Apollo 6: A Major Unplanned Accomplishment.

Video from the channel The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered about Apollo 6, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 15:27. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Episode of the educational channel The History Guy devoted to Apollo 6, the uncrewed Saturn V mission that came close to failure and that the public nearly forgot. It reconstructs the flight using the mission report, NASA publications, and a 2004 interview with Jay Greene, flight dynamics officer.

It reviews the program's earlier tests: the SA-1 through SA-5 flights, AS-101 through 105, and AS-201 through 203. It continues with the Apollo 1 fire on January 27, 1967, the cancellation of Apollo 2 and 3, and the flights of Apollo 4 (November 9, 1967, the first Saturn V) and Apollo 5 (January 22, 1968). Apollo 6 was the dress rehearsal before risking crews and included a translunar injection. Its launch went almost unnoticed amid the Vietnam War and Johnson's withdrawal from the reelection race. The next day, the assassination of Martin Luther King dominated the front pages.

It lifted off at 7:00 a.m. from Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The first stage experienced about 30 seconds of pogo oscillation, and at 133 seconds more than 3 m² of the lunar module adapter's surface came off. On the second stage, two of the five engines shut down, and the S-IVB failed to reignite for the translunar injection. The capsule splashed down about 10 hours after liftoff, 43 nautical miles from the planned point, and was recovered by the USS Okinawa. Samuel Phillips described it as a major unplanned accomplishment, and NASA decided another uncrewed flight was not necessary.