Posts: 3576 From: Netherlands Registered: Nov 2001
posted 04-08-2022 12:11 PM
The eighth firing of the S-1-T booster on June 15, 1960. This was the first Saturn rocket stage built by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) and the first to be test-fired. In total it was static fired 31 times. The stage was recently scrapped after being stored at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, since the early 1960s. MSFC tried to offer it to any museum or educational institution that was willing to pay the shipping cost, but there were no interested parties.
micropooz Member
Posts: 1626 From: Washington, DC, USA Registered: Apr 2003
posted 04-08-2022 04:36 PM
Great photo Ed! There is also a picture postcard that shows this test setup albeit prior to the S-1-T firing. I always marveled that they took the risk of hanging a Juno launch vehicle on the other side of the test stand from the S-1-T stage. It's efficient to be able to test more than one vehicle with one test stand but, boy if something went "boom" on either side, very risky for the other.
And sad that no museum took the S-1-T test stage...