The other was the Saturn Five. It would be the one to launch astronauts to the moon. Saturn One-B rockets launched six unmanned Apollo spacecraft. The test flights showed that all the rocket engines worked successfully. They also showed that the Apollo spacecraft could survive the launch and could re-enter Earth's atmosphere safely.
STEVE EMBER: By the end of nineteen sixty-six, NASA officials considered the Apollo spacecraft ready for test flights by astronauts. Three astronauts were named for the first manned Apollo test flight: Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee. Four weeks before the flight, the three men were in the command module at Cape Kennedy, Florida. They were testing equipment for the flight.
Suddenly, fire broke out in the spacecraft. When rescuers got the door open, they found the flames had killed the three astronauts. Grissom, White and Chaffee were the first Americans to die in the space program.
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BARBARA KLEIN: Engineers redesigned and rebuilt the Apollo command module. They designed a new door that could be opened more quickly. They improved the electrical wiring. And they used only materials that would not burn easily. By November, nineteen sixty-seven, the moon launch rocket, Saturn Five, was ready for a test flight. It thundered into space perfectly, pushing an unmanned Apollo spacecraft more than eighteen thousand kilometers up into the atmosphere.
STEVE EMBER: The huge Saturn rocket, as tall as a thirty-six-floor building, was the heaviest thing ever to leave Earth. It weighed more than two million seven hundred thousand kilograms. The noise of its rockets was one of the loudest man-made sounds ever created.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25