This is so cool – and impressive, most impressive! A 16mm camera located near the base of the Saturn V rocket captured incredible detail about the ignition and lift off of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. The high-quality video slows down 30 second of footage to about 8 minutes, but it’s worth every second to watch! The narrator explains it all in great detail. You’ll see the first moments of ignition where the flames light and expand, then get sucked back into the flame trench; and fire and ice all in one video. It really is awesome!
Source: Huffington Post
Now THAT’s a ‘groovy movie’! We’ve all seen that launch hundreds of times, I’m sure. But never from this perspective? Like millions, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing during that launch. I was in Gardner, Mass. visiting my grandparent’s home during summer break… drove there from Californicator! What a trip! Wuz just a tadpole back then~
I was about to scream OOOOOLD, because I’ve seen a similar video somewhere else. However, it was without the narrative part which makes this video particularly interesting! Thanks for sharing 😉
The darkish exhaust leaving the nozzle and eventually meeting up with the bright flame is just cooler exhaust that’s not flashing brightingly. It’s just a surface layer around the core exhaust. That makes sense now. The coils of cold fuel circulating on the outer surface of the nozzle provides the cooler temperature. I wonder if the nozzle would have melted or deformed without the cooling.
One of the coolest things I have ever seen. 500 frames a sec is super-duper slo-mo. The best part was when the ingnition flames get sucked down into the trench, it looks like the movie runs backwards. Thanks for posting this.
OK, NOW I understand what the F-1 in the Saturn main engine’s designation means:
Fantastic one! I have no idea why it took me so long to figure that out. Thanks, Nancy, from me too, and by the way, about that Star Wars reference from Grand Mof(?) Tarkin: Ah! Humor! Ar ar ar ar! (remember that one? Or how about: “cute, marie, real cute”!
I think it was also informally known as F-bomb 1.
Also, the Apollo 13 movie depicted the initial exhaust being sucked back in.
First part of this movie has also been used in another movie, dramatically powered with music from the Battlestar Galactica. Phil Plait showed the movie here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/15/a-different-saturn/
Adrianus,
Thanks for the link. The new BSG music is just awesome and fit the slo-mo footage very well.
Gas film cooling using fuel-rich exhaust from the turbopump’s gas generator (GG) produces the dark, jittery exhaust you see at liftoff. This exhaust produces the very dark smoky trail when S-V was at altitude.
Gas film ‘cooling’ (GG’s exhaust is very fuel rich and is actually ‘only’ several hundred degrees F) is used in the lower half of the F-1 bell where heat flux from combustion exhaust is manageable by such a technique. You can see the GG ducting that wraps around the bell — looks like a fat snake. Further up in the nozzle where heat flux is much higher, cold RP-1 fuel is used in the upper half to cool the bell and combustion chamber.
Modern RP-1/LOX engines, i.e. RD-170/180 engines, are remarkably clean as these things go and very hot. Technology has improved greatly.
ND: “Also, the Apollo 13 movie depicted the initial exhaust being sucked back in.”
No, the exhaust wasn’t being sucked back into the engine, it was being sucked down into the flame-pit by the vacuum generated by the high-speed exhaust going down the opening to the flame-pit below the engine. A textbook aerodynamics principle- on MAJOR steroids!
That arrangement could out-suck every type vacuum cleaner on the market combined! Be messy, though.