Apollo 4 - Objectives

Objectives

AS-501 was the Saturn V's first flight. At the time, it was the largest launch vehicle to ever attempt a flight. This mission was NASA's first to use "all-up" testing, a decision that goes back to late-1963. George Mueller, the head of the NASA Office of Manned Space Flight at that time, was a systems engineer who previously worked on military missile projects, recognized all-up testing was successfully used to rapidly develop the Air Force's Minuteman ICBM program, and thought it could be used to meet Apollo's schedule. Previously, the way Wernher von Braun's team at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and the old N.A.C.A. Langley Research Center engineers tested new rockets was by testing each stage incrementally. The Saturn V's test program departed from the conservative incremental approach previously used by the Marshall and Langley engineers. It would be tested all at once, with all stages live and fully flight-worthy, including an Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM). This decision dramatically streamlined the program's test flight phase, eliminating four missions, but it required everything to work properly the first time. Apollo program managers had misgivings about all-up testing but agreed to it with some reluctance since incremental component tests would inevitably push the lunar landing mission past the 1970 goal.

The mission was the first launch from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39, specifically built for the Saturn V. Since this was an all-up test, it was the S-IC first stage and S-II second stage's first launch. It would also be the first time that the S-IVB third stage would be restarted in Earth orbit, and the first time that the Apollo spacecraft would reenter the Earth's atmosphere at the speed of a lunar return trajectory.

The payload was a CSM, serial number 017. This was a Block I design meant for systems testing, not the Block II spacecraft designed for use with the Lunar Module (LM) on the actual Moon landings. However, several significant Block II modifications were made for certification, since no all-up Block II spacecraft would fly without a crew. The modifications included: a new CM heat shield outer covering; a new CM-to-SM umbilical connector; moving the VHF scimitar antennas from the CM to the SM; a new Unified S-Band antenna; and a modified crew compartment hatch.

A dummy LM known as a Lunar Module Test Article, LTA-10R was carried as ballast to simulate the loadings of the LM on the launch vehicle. At 29,500 pounds (13,400 kg), the LTA-10R was slightly lighter than a nominal LM used on the first lunar landing, which weighed 33,278 pounds (15,095 kg).