hogg@csri.toronto.edu (John Hogg) (02/05/88)
In article <7049@ihlpa.ATT.COM> animal@ihlpa.ATT.COM (D. Starr) writes: >A while ago, somebody asked how long it took a Saturn V to clear the launch >tower. I had an opportunity to time it just the other night when the PBS >series "Television" re-ran the original network feed from the Apollo 11 >launch. From this program it looks like about six and a half seconds pass >between the word "liftoff" and the first stage fins passing the crane at >the top of the tower, a distance of about 400 feet... According to the book ``Project Apollo'' (published 1971, original edition 1969) the time to clear the tower is greater than 20 seconds. That may well be starting from ignition; the context concerned the mechanism by which the upper service booms retract into their shields before five F-1 engines at full power come past. Let's see... at 15 tons/sec, that's about 300 tons of fuel to go the first ~450 feet. Working this out in my head, the initial milage is order-of- magnitude 200,000,000 l/100km. Of course, it gets better if you average over the whole trip... -- John Hogg | hogg@csri.toronto.{edu,cdn} Computer Systems Research Institute| uunet!csri.toronto.edu!hogg University of Toronto | hogg%csri.toronto.edu@relay.cs.net (arpa) | hogg@csri.utoronto (bitnet)
dsmith@hplabsb.UUCP (David Smith) (02/06/88)
In article <1988Feb4.164741.6228@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, hogg@csri.toronto.edu (John Hogg) writes: > In article <7049@ihlpa.ATT.COM> animal@ihlpa.ATT.COM (D. Starr) writes: > >A while ago, somebody asked how long it took a Saturn V to clear the launch > >tower. I had an opportunity to time it just the other night when the PBS > >series "Television" re-ran the original network feed from the Apollo 11 > >launch. From this program it looks like about six and a half seconds pass > >between the word "liftoff" and the first stage fins passing the crane at > >the top of the tower, a distance of about 400 feet... > > According to the book ``Project Apollo'' (published 1971, original edition > 1969) the time to clear the tower is greater than 20 seconds. That may > well be starting from ignition; the context concerned the mechanism by which > the upper service booms retract into their shields before five F-1 engines > at full power come past. My recollection is that control passed from Kennedy to Johnson (hmmm... must be a message in there somewhere) at T+13 seconds, that being the time it took to clear the tower. F-1 ignition was supposed to be at T-8.9 seconds. David Smith