A Ringside View of the Moon Shots, Part 5: Uncle Walter's Launch Window

In August 1968, CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite experiences astronaut training at Langley Research Center's reduced gravity simulator in Hampton, Virginia. (NASA photo via NASA.gov)

By Steve Milner
Contributing Writer

I remember the day before the Saturn V's maiden launch when a co-worker suggested to one of CBS news legend Walter Cronkite’s assistants that he should secure a loose outside window frame on the network’s press site trailer. For whatever reason, the assistant didn’t follow this suggestion, and during this first unmanned Saturn V’s fiery and earth-shaking liftoff, a very excited Cronkite told his worldwide television audience that his trailer might be coming apart, as the unsecured window frame vibrated wildly. This real-time, confusing scene made for good television news drama, even if Cronkite might not have known about the loose window frame.

The Saturn V known as AS-501 sits upon Pad 39 before launching as Apollo 4 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The uncrewed mission was the first "all-up" test of the three stages of the Saturn V rocket and was designed to test all aspects of the launch vehicle. Rather than traditional methods of testing rockets, "all-up" called for a rocket comprised entirely of live stages from the very first launch. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center designed, developed and managed the production of the Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the Moon. (NASA Photo via Marshall Space Flight Center/Flickr)

This launch was a successful one, validating Dr. John Houbolt’s scaled-down rocket concept that was less powerful than the one that would have been needed for a direct assent to the Moon, Ironically, it used some of the same launch and guidance techniques some of Houbolt's German colleagues developed for Germany’s deadly World War II V-2 missiles that terrorized London and other locations only 24 years earlier. In fact, some of those scientists and engineers were in KSC’s Launch Control Center during Apollo 11’s launch. Others worked at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and at KSC, the latter place where I occasionally interviewed them for base newspaper stories and related news releases.

A new chapter in space flight began on July 1950 with the launch of the first rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla.: the Bumper 2, which was an ambitious two-stage rocket program that topped a V-2 missile base with a WAC Corporal rocket. Four had already been launched at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico under the Army's Project Hermes. The upper stage was able to reach then-record altitudes of almost 400 kilometers. Launched under the direction of the General Electric Company, the Bumper 2 was used primarily for testing rocket systems and for research on the upper atmosphere. Bumper 2 rockets carried small payloads that allowed them to measure attributes including air temperature and cosmic ray impacts. (NASA photo)

Like it or not, we needed Dr. Wernher von Braun and his more than 100 Peenemunde technical personnel—plus his large stash of V-2 missiles, many of which the U.S. later test fired at White Sands, New Mexico. If we hadn’t captured these fleeing engineers and technicians during the closing days of the war, the advancing Russian soldiers would have captured them, in addition to those they scooped up for their space program.

Dr. Robert Goddard, regarded as the “father of American rocketry,” had experimented with liquid-fueled launch vehicles in the 1920s, but didn’t have our government’s financial backing and interest, as Dr.von Braun had with his German military hierarchy in the 1930s. If Goddard had had the U.S. endorsement, our nation would have probably perfected later unmanned and manned space flights more quickly than it did.

On April 4, 1968, Apollo AS-502 launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The uncrewed Apollo 6 mission was the final qualification flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle and the Apollo spacecraft. The primary objectives of the mission were to demonstrate structural and thermal integrity and compatibility of the launch vehicle and spacecraft, confirm launch loads and dynamic characteristics, and verify stage separations, propulsion, guidance and control, electrical systems, emergency detection system, and mission support facilities and operations, including Command Module recovery. Pictured here is the Apollo 6 launch vehicle as it leaves Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building on the transporter heading to launch pad 39-A. The news of this NASA success would be overshadowed by that of the the tragic assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, which occurred in Memphis the same day. (NASA Photo via Marshall Space Flight Center/Flickr)

A second unmanned Apollo/Saturn V space vehicle (AS-502) was launched on April 4, 1968, before a manned Apollo 8 crew would begin its 10-day lunar orbital mission aboard another one. In addition to testing the launch vehicles in Earth orbit, these two unmanned flights also verified Apollo spacecraft systems, and determined how well their heat shields withstood a 25,000-mile-per-hour earth reentry—as the Apollo 7 manned Earth-orbital mission had also done.

The December 21, 1968 launch of Apollo 8 (AS-503) from Cape Kennedy, Fla. was the beginning of a mission designed to test the Apollo system and gain the operational experience necessary to realize President Kennedy’s goal of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” In this photo, Colonel Frank Borman, the mission commander, leads the way as he, Command Module Pilot Captain James A Lovell Jr., and Lunar Module Pilot Major William A. Anders head to the launch pad for humanity’s maiden voyage around the moon. (NASA Photo via Marshall Space Flight Center/Flickr)

Apollo 8, piloted by its commander, Frank Borman, and crewmates James Lovell and William Anders, was launched on a Saturn V rocket December 21, 1968. They captured the world’s attention on Christmas Eve that year, when they read from the Book of Genesis, as the trio orbited above the bleak lunar surface.

View of the Apollo 9 Lunar Module "Spider" in a lunar landing configuration photographed by Command Module pilot David Scott inside the Command/Service Module "Gumdrop" on March 7, 1969, the fifth day of the Apollo 9 earth-orbital mission. The landing gear on "Spider" has been deployed. lunar surface probes (sensors) extend out from the landing gear foot pads. Inside the "Spider" were astronauts James A. McDivitt, Apollo 9 Commander; and Russell L. Schweickart, Lunar Module pilot. (NASA image AS9-21-3212, NASA on the Commons/Flickr)

In the next step, Apollo 9 certified the untried lunar module in Earth orbit. In doing this, astronauts James McDivitt, David Scott and Russell “Rusty” Schweickart were launched on a Saturn V on March 3, 1969.

The final milestone before a manned lunar landing could occur was a partial dress rehearsal, when Apollo 10 astronauts Thomas Stafford and Gene Cernan, descended in a lunar module to less than 50,000 feet above the Moon’s surface, while John Young piloted the command module overhead. They were launched on a Saturn V rocket on May 18, 1969.

NASA was now ready to launch the Apollo11 lunar-landing mission into the history books two months later.

Editor's Note: In addition to serving as public affairs officer for 17 years at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Steve Milner was also a public affairs contractor with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Cape Canaveral during the manned Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs.