Ed Kyle wrote:
Proponent wrote:
A documentary entitled "Apollo 11: The Untold Story," which aired on
British TV Monday night, highlighted a Bellcomm report by one J. J.
O'Connor
(http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1979072576.pdf)
about difficulties of safely aborting a mission during first-stage
operation. Although the documentary gave few details, O'Connor's
report clearly identifies two problems:

1. Break-up of the Launch Vehicle. During a high-Q abort, the
first-stage engines would be shut down as part of the abort procedure
The report indicates that this would cause the break-up -- and probably
explosion -- of the vehicle within half a second.
2) Break-up of the Spacecraft. Loss of one first-stage engine would
could cause the CM to separate from the SM.

Was anything ever done about this?


Henry Spencer wrote something about this in 1997
"http://yarchive.net/space/launchers/saturn_v.html"

- Ed Kyle

The essential point is that the "High-Q" abort issue only dealt
with conditions that lasted for a few seconds, peaking during
the "Max-Q" point at about T+78 seconds. I doubt very much
that Apollo astronauts were not aware of the weaknesses of
their abort system.

- Ed Kyle