Talk:Apollo 6

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This page of the Encyclopedia is very informational thanks for helping me finish my project

S-IC Impact

I would think it would have to be West Longitude

Your absolutely right. Changed both from E to W. Evil Monkey → Talk 02:33, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

Cameras

There's mention of the famous Saturn V launch footage originating from Apollo 6, but similar footage came from Apollo 4, too--perhaps this and the Apollo 4 article should reflect that? (The footage of the interstage falling away is seen in the Star Trek episode "Assignment: Earth" which aired in late March 1968, and thus must have been from Apollo 4.)

Cameras covering the interstage separation were on both Apollo 4 and 6. The appear to NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Saturn V reports for both missions detail their operation--both cameras worked on Apollo 4[1], while one of the cameras on the S-II on Apollo 6 was not recovered[2]. This could simplify identification of images in that any image with the rocket nozzles at the top of the frame (with the Earth below) must be from Apollo 4, while images with the rocket nozzles at the bottom of the frame could be from 4 or 6. It's difficult to search NASA's sites (the interstage photo on this Apollo 6 page appears to come from a NASA Apollo 6 page that no longer exists), such that I am unable to find still images of the interstage separation from Apollo 4, but note that Spacecraft Films' Saturn V DVD set includes Apollo 4 interstage footage ("Film 0-377" and "Film 0-378") and no interstage footage from Apollo 6 [3].

I've now changed the Camera section on Apollo 6 and added a Camera section to the Apollo 4 article. Jaydro 15:38, 12 November 2005(UTC)

The source of other footage?

What about the frequently shown footage apparently showing the complete S-IVB /Apollo spacecraft firing up and heading away from the camera? Does this come from other recovered cine footage or is it from a TV transmission?

Here is a NASA film clip (2m 19s - 25MB mpeg) showing the three distinct separations:

"Apollo-Saturn S1-C Staging" "Apollo-Saturn S-II Interstage Staging" "Apollo-Saturn S-IV-B Staging"

http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/video/staging.mpg

From the foregoing discussion it would appear that all three come from the Apollo 4 launch (Star Trek footage?) - as the point of view is below the main engines on the S-II. It appears they have two cameras at least - one forward point the other backward pointing. Maybe the 'forward pointing' footage from Apollo 6 is the lost footage?

Any thoughts?

The S-IV-B staging footage is "other recovered cine footage" from Apollo 5, an unmanned Saturn IB test of the LM. Maybe someone should add a Cameras section there, though this footage is somewhat less famous than the interstage footage. Jaydro 18:07, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

This can't be right. The forward looking footage shows the S-IVB was connect to a truncated conical adapter like that in the Saturn V, but the S-IB first stage was the same diameter as the S-IVB and so wouldn't have a conical adapter. So the S-IVB staging footage almost certainly must have come from Apollo 4 or Apollo 6. Karn (talk) 06:54, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I see someone ignored what I said and the page referring to the footage which states "MPEG-1 movie showing first plane separation, second plane separation and separation of an S-IVB from a Saturn IB first stage" [emphasis mine]. The paragraph describing the footage needs correction.... Jaydro (talk) 18:56, 11 June 2008 (UTC) ...and I did it. Jaydro (talk) 04:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I think it's safe to say that the NASA History statement is incorrect and that couldn't have been Apollo 5. They're not infallible, ya know. Karn (talk) 06:56, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

As yet another data point, Apollo 5 was launched at 5:48:08 PM on January 22, 1968. That's at night. Yet the sun shines in from the right and front of the stage as we look up and watch the S-IVB pull away. This indicates morning, so it can't possibly be Apollo 5. I went ahead and rewrote the section to eliminate the reference to Apollo 5. Apollos 4 and 6 were both launched at 12:00:01 UTC on 9 November 1967 and 4 April 1968, respectively, so we can't easily tell them apart by sun angle. So all I can say is that the S-IVB footage came from either Apollo 4 or Apollo 6. 72.130.190.192 (talk) 09:06, 27 November 2008 (UTC) <-- this comment was from me. Karn (talk) 09:08, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it can be an S-IB and Apollo 5. The forward-looking footage shows the distortion of a wide-angle lens, not a conical adapter. It almost certainly wasn't from Apollo 4 or 6 or any other Saturn V flight because the S-IVB has the three ullage motors of the 200 series, not the 500 series' 2 ullage motors used on Saturn V's, never mind that I doubt a camera unit could be successfully ejected from the altitude of a Saturn V third-stage separation. I can't vouch for correct sun angles, but it's definitely not from a Saturn V launch, and I can't find another S-IB launch that it could be from, plus there are references to it being from Apollo 5. I'll fix this when I assemble all the proper references. Jaydro (talk) 02:25, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Forgive the lateness of the reply, but a NASA documentary from the late '60s identified the footage as coming from the unmanned AS-202 mission (as is actually mentioned in the link provided above to the Apollo Flight Journal). From what I understand, the fact that you can see three ullage motors firing and not four helps to distinguish this mission from later ones.172.190.112.218 (talk) 03:16, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

