First Saturn V launch-in Guinness Book?

Hi all

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Peter Stickney wrote:

WEspecially since the Saturn spread its noise over a wide path in spae
and time as it climbed out, and the N-1 concentrated it's noise by
releasing it all at once.


Well, one N-1 _almost_ got to the end of its first stage burn before it
blew up. :-)
Actually, it would be interesting to figure out if the 30 N-1
first-stage motors or five Saturn V first stage motors made more noise.
Since the F-1s were larger, did they generate a lower frequency sound?

I'm just guessing here but how do the very large chemical explosions used to
calibrate sensors before the Trinity (that is the right name - Manhatten
Project first A-bomb) test weight in?

What about that explosion in that Canadian port (harbour?) during WWI (I
can't remember the name, something with a 'H'), that was supposed to be in
the kiloton range. It erased substancial portions of the town.

As impressive as the Saturn V and N-1 were can they really outweigh
thousands of tons of TNT or ammonia nitrate all unwrapping itself in the
same instant?



Pat


I'm not an expert on these matters, and I'd much rather watch and listen to
a Saturn V rising into the clouds than see (or hear the cause of ) a
mushroom cloud ascending into the heavens.

Regards
Frank Scrooby

"Frank Scrooby" wrote in message
...
What about that explosion in that Canadian port (harbour?) during WWI (I
can't remember the name, something with a 'H'), that was supposed to be in
the kiloton range. It erased substancial portions of the town.

Halifax


Regards
Frank Scrooby

I can attest to the fact that the Saturn V was loud. I witnessed the
Apollo 15, 16 and 17 launches from Titusville. I couldn't believe it
was that loud that far away. For many of those of us who have "felt"
the Saturn V, it seems like a big mistake to have discarded such a
great weight lifter. I believe that bird could lift 100 tons into low
earth orbit while the Shuttle has never done its maximum of 20. Wish
we still had the Saturn for lifting cargo.

Bill

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:03:53 -0400, Bill wrote:

I have heard that the first Saturn V launch is still in the Guinness
Book of World Records as the loudest man-made, non-nuclear sound in
history. I also heard (somewhere) that it broke windows out of houses
in Melbourne and they had to install sound dampening skirts on the
first stage. Anyone know if this is correct?

In message , Bill
writes

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:03:53 -0400, Bill wrote:

I have heard that the first Saturn V launch is still in the Guinness
Book of World Records as the loudest man-made, non-nuclear sound in
history. I also heard (somewhere) that it broke windows out of houses
in Melbourne and they had to install sound dampening skirts on the
first stage. Anyone know if this is correct?

I can attest to the fact that the Saturn V was loud. I witnessed the
Apollo 15, 16 and 17 launches from Titusville. I couldn't believe it
was that loud that far away. For many of those of us who have "felt"
the Saturn V, it seems like a big mistake to have discarded such a
great weight lifter. I believe that bird could lift 100 tons into low
earth orbit while the Shuttle has never done its maximum of 20. Wish
we still had the Saturn for lifting cargo.

120 metric tons, according to
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5772&sequence=2. And as many
people have noted, a modern version would have modern materials and
avionics and do even better.
--
What have they got to hide? Release the ESA Beagle 2 report.
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

"Frank Scrooby" ) writes:
Hi all

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

Peter Stickney wrote:

WEspecially since the Saturn spread its noise over a wide path in spae
and time as it climbed out, and the N-1 concentrated it's noise by
releasing it all at once.

Well, one N-1 _almost_ got to the end of its first stage burn before it
blew up. :-)
Actually, it would be interesting to figure out if the 30 N-1
first-stage motors or five Saturn V first stage motors made more noise.
Since the F-1s were larger, did they generate a lower frequency sound?

I'm just guessing here but how do the very large chemical explosions used
to calibrate sensors before the Trinity (that is the right name - Manhatten
Project first A-bomb) test weight in?

What about that explosion in that Canadian port (harbour?) during WWI (I
can't remember the name, something with a 'H'), that was supposed to be in
the kiloton range. It erased substancial portions of the town.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Dec. 6, 1917, 9:06 AM. Two merchantmen collided in
the neck of The Narrows, one, the Mont Blanc, loaded with munitions for
the WW1 front. Both caught fire, and the Mont Blanc blew up.

