🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <7049@ihlpa.ATT.COM> animal@ihlpa.ATT.COM (D. Starr) writes:
>A while ago, somebody asked how long it took a Saturn V to clear the launch
>tower.  I had an opportunity to time it just the other night when the PBS
>series "Television" re-ran the original network feed from the Apollo 11
>launch.  From this program it looks like about six and a half seconds pass
>between the word "liftoff" and the first stage fins passing the crane at
>the top of the tower, a distance of about 400 feet...

According to the book ``Project Apollo'' (published 1971, original edition
1969) the time to clear the tower is greater than 20 seconds.  That may
well be starting from ignition; the context concerned the mechanism by which
the upper service booms retract into their shields before five F-1 engines
at full power come past.

Let's see... at 15 tons/sec, that's about 300 tons of fuel to go the first
~450 feet.  Working this out in my head, the initial milage is order-of-
magnitude 200,000,000 l/100km.  Of course, it gets better if you average
over the whole trip...
-- 
John Hogg			   | hogg@csri.toronto.{edu,cdn}
Computer Systems Research Institute| uunet!csri.toronto.edu!hogg
University of Toronto		   | hogg%csri.toronto.edu@relay.cs.net (arpa)
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