“The successful completion of the first Apollo/Saturn mission was one of the most important accomplishments to date in the development of manned lunar mission capability.”
This is a heavily technical, detailed report on the status of various aspects of the Apollo spacecraft by mid-1966, culminating in a report on the first Apollo/Saturn mission, AS-201. While we can criticize the film’s narrator for sounding like he is simply reading technical manuals, we can commend the report overall for its attention to detail in explaining NASA’s progress in readying components of the Apollo spacecraft for manned flight, much of which took place at the Manned Spacecraft Center. To help determine if you are interested in watching this densely technical film, the following sentence gives an idea of what it is like: “Subsystem duty cycling tests with the engines mounted in an operational quad configuration were completed at Downey in support of the 009 and 011 spacecraft missions.” If you find that sentence intriguing, you will very likely enjoy this film.
Date Released: Mid-1966
File #: MSC-66-321
Produced By: NASA/MSC
Program Duration: 27:43
Media: 16mm Film
Reel Length: 1,000 ft
Audio: Optical, Variable Area
Film Stock: Ektachrome
Film Stock Edge Code Date: 1966