Editor’s note: We posted this yesterday only to find that the original video we used had been pulled. Now, we’ve reposted the article with a new and improved version of the video, thanks to Spacecraft Films.
To the moon! The goal people most remember from the Apollo program was setting foot on the surface of our closest neighbor. To get there required a heck of a lot of firepower, bundled in the Saturn V rocket. The video above gives you the unique treat of watching each rocket launch at the same time.
Some notes on the rockets you see:
- Apollos 4 and 6 were uncrewed test flights.
- Apollo 9 was an Earth-orbit flight to (principally) test the lunar module.
- Apollo 8 and 10 were both flights around the moon (with no lunar landing).
- Apollo 13 was originally scheduled to land on the moon but famously experienced a dangerous explosion that forced the astronauts to come back to Earth early — but safely.
- Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 safely made it to the moon’s surface and back.
- Skylab’s launch was also uncrewed; the Saturn V was used in this case to send a space station into Earth’s orbit that was used by three crews in the 1970s.
- You don’t see Apollo 7 pictured here because it did not use the Saturn V rocket; it instead used the Saturn IB. It was an Earth-orbiting flight and the first successful manned one of the Apollo program. (Apollo 1 was the first scheduled crew, but the three men died in a launch pad fire.)
And if this isn’t enough firepower for you, how about all 135 space shuttle launches at the same time?
Read more about the Saturn V at NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
(h/t Sploid)
All Saturn V Launches At Once from Spacecraft Films on Vimeo.