Now That's Horsepower

Now That's Horsepower

This is another of those, hopefully rare, posts about something I never drove, rode, or wrenched on. But I did spend a number of years in close proximity to it and it's predecessors, and there was never anything like it before or since.

I'm referring to the 1960s Space Race and in particular the Saturn V moon rocket.

World's Biggest Roman Candle

I was fortunate enough to not only live in Florida in that era, but while in college my parents lived in close proximity to Cape Canaveral, my first college roommate's parents worked at the Cape, another roommate did for a summer as well, I was a DJ for a local station nearby for a bit, and, finally, my sister worked for a time at a local PBS station and covered the Cape activities for them.

The early 60s were pretty exciting on the central Florida Coast. Kennedy announced the manned moon mission goal in 1961, and by the time I started college two years later the activity in the area was frenetic. One of my first off-campus weekends took me down to visit with Donnie Russell at his home, somewhere in Brevard County. Donnie was of mixed heritage, but introduced himself to me as Filipino, and in fact suggested that his friends called him “Jungle Bunny” or “JB” for short, though I never did. Along with Tom Stark, a high school buddy of Donnie's, and Donnie's fiery Italian girlfriend Annette, these were the first friends I made in college.

Donnie had a pet dog, the first Rhodesian Ridgeback I had ever seen, and at the time a very exotic breed in America. They are really beautiful animals characterized by a ridge of fur on their spine which grows in the opposite direction to the rest of their coat. I was a bit intimidated by the animal until I learned that they can be quite gentle and loving.

Sweet, but they can look intimidating

The dog was not the only odd thing about Donnie's “family.” His father was a quiet, soft spoken Southerner from Alabama. And his mother, of course, was from the Philippines. I never asked, but would guess they met when his dad was stationed there in the military. While today inter-racial relationships are more common, but at the time this seemed a very odd couple indeed, particularly in a part of Florida that remains, to this day, anything but tolerant.

In addition, his mother's sisters were visiting, and it was my first exposure to the exotic cadences of Tagalog. I was also amused at what they were doing when I arrived, separating pairs of shoes, putting one from a pair in one box and the other in a different shipping container. They explained this was tof their fear tha the Philippine Post Office employees would steal the shoes.

Donnie's mother was the Chief Librarian at NASA's facility on the Cape. I did not learn explicitly what his father did, but somehow picked up that he was in charge of fueling the rockets. However, there is one odd story stuck in my memory and I have never figured out how it got there. Someone (Donnie?) told me that his dad was on the cover of a Life magazine issue.

When the first US attempt, by the Navy, to counter the Russian Sputnik success failed on the pad, the Army was thrown into the fray with their Redstone missile, built at what later became the Marshall Space Center in Alabama. I suspect that was where Russell Senior had first joined the program. At any rate, the satellite was placed on top of the Redstone and hurled into orbit...and the cover photo of Life showed someone behind and at the top of the rocket, motioning to an out of picture crane operator to lower the Explorer onto the rocket. I was told that this only partly seen person was Donnie's father.

I've searched everyplace I can think of and have yet to find the cover, and can't begin to confirm the truth of the story...though I don't think I just made it up.

Things at the Cape were pretty wild through the mid 60s. Missile control was in its infancy, as were computers, and the learning curve was high...and dangerous. One time while driving to the area I had a fairly close encounter with a Polaris...or at least closer than I would have liked. 

Innocent looking, right?

This thing was a purely military affair, designed to be launched from a submerged submarine, but in the mid 1960s they were having trouble just getting it to go straight off the concrete pad. This particular one didn't.

I don't know why, as my folks lived on the mainland, but I was on the 520 Causeway headed to Cocoa Beach. Perhaps Donnie's folks lived there? Anyway, this was a very odd road in those days. The pavement was typical of Florida's highways even today. Two lanes in each direction separated by a wide center swath of greenery perhaps 25 or more feet wide. Made making left turns “interesting.” There were two bridges between the mainland and the Beach, one crossing the Indian River and the other across the Intracoastal Waterway. Oddly, these had only one lane in each direction and were drawbridges besides. So there was often a drag race at the approaches to the bridges to try and get ahead of slower moving traffic before the road narrowed down. Usually quite amusing, sometimes not funny.

As I was driving, likely in my Corvair (see, I did drag driving into it after all!) I noticed I was the only car moving. Everyone else was parked on the shoulder, and people were either in their cars looking up, or crouched beside them scanning the sky. As I became increasingly uncomfortable I too finally pulled over and looked up.

To my shock, and too stupid to be scared, I saw a Polaris doing crazy spirals in every direction but vertical, as Launch Control at the Cape tried desperately to get it pointed safely out to sea in order to safely destroy it. This went on for what seemed to me to be hours but was much more likely about 15 seconds. Made a hell of a boom when they finally got it out over the Atlantic.

I vividly remember night launches, many of which you never read about in the press, as they were military. One night on Highway 50 the sky literally lit up bright enough to look like sunrise, with an unpublicized Atlas launch. The early career of the liquid fuel Atlas was not encouraging, and I thought it an unbridled act of bravado to put John Glenn on top of that thing in 1962. But we were a lot braver country then.

Highway 50 was also the only place I ever encountered the KKK. One night while driving past Orlando to my folks place in Cocoa or Titusville I saw flames beside the highway. There was a wide grassy strip along the road that was perhaps 50 feet deep before the dense tree line. Not only was there a burning cross, but the full display of Confederate flags and white sheeted and hooded demons.

Holy shit! I almost ran off the road as my head swiveled around to gape at the spectacle. Even though it had no black students this made me realize what little bubbles of relative tolerance Miami and Gainesville were, and what they were surrounded with.

But by far the most spectacular display of power I ever saw was the liftoff of a Saturn V. (pic)

Talk about horsepower! This candle is taller than the Statue of Liberty and has enough thrust, at 7.5 million pounds, to do a much better job of levitating the Pentagon than those friends of mine who tried a few years later. The fuel pumps could empty a 40,000 gallon swimming pool in less then five minutes.

Even if I could not see it, I could always tell when a IB or V was being launched (they used the same first stage). Our second floor apartment in Cocoa had a single pane picture window that would literally start vibrating long before I could hear anything.

Speaking of which...I believe to this day the only louder sound made by man is a nuclear explosion. But that fact actually baffles me as I don't think of it as exactly ear-splitting. Nothing like the banshee howl of a late 1940s Alfa Tipo 158 GP car, for example. I think it is that the frequencies are so low you feel them but don't really hear them. Don't get me wrong, it IS loud, a sort of crackling...but what really got you was when the pressure wave hits your chest.

I'm sure you've seen pictures of spectators in the viewing stands at the Cape. These are three miles from the pad, and most of them, especially the women with their smaller chest capacity, have their mouths open. Yes, it is awe inspiring...but it is more likely that they have had the wind knocked out of them. If you were not ready for it it was several seconds before the pressure wave subsided and allowed you to expand your chest and inhale.

Of course I never got closer than about five miles, but the effect was similar. My sister actually was in the viewing stand for the night launch of Apollo 17, and she told me you could read a newspaper by its light for at least 90 seconds.

It was a great time to be American. We could take on any challenge and just do it. The best book I ever read about the Apollo program was not about the astronauts, but instead focused on the engineers, scientists, and workers who solved unbelievable problems very quickly to make the thing happen.

I often find myself wishing we had more of that spirit today, as I think about those immortal words...the first to be spoken from another world...”Contact light...engine shutdown”......by Buzz Aldrin!

Surprised?