"The Apollo 4 Mission" (1967)

Video from the channel From the Vault of MIT about Apollo 4, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 15:49. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

NASA film devoted to the Apollo 4 mission (AS-501), the first uncrewed flight of the Apollo-Saturn V stack. It first reviews where the launch vehicle's parts came from, manufactured across numerous states, and then shows how the crawler-transporter carries the vehicle to the launch pad, as well as the countdown, liftoff and capsule recovery. The orbital trajectory is explained with animation, interspersed with footage of stage separation captured by onboard cameras and photographs of Earth taken from the spacecraft's window.

It is a 1967 NASA production, filmed at the Kennedy Space Center and in the Pacific recovery area. The countdown began on November 7, 1967, and liftoff occurred on November 9, one second after 7:00.

Rather than testing the vehicle stage by stage, the mission tested it fully assembled on its first flight. The first stage shut down at 2 min 32 s. After the second stage, the third placed the spacecraft into a circular orbit and reignited about three hours later, a capability needed for a trip to the Moon. A burn of the spacecraft's engine raised it to 11,232 miles above the Indian Ocean. Another burn, lasting 4.5 minutes, sent it into a reentry at 25,000 mph, as in a return from the Moon. The heat shield reached 5,000°F, while inside the command module the temperature never exceeded 70°. The module splashed down in the Pacific within sight of the USS Bennington, about 8.5 hours after launch.