunar Liftoff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj6a0Wrrh1g&
#Apollo11