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SA-4 S-I stage hoisted into position onto the pad of Launch Complex 34 and awaiting second and third inert upper stages

Date: March 24, 1963

NASA ID: SAT-4-46, SAT-4-41, 63-SA4-9

#SA-4 #Saturn I #Rocket #Apollo Program #NASA #LC-34 #Kennedy Space Center #KSC #Cape Canaveral #Florida #March #1963 #stacking #my post

#2K11 #Krug #SA-4 #Ganef

"Saturn Apollo Program

In this photograph, the Saturn I S-I stages for the SA-4, SA-6, and SA-7 missions were being assembled at the Fabrication and Assembly Engineering Division in the Marshall Space Flight Center building 4705. (Left to right: SA-6, SA-7 & SA-4.) Marshall designed, developed and managed the production of the Saturn I and the Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the moon. SA-4, an uncrewed test flight of the Saturn I booster, was the final of a series of four tests of the Saturn I first stage."

Date: January 13, 1963

NASA ID: 6413388

#SA-4 #SA-6 #SA-7 #Saturn I #S-I #Saturn I Block II #rocket #construction #Marshall Space Flight Center #NASA #January #1963 #my post

"Inert S-IV second stage is hoisted up gantry for mating to S-I first stage" of SA-4 on Launch Complex 34.

Date: March 24, 1963

NASA ID: 63-SA4-11

#SA-4 #Saturn I #Rocket #Apollo Program #NASA #LC-34 #Kennedy Space Center #KSC #Cape Canaveral #Florida #stacking #March #1963 #my post

Launch of SA-4

Saturn I (SA-4) lifted off from Kennedy Space Center launch Complex 34.

"The fourth launch of Saturn launch vehicles developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun, incorporated a Saturn I, Block I engine. The typical height of a Block I vehicle was approximately 163 feet and had only one live stage. It consisted of eight tanks, each 70 inches in diameter, clustered around a central tank, 105 inches in diameter. Four of the external tanks were fuel tanks for the RP-1 (kerosene) fuel. The other four, spaced alternately with the fuel tanks, were liquid oxygen tanks as was the large center tank. All fuel tanks and liquid oxygen tanks drained at the same rates respectively. The thrust for the stage came from eight H-1 engines, each producing a thrust of 165,000 pounds, for a total thrust of over 1,300,000 pounds. The engines were arranged in a double pattern. Four engines, located inboard, were fixed in a square pattern around the stage axis and canted outward slightly, while the remaining four engines were located outboard in a larger square pattern offset 40 degrees from the inner pattern. Unlike the inner engines, each outer engine was gimbaled. That is, each could be swung through an arc. They were gimbaled as a means of steering the rocket, by letting the instrumentation of the rocket correct any deviations of its powered trajectory. The block I required engine gimabling as the only method of guiding and stabilizing the rocket through the lower atmosphere. The upper stages of the Block I rocket reflected the three-stage configuration of the Saturn I vehicle. Like SA-3, the SA-4 flight’s upper stage ejected 113,560 liters (30,000 gallons) of ballast water in the upper atmosphere for "Project Highwater" physics experiment. Release of this vast quantity of water in a near-space environment marked the second purely scientific large-scale experiment. The SA-4 was the last Block I rocket launch."

Date: March 28, 1963

NASA ID: CCAFS-LC34, MSFC-6413722, SAT-4-52, 6413719