THE FIRST SHORT STEPS

[Music] comparatively speaking the first leg of Apollo Saturn 5's trip to the moon will be a slow [Music] one it consists of moving the various parts of the rocket from their places of manufacture to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center trips that range from the hundreds to the thousands of miles and methods that that VAR from a barge to one of the world's most unusual planes when development of the Saturn 5 was started it was realized that one of the principal problems was going to be the task of getting the various parts of the rocket and spacecraft from their manufacturing plants to the assembly area at the Kennedy Space Center it was also obvious that because of the enormous size of the parts ordinary roads and means of hauling would not be sufficient for the job so from the very start transportation problems were being worked on along with the Saturn 5 itself the first booster stage of the Apollo Saturn rocket is nearly half the length of a football field and without fuel weighs 150 tons it has the shortest trip to make from New Orleans to the cape by way of a test facility on the Mississippi for the first part of the trip it actually acts as its own carrier it is fitted with a set of wheels at each end lowered then attached to a truck cab three drivers are needed one in the cab and one at each set of wheels because of the size of the booster and for the same reason special heavyduty roads had to be constructed to accommodate the load the combined truck booster moves to specially constructed dck box and from there onto a waiting barge additional parts are loaded everything secured and a tug pushes the barge out over the water or its day and a half trip to the Mississippi test facility the docks canals and locks were all built especially for the project and the rivers dredged because it was obvious early in Saturn 5 planning that this represented the most economical way to move the weighty cargo the Mississippi test facility crisscrossed as it is with a network of canals has an almost Venice like quality it is here that the booster goes through its first series of tests including the firing of its engines in a test stand when the testing is finished the stage returns by the same route for final checking then the stage once again takes to the water this time on board a NASA car cargo [Music] ship the ship itself had to be refitted for its task with special stabilizing fins and ballasting to ensure its stability in the ocean and weathertight doors on its deck the end of the line is the Kennedy Space Center in Florida where the booster is unloaded and move moov to the Vehicle Assembly Building for mating with the other stages of the rocket the moon rocket second stage is the same diameter as the first 33 ft and 82 ft long nearly 48 tons without fuel it must be moved all the way from Seal Beach California to Mississippi for testing and from there to the [Music] cape this stage like the first is also fittting with wheels for moving across special roads like the first two it is transported by water it differs though in that its STP is nearly 4,000 M long down the western coast of the United States and Mexico through the Panama Canal and across the Caribbean to the Mississippi and then to the test facility [Music] as soon as testing is complete the stage is loaded aboard the point barrel for the trip to Kennedy Space Center and the VAB even though it's bigger than most items moved by land the third stage of the Saturn 5 does not present the problems of the first two and so the initial plans call for moving it by land from Huntington Beach California where it is made to Sacramento where it is tested and then to Florida instead a Boeing Strat Cruiser was refitted with an oversized cargo area renamed the super guppy after its predecessor the pregnant guppy and now carries the stage from California to the Space Center in Florida in less than 12 hours the last of the Saturn 5 stages the instrument unit is also moved by air using the super guppy the unit is made by IBM and tested at the Marshall space flight center at Huntsville Alabama and flown to Cape Kennedy to be mated with the rocket the pregnant guppy is used to transport the various segments of the Apollo spacecraft to KSC for mating with the Saturn [Music] 5 and when all the pieces of the space vehicle are put together and tested at the Vehicle Assembly Building it makes its final Earthbound move the 3 and 1/2 mile trip to the Launchpad the next trip for the Saturn 5 will be in its own element space [Applause] [Music] and