The resulting explosion is listed as being the greatest explosion,
pre-Trinity. 2,766 tons of picric acid, TNT and guncotton all blew.
The result was some 1,600 dead, in a city of 50,000.

As impressive as the Saturn V and N-1 were can they really outweigh
thousands of tons of TNT or ammonia nitrate all unwrapping itself in the
same instant?

Pat

I'm not an expert on these matters, and I'd much rather watch and listen
to a Saturn V rising into the clouds than see (or hear the cause of ) a
mushroom cloud ascending into the heavens.

Well, both are literally awesome.

Andre

--
" I'm a man... But, I can change... If I have to... I guess. "
The Man Prayer, Red Green.

What about that explosion in that Canadian port (harbour?) during
WWI (I
can't remember the name, something with a 'H')
Halifax

See for instance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_explosion
and
http://www.cbc.ca/halifaxexplosion/

The Halifax catastrophe is widely considered to be among the largest
manmade conventional explosions; the Mont-Blanc was laden with some
4500 tons of various vigorous explosives. There have however been
others of that scale.

Some sources indicate that there might have been an explosion of
similar scope in Steinfield, Germany in 1917, but I can find out very
little about it.

Those years exposed many people, both workers and townspeople, to
misadventure and malice involving energetic materials. The T.A.
Gillespie Shell Loading Plant explosion (three days of cookoffs;
unexploded ordnance still being unearthed now and then into the 1990s)
and the Black Tom explosion, attributed to sabotage, are among the
"awful, but could have been far worse" category from World War I.

In 1921, there was a Halifax-scale disaster at an ammonium nitrate
plant in Oppau, Germany. That one may have been caused by the use of
dynamite to break up a big clotted mass of the stuff that had absorbed
water from the air (amazingly, a common practice back then, according
to one site).


Three decades later, another thousands-of-tons ship explosion
(actually a pair of them) devastated another port:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/...w/TT/lyt1.html


In that same year, Brest, still rebuilding from the war, sustained
significant damage when another cargo of ammonium nitrate went up
(though fortunately there were "only" 21 deaths, probably thanks to
five hours in which to tow the ship away from the docks).


In the 1980s, the US Army did a series of experiments at White Sands
Missile Range to simulate, as best they could with conventional
explosives, various effects of nuclear weapons. The largest might
have involved a couple thousand tons of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil
mixture. These were of course planned experiments carried out a
long way from anything breakable that wasn't part of the deal.

Anyway, to get back at long last to the original question, I suspect
that the "loudest noise" question is very complicated and has to do
with duration and power spectrum and perhaps modulation and of course
distance and position with respect to reflection and reinforcement
and... oh, you name it.

--Joe

The Halifax catastrophe is widely considered to be among the largest
manmade conventional explosions; the Mont-Blanc was laden with some
4500 tons of various vigorous explosives. There have however been
others of that scale.

Last winter wasn't there a big explosion somewheres in
North Korea?

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 09:53:48 +0200, "Frank Scrooby" wrote:

What about that explosion in that Canadian port (harbour?) during WWI (I
can't remember the name, something with a 'H'), that was supposed to be in
the kiloton range. It erased substancial portions of the town.

....And then there was the Texas City explosion back in '47, when a
tanker full of fertilizer caught fire and blew. The force was easily
in the kiloton range.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Bill wrote:
I can attest to the fact that the Saturn V was loud. I witnessed the
Apollo 15, 16 and 17 launches from Titusville. I couldn't believe it
was that loud that far away. For many of those of us who have "felt"
the Saturn V, it seems like a big mistake to have discarded such a
great weight lifter. I believe that bird could lift 100 tons into low
earth orbit while the Shuttle has never done its maximum of 20. Wish
we still had the Saturn for lifting cargo.

The Shuttle system actually has a very similar LEO cargo
capability to the Saturn V. The Shuttle, however, uses
up most of it (about 80%) with the Orbiter's mass. This
might be fine if Shuttle launches were numerous, routine,
and inexpensive. But they're not, so it tends to be a
rather large waste quite often.

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 02:14:19 GMT, Robert Casey
wrote:

Last winter wasn't there a big explosion somewheres in
North Korea?

....Yeah. They claim it was simply them blowing a hole in a mountain
for a tunnel, or something like that. I suspect that's where Al Queda
or his brother, Fred Queda, hid those 300 tons of missing Iraqi
explosives.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr