The Unsung Workhorse: How the Saturn 1B Launched the Apollo Program

Video from the channel apollo11space about Saturn IB, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 8:48. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

An educational piece on the Saturn IB as the bridging launch vehicle of the Apollo program: the vehicle NASA used to test Moon-bound hardware in Earth orbit before the Saturn V was ready.

The video explains that the first stage, the S-IB, derived from the Saturn I's and grouped eight already-proven H-1 engines. The second, the S-IVB, with a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen J-2 engine, was the same stage that would fly as the Saturn V's third stage. It covers the uncrewed Apollo 5 mission, in which the lunar module's ascent and descent engines were fired in space for the first time. It also recalls the January 1967 fire, in which the Apollo 1 crew died and which forced a redesign of the command module.

On October 11, 1968, a Saturn IB launched Apollo 7, the first crewed mission after the accident. Over 11 days, the crew tested life support, rendezvous radar, communications, and the service propulsion system engine. Later, the launch vehicle carried three crews to the Skylab space station and, in 1975, launched the last crewed Apollo spacecraft, that of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.