SA-500F (alternately SA500F, 500F, or Facilities Integration Vehicle) was a dummy

Saturn V Saturn V is a retired American super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by NASA under the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon. The rocket was human-rated, with three stages, and powered with liquid fuel. It was flown from 196 ...

used by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

to test facilities at

Launch Complex 39 Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) is a rocket launch site at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida, United States. The site and its collection of facilities were originally built as the Apollo program's "Moonport" and later m ...

at the

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968 ...

Merritt Island, Florida Merritt Island is a peninsula, commonly referred to as an island, in Brevard County, Florida, United States, located on the eastern Floridian coast, along the Atlantic Ocean. It is also the name of an unincorporated town in the central and so ...

throughout 1966. Tests included the mating of the Saturn's stages in the

Vehicle Assembly Building The Vehicle Assembly Building (originally the Vertical Assembly Building), or VAB, is a large building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), designed to assemble large pre-manufactured space vehicle components, such as the massive Saturn V and th ...

(VAB), the fit of the service platforms, the launcher-transporter operation, the propellant loading system, and the test connections to the mobile launcher and support equipment. Its three stages duplicated the flight configuration, ordnance, and umbilical connections of their live counterparts. Although inert, the retrograde rockets, ullage rockets, and shaped charges had the dimensions of the live ordnance to let the launch team practice ordnance installation. The first stage only had one real F-1 engine, and the inter-tank section of the first stage had a different paint scheme than flight vehicles. The third stage had a paint scheme partially matching the Saturn 1B, for which it was originally made. SA-500F was first stacked on Mobile Launcher 1 in the

High Bay 1 up to the Instrument Unit on March 30, 1966. The Apollo Command/Service Module facilities verification boilerplate was added on May 2, 1966. 500F was rolled out to Pad A on May 25, 1966. On June 8, it was rolled back to the VAB temporarily as

Hurricane Alma The name Alma has been used to name 11 tropical cyclones worldwide: 5 in the North Atlantic Ocean, 5 in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and 1 in the Western Pacific Ocean. In the Atlantic: * Tropical Storm Alma (1958), made landfall in northeastern Mexi ...

passed, though the ground crew supposed the rollback was more of an exercise than necessity because winds remained below critical for the entire storm. 500F returned to Pad A on June 10. Facility checkout culminated with a "wet test" (Filling the tanks with propellant) to verify storage and transfer of propellants. 500F was removed from Pad A on October 14 and destacked on October 21, 1966.

Paint scheme

SA-500F was the first complete assembly of something resembling a Saturn V, and model makers quickly patterned their designs after its paint scheme, but engineers changed the black stripe to white in the intertank section of the first stage for flight vehicles after discovering the intertank got too hot from the heat of the Sun. The third stage's paint scheme is similar to that of the Saturn IB, with some minor differences, since it was originally made for testing the facilities of the Saturn IB. Model manufacturers largely have not updated their paint schemes since. The SA-500D test article also had a similar paint scheme.

Fate

The first stage, S-IC-F, was returned to the Marshall Space Flight Center and was stored there for an extended time (possibly for a few years). The stage was eventually scrapped to make more room. The second stage, S-II-F, was reassigned as a dynamic test stage at Marshall in early 1967 as S-II-F/D for use in the dynamic test vehicle SA-500D, after its predecessor was destroyed in an accident on a test stand. It is now displayed as part of the Saturn V at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The third stage, S-IVB-500F, was originally manufactured as a dummy third stage for the smaller Saturn IB and was used to fit-check the two Saturn IB launch complex facilities ( LC 34 and LC 37). It was then modified to meet the Saturn V third stage configuration for use on the SA-500F. In 1970, it was modified into the

Skylab Skylab was the first United States space station, launched by NASA, occupied for about 24 weeks between May 1973 and February 1974. It was operated by three separate three-astronaut crews: Skylab 2, Skylab 3, and Skylab 4. Major operations ...

Workshop Dynamic Test Stage and was shipped in December to the Johnson Space Center for dynamic testing. In June 1971, it was shipped to Marshall for Skylab workshop static testing; and in June 1974 it was returned to KSC. It was scrapped in the 1980s or 1990s, with a possible sighting in 1986.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite web , url=http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=6263.0 , title=Saturn V 500F question , date=January 25, 2007 , publisher=NASASpaceFlight.com , access-date=February 12, 2011 {{cite web , url=http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=6263.0, last=Kyle , first=Ed , title=Saturn V 500F question , publisher=NASASpaceFlight.com , date=January 21, 2007 , access-date=February 12, 2011 Memorandum from Larry Mauk, Kennedy Space Center, to Mike Wright, "Saturn V numbers," February 20, 1992, with attachment entitled, "Stage S-IVB-500F History". {{cite book , first1=Charles D. , last1=Benson , first2=William Barnaby , last2=Faherty , title=Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations , url=https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4204/contents.html , publisher=Scientific and Technical Information Office,

, year=1978, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041117050424/https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4204/contents.html, archive-date=2004-11-17 {{cite web , url=http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/satstg5.html , title=Saturn Vehicle History , work=Space Launch Report , date=December 22, 2010 , access-date=February 12, 2011 {{cite news , url=http://collectspace.com/news/news-010708a.html , last1=Lawrie , first1=Alan , last2=Pearlman , first2=Robert , title=Untold Apollo: How tennis shoes and tug-of-war toppled the mighty Saturn V , publisher=

CollectSPACE collectSPACE is an online publication and community for space history enthusiasts featuring articles and photos about space artifacts and memorabilia, information on past, current, and upcoming space events, space history collecting resources, an ...

, date=January 7, 2008 , access-date=February 12, 2011 {{Cite book , first=Wernher , last=von Braun , author-link=Wernher von Braun , editor-first=Ed , editor-last=Buckbee , title=The Rocket Man: Wernher von Braun: The Man Who Took America to the Moon: His Weekly Notes: 1961-1969 , url=http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum9/HTML/001778.html , format=DVD , year=2010 , publisher=Steward & Wise Music Publishing , isbn=978-1-935001-27-0 , page=17 (NOTES 4/4/66 RUDOLPH) {{cite news , first=Amy Shira , last=Teitel , work=Vintage Space , via= Popular Science , title=Rocking a Rocket: The Saturn 500F Shake Test , url=http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/rocking-rocket-saturn-500f-shake-test , date=October 27, 2014 , access-date=December 19, 2014 {{Cite web , url=http://apollosaturncom.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-saturn-v-facilities-verification.html , title=The Saturn V: The Facilities Verification Vehicle 500F , last=Duncan , first=John , date=June 17, 2017 , access-date=June 17, 2017 {{Cite web , url=http://www.ninfinger.org/models/rms_tips/saturn_v.html , title=Other Saturn IB Colors Saturn (rocket family)

Paint scheme

Fate

See also

References