Apollo Missions
NASA PHOTO: The Apollo 7 spacecraft, atop a Saturn IB rocket, lifts off from Complex 34, Cape Kennedy, at 11:03 a.m. EDT. The spacecraft achieved orbit to begin an 11-day mission. The flight is intended to qualify Apollo for a manned flight to the moon.
After the design failures that led up to the Apollo 1's disaster, NASA and its suppliers went back to the drawing board, literally. The Command Module had been extensively redesigned to eliminate the risk of a second catastrophe. With new procedures and new teams in place, the Apollo program had once again fallen behind schedule.
The mission's main goal was to test the new Command Module and the Service Module, including the Service Propulsion System that would be relied upon to place Apollo into and out of Lunar orbit. It was also a test of NASA's fractured psyche-- we needed a big morale boost that would be necessary to lift us to the moon. Apollo 7 provided that boost.
Apollo 7 was the only manned Apollo launch using the smaller, Saturn 1B rocket. It would also be the first manned test of the Command and Service Modules. All totalled the crew orbited the Earth 163 times during its 10 days, 20 hours in space. Afterwards, the mission was called a 101 percent success. Of all the Apollo Missions, Apollo 7 was the most perfect in achieving all of its goals.
The only failing, if it could be called that, is that all of the crew came down with common colds. While this didn't effect the overall mission, it did make for an extremely uncomfortable 10 days in space, and the crew became what might be called grumpy. They complained about numerous problems in the cabin from the noise, to the sleeping arrangements, even to the poorly designed defecation bags used during the flight. As a result of these complaints from the crew, it was unofficially decided that the crew would never fly in space again according to Flight Director Chris Kraft in his 2001 memoirs.
ABOVE NASA PHOTO: Attached to the Saturn IV-B stage, the Lunar Module Adapter's four panels are retracted to the fully open position. This is where the Lunar Module (LM) is stored during launch. On missions requiring the use of a LM, the four panels would be retracted and jettisoned before rendezvous and docking. This photo was taken during the Apollo 7 mission, when no Lunar Module was carried. The SIV-B stage flew as the second stage on a Saturn IB rocket. It is also used as the third stage on the Saturn V. The Apollo 7 mission was designed to test the Apollo Command and Service Module spacecraft systems specifically
NASA PHOTO: Apollo 7 Crew Donn F. Eisele (left), Walter Schirra, and Walter Cunningham.
October 11, 1968 / Launch Pad 34
Saturn 1B
Crew:
Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Commander
Donn F. Eisele, CSM Pilot
R. Walter Cunningham, Lunar Module Pilot
Payload:
CSM-101
Mission:
The primary objectives for the Apollo 7 engineering test flight, were simple: Demonstrate CSM/crew performance; demonstrate crew/space vehicle/mission support facilities performance during a manned CSM mission; demonstrate CSM rendezvous capability.
