This Is Beautiful

The launch of Apollo 7.

And now we have the Apollo 8 launch. These were the first guys outside the Low Earth Orbit, flying right by the Moon. You can see the stage separation from outside, this time from the better angle and in color. Dem J-2 cluster though...

The S-Ic was running on RP-1 (airplane fuel)/liquid oxygen mixture, thus the orange bright flame. S-II on the other hand used liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen mixture, which means the exhaust (water vapor) is invisible.

Around 1:28 you can see the vapor cone around the front of S-II, which appeared when the rocket was passing through the sound bareer, and disappeared shortly after.

After stage separation you can see that first stage engines are still glowing orange. The center engine however isn’t - is was shut down thirty seconds before (around 2:40) to avoid oscillations.

At the end of the video you can see the interstage separating, which was done to reduce the spacecraft's mass.

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