S-II Engine Cutoff Sequence

The NASA report on the flight, http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900066484_1990066484.pdf, says it was engine 2 that cutout due to the ASI fuel line failure and that engine 3 was shutdown due to the wiring crossover. This entry has it the other way round. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Laryb1492 (talk • contribs) 17:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Apollo 6 & the film Marooned

After watching the film Marooned it would appear that the footage used for the opening sequence showing the launch of Ironman One comes from the Apollo 6 launch footage. It would also explain why the Service Module in the film was painted white. Graham1973 (talk) 14:30, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

A user has notified me of my errors in editing this article, on my talk page

Apologies. I had misremembered that this flight was supposed to go to the moon, when the truth is, that it was only supposed to go into a trans-lunar injection orbit (never going farther than 12,000 nautical miles out, however, and not in the direction of the moon), then immediately after injection burn (5 minutes) turn around and use the SPS to start a burn to come back, with exactly translunar re-entry angle and speed. Total planned mission time was 10 hours, about the same as actual time. It never got up to translunar injection velocity, due to S-IVB re-ignite failure. This was caused by ruptures in a fuel line expansion-contraction segments in both the S-II and S-IVB engines, caused by resonance failure in the line. These had not been seen in sea level tests because ice crystals had damped out the line vibrations, but in a real Saturn V launch, the high altutude was too dry for the damping crystals to form! The problem was fixed by deleting and expansion segments and replacing them with tougher sections that could still bend.

Instead of the S-IVB sending the thing into translunar insertion, it was dead. All Apollo 6's controllers could do, was fire the SPS service module engine from low Earth orbit, to put it into an elipitical higher Earth orbit from which it could then be returned by the same engine, faster than low Earth orbit (about 10,000 fps) but still significantly more slowly than than had been planned, and also slower than Apollo 4 had done. SBHarris 05:14, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification, Doctor. I (probably with a lot of others) was under the mistaken impression that Apollo 6's intended mission profile wasn't substantially different from Apollo 4. This is a great improvement in the accuracy of this article. :-)

It also has a significant implication in context of the entire Apollo program, specifically Apollo 13. If the third stage engine had restarted as intended, besides demonstrating the heat shield, it would have been a demonstration of the "direct abort" maneuver which NASA had developed in early contingency planning, and which some have implied should have been used on Apollo 13 (though this was practically impossible, given the fact that the accident happened too late, when they were in the Moon's gravitational sphere of influence, requiring more fuel than they could safely use.) If Apollo 6 had succeeded in reaching lunar injection velocity, the direct abort might have had more visibility, with even more second-guessing of Apollo 13 (yes, I realize that last part is OR.)

I just have one stylistic concern: this is probably now too much information in the lead (opposite extreme from the prior situation). We should probably move it down into the body of the article, and summarize it more briefely in the intro. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:17, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't mind long ledes, but do what seems best to you-- I won't object. Interestingly, I had exactly the same thought when reading the details on Apollo 6. "Aha," I said-- THIS is where they got the blase' attitude about some of the plans to get Apollo 13 back, which involved direct abort and turnaround from translunar orbit; I would have thought that was impossible. But no, they could have easily done it with a working SPS and had already demo'd that. But due to the engine bell damage fears, they didn't dare use it unless there was no other choice. They could even do it with a full LM burn and just the CM (jetisoning the SM that they weren't using anyway), but as I recall they didn't want to expose the heatshield to "cold" or at least "naked" space that long, if they could help it (it wasn't designed to "start" re-entry any anything but a nice controlled temperature). I think there wasn't quite enough delta-V in the LEM available to do the direct abort with the entire CSM attached, but could be wrong. In any event, they were more than halfway to the moon already and the time savings of not doing the free-return swing-around were getting to be less and less. And time was their biggest enemy, since it was oxygen they were shortest of (in the film it looks like power, but that's to heighten drama. In the real event, had they not done the burn to speed the return, they'd have been out of O's before they hit the atmosphere). SBHarris 19:05, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

"Mission failure" in infobox

@76.118.198.18: keeps adding "partial failure" or "mission failure" to the Mission duration field in the infobox. Please stop doing this.

• We have a policy against edit warring.
• The Template:Infobox spaceflight has not been designed to designate mission success or failure. If you feel this needs to be changed, please discuss the issue on the template's Talk page. If you don't know how to edit templates, someone more experienced can do it (after consensus is reached.) Just shoe-horning it into that field isn't appropriate.
• NASA did not designate the mission a complete failure. The spacecraft was inserted into a usable orbit (our consensus definition of "partial failure", see Template:Infobox rocket), and the objective of doing a high-speed re-entry was able to be done using the spacecraft engine (similar to Apollo 4). Restart of the S-IVB had been successfully demonstrated on Apollo 4. They identified fixes to the cause of the engine failures, and met the objective of man-rating the Saturn V.
• Is it necessary to highlight the failure in this page's infobox? The partial failure is tabulated on the Saturn V page. JustinTime55 (talk) 14:01, 5 February 2015 (UTC)