How did they get these filmings? It was in excellent picture quality, so it couldn't be a live transmitted TV-feed from orbit in lousy 1969-quality.
I thought that the separated stages burn up during plunging back into the atmosphere?
The footage you are referring to was filmed during the unmanned Apollo 6 mission and shows that mission's S-IVB (third) stage separating from the S-II (second) stage. An automatic camera was mounted inside the "collar" of the S-II stage and near the five J-2 engines at the bottom of the S-II stage. Typically, the footage shown cuts off the last few seconds of the film where you see the camera pod ejecting from the S-II right before the film runs out. The cameras then re-entered the atmosphere from a sub-orbital altitude of approximately 200,000 feet, parachuted to the ocean and were then recovered by waiting recovery ships.
The other footage commonly show is of the separation of the S-I (first) stage and the Interstage ring from the S-II stage. This is footage from the unmanned Apollo 4 mission.
Apolle drifts slowly away, then some hundret meters away the main engine ingnites and sets thrust for the course towards moon.
The separated stage turnes slowly sideways and the blue earth comes into view.
This happened in a 177 nautical miles orbit.
You are correct that the TLI burn occurs somewhere around 177 miles, but the footage shown was shot, as mentioned above, at a sub-orbital altitude of approximately 200,000 feet, or roughly 37 miles. The S-IVB stage puts the Apollo spacecraft into orbit during its first burn after separation from the S-II stage, then it seconds burn a few hours / orbits later sets the spacecraft on its trajectory to the Moon. It is after this second burn that the CS/M stack separates from the S-IVB stage and then turns around and extracts the LM from the top of the S-IVB.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_6#Cameras
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_4#Cameras
Footage compilation:
http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/video/staging.mpg
Cz
Evil PURE AND SIMPLE by way of the Eighth Dimension!
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Bavarian
15 years ago
Thank you very much for the explanations and the links! ^^
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BigAl42
15 years ago
Came here intending to ask the same question as I couldn't recall seeing the separation from that perspective before. Guessed it was an ejected camera of some sort as you can see upward movement just before the film cuts. Also, I hadn't realised the height that was done at - I guess that the camera would have had a very wide angle lens to get the shot, which would also have exaggerated the apparent height
Thanks for the references and explanation.
Incidentally, having managed to see one of the few cinema showings of this film in the UK, I ordered the DVD - which was great. But having just bought the Blu-ray version, I can say that it's definately worth the extra! Especially as Amazon UK are currently selling it for less than £8.00 (and the DVD for less than £4.00).
Bloody typical, they've gone back to metric without telling us!
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melipooh72
9 years ago
Wow, thanks for this. One of my students asked this and now I can give him a more detailed answer.
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bureau203
8 years ago
I've often wondered this too. This answer makes more sense than what I was thinking (that they left it attached to the booster/shroud in some kind of heat resistant casing). It makes sense because our first satellites, the Corona series, returned photos to earth this same way. So we had some experience with returning film to earth from space.
I've seen things that would make you want to write a book on how to puke.
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