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[i]Could be worse. LC-39 was laid out with possible failures in mind, of course, but one thing that hadn't occurred to the site designers was that a five-engine rocket could have significant engine-out capability. This may not sound worrisome, but combine that with the fact that the Saturn V first stage did not use closed-loop guidance -- it just followed a preprogrammed tilt schedule, rather than trying to maintain a specific trajectory -- and problems appear, because that means that the thing drifts sideways if an engine fails. Plus, of course, it climbs more slowly with one engine gone. As a result, the ground path of the theoretical impact point was described as "quite a strange curve". And if it happened to be engine #3 that failed, the strange curve passed quite close to the VAB... meaning that the VAB would be within the debris footprint if the thing then had to be destroyed for some reason (e.g., another engine died).[/i]
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