Fifty years ago today, 11/9/67, the first Saturn V flew.

SkyMan · November 9, 2017 9:43PM

Fifty years ago today, 11/9/67, the first Saturn V flew. This was the rocket that allowed the US to send men to the Moon. It stood taller than the Statue of Liberty, was more massive than six Boeing 747 jetliners and generated more thrust than two dozen of the jumbo jets.

Now the US can't even launch a human to low Earth orbit. We have to pay the Russians to take us up to the International Space Station.

Post a coin from 1967 or one that has a space based theme.

SaorAlba · November 10, 2017 3:19AM

Space exploration became an ugly red headed step child of the US government beginning in the late 1970s and eventually NASA will cease to exist. Roskomos will rule, and you wonder who won the space race?

1630Boston · November 10, 2017 3:41AM

@SkyMan
Great to remind us all of 'our' collective endeavors and successes in the past. Great lift off photo.
Thanks for sharing it

ricko · November 10, 2017 7:04AM

Such a great period in American ingenuity and progress.... sad that the space program was crushed by politics. Cheers, RickO

CaptHenway · November 10, 2017 7:22AM

A mighty bird. Saw the one on display at the Smithsonian. Sad that we could not build one today if we had the guts to do so.

tincup · November 10, 2017 7:27AM

It's been quite a few years ago... but on a trip to Johnson Space Center there was one displayed outside lying down on the ground; one could walk up to it, around it and touch it. It is a vivid memory of standing next to the rocket thruster end, just the sheer magnitude of it. AWESOME is the only word I could come up with, that man could build such a thing...

BobSav · November 10, 2017 8:13AM

Wow I feel really old now, I was in grade school when that happened.
Here's to the men that had the balls to get on top of that thing and take it for a ride,
Bob

cmerlo1 · November 10, 2017 1:46PM

@tincup said:
It's been quite a few years ago... but on a trip to Johnson Space Center there was one displayed outside lying down on the ground; one could walk up to it, around it and touch it. It is a vivid memory of standing next to the rocket thruster end, just the sheer magnitude of it. AWESOME is the only word I could come up with, that man could build such a thing...

I remember seeing that one also.

SanctionII · November 10, 2017 2:20PM

Sad it is that the USA today cannot duplicate what it accomplshed 40-50 years ago. Even if the USA had the will and desire to send people back to the moon, the red tape and cost of doing so would be orders of magnitude higher than what the red tape and cost of doing so was in the 50's, 60's and early 70's.

SkyMan · November 10, 2017 3:32PM

@SaorAlba said:
Space exploration became an ugly red headed step child of the US government beginning in the late 1970s and eventually NASA will cease to exist. Roskomos will rule, and you wonder who won the space race?

I'd disagree with your statement for several reasons. First, NASA will continue, because what US government department has ever been killed off? Second, for all it's faults, NASA still continues to CRUSH Russia with regards to unmanned space exploration. NO Russian space probe has successfully made it out of low earth orbit (except one, an orbiter of Mars that launched in 2016, that was a joint project with the European Space Agency, ESA). That's 25 years and counting.

From 1992 to the present the US has sent 6 probes to study the Sun (plus another 4 in conjunction with ESA); 1 orbiting probe to Mercury; 1 orbiting probe to Venus; 4 orbiters, 2 landers and 4 rovers to Mars; 2 flyby probes and 2 orbiter probes to the asteroids; 2 orbiting probes of Jupiter (one of which included some instruments from the German Space Agency); 1 orbiting probe of Saturn (with some instruments from ESA and the Italian Space Agency); 1 flyby probe of Pluto; and 4 flyby missions to comets. In addition to all these mentioned missions, arguably the most important of all NASA projects was the Hubble Space Telescope. Many other satellites/probes have also to be considered, such as the Kepler spacecraft, designed to find planets around other stars.

Russia continues to do what it (and the USSR) have been doing for 40 years, orbiting the Earth in low Earth orbit (LEO) in a manned space station. Of particular note has been their development of waste water recycling (e.g. urine etc.). This is good useful research, and of Great importance to long term spaceflight, but this was pretty much figured out by the mid-1990's (solely by the Russians, e.g. the US engineers could not figure out a spaceworthy way to do it). Realistically, since the construction of the International Space Station (ISS), most of the science from the ISS has been generated by the US, ESA or the Japanese Space Agency.

Looking 10 years in the future, the great up and coming space agency will be the Chinese Space Agency. The Chinese have committed to launching a manned space station, Tiangong, that is roughly 1/6 the size of the ISS. Launch is tentatively scheduled for 2019. The Chinese have also stated that they plan to land people on the Moon by 2036. India is also an up and coming space power, but it's plans are not as grandiose as China's.

One thing that can be said about ALL national space programs is that the deadlines tend to slip. This is a function of both funding, and the actual difficulty of the science needed to get a functioning payload to the appropriate destination. It is after all called rocket science for a reason.