fisher@dvinci.DEC (Burns Fisher, MRO3-1/E13, 231-4108) (07/16/84)
My recollection of things about water cooling/shock-wave-suppression is as follows: 1) The Saturn 5 without question had water cooling at its base. I remember seeing it start up a few seconds before ignition. 2) Even on mission 1, the shuttle had SOME water. I believe that ugly water tank you can see in almost any picture of the pad supplies water too this system. Note that that tank was there for the first launch. I don't know if the original intent of this water was cooling the pad or shock sup- pression or both. 3) After the first launch, as others have said, the shock-wave-from-the-SRBs problem was discovered (or at least quantified), and it was determined that more suppression was needed. At this point, the "water balloons" mentioned in other notes were added. I don't know if the original flowing water was modified to help the shock-wave problem or not. Interesting question: did the Saturn 1B have any cooling water? I suspect not since it sat way up on that "milk-stool" launch platform. Burns Fisher UUCP: ... {decvax|allegra|ucbvax}!decwrl!rhea!dvinci!fisher ARPA: decwrl!rhea!dvinci!fisher@{Berkeley | SU-Shasta}
thoth@tellab2.UUCP (Marcus Hall) (07/18/84)
The first flights of the Saturn IB were launched from Launch Complex 34 and LC37. These definately had water systems to protect the pad after launch, but I don't know about the launches from LC39. It seems that there must have been something to protect the launcher, though. marcus ..!ihnp4!tellab1!tellab2!thoth