Rocketry Planet

The Launch of the Saturn V
Driven by some unseen force, Ray Kinsella travels to Boston, where he picks up writer-turned-recluse Terrance Mann—played by actor James Earl Jones—and hauls him all the way back to Iowa to see the magical baseball field.

They arrive just in time for Kinsella to be served by his brother-in-law with foreclosure papers on the farm. Kinsella's obsession with the ballfield has doomed his family's finances. How can he keep the field any longer? Why provide this venue for ghostly baseball players from an era long gone? Where will he get the money to save the farm and the ballfield?

His tiny daughter says that people will pay to come to the field. "It will be just like when they were little kids a long time ago," she announces, "and they will watch the game and remember what it was like."

The brother-in-law scoffs. "Sign the papers, Ray," he demands. "Turn over the farm now while you still can."

"People will come, Ray," announces Mann in a booming voice as he rises up from the bleachers and walks into the field, surrounded by ballplayers. "They will come to Iowa for reasons they cannot even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not even sure why they are doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children longing for the past . . . and they'll walk out to the bleachers and sit in their short sleeves on a perfect afternoon, and they'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines where they sat when they were children and they cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it will be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick that they will have to brush them away from their faces. . . .

"People will come, Ray . . . this field, this game is part of our past, Ray, and it reminds us of all that was once good and could be good again.

"Oh, people will come, Ray, they most certainly will come."

In the end, it was all Steve Eves.

Yes, it took a small army of assistants, crew members, electronics experts, financial sponsors, motor-builders, parachute riggers, and countless others to get his one-tenth-scale Saturn V off the ground. It took the generosity of the landowners and the hard work of MDRA. It took the patience of Eves's wife and family. But when the final countdown began, the entire weight of this project rested squarely on the shoulders of the boy-turned-rocket builder who was about to give us all another glimpse of the past glory of mankind's reach for the moon.

"Are you ready?" asked McGilvray.

"Let's do it," replied Eves.

"Right there," said McGilvray, pointing at the launch button.

With thousands of people on their feet, the waiting was over. It was July 16, 1969, again, and the biggest amateur rocket in high-power history was about to be lit. And when it was over a big piece of history was repeated—and a smaller bit of history was made.

It was precisely one o'clock. McGilvray started the countdown from ten, nine, eight . . .

"At this point I had to really concentrate to make sure I didn't transpose one of the ten numbers," said McGilvray later.

"As Neil started the countdown, there was no more time to worry," said Eves. "There was only the realization that two years of work was only seconds away from completion."

"Six, five, four . . ."

Eves's hands were shaking.

"Three, two, one . . ."

Steve pushed the button.

There was a bright flash, and instantaneously all nine Loki Research rocket motors came screaming to life in a single ear-splitting voice. Huge columns of white smoke billowed around the bottom of the rocket, racing outward in every direction. A bird that had flown right up to the launch pad abruptly changed course, retreating as the sixteen-hundred-pound one-tenth-scale Saturn V climbed up the tower.

The four-story-tall bright-red gantry disappeared in the smoke and fire.

In only a fraction of a second, the rocket was roaring into the sky under an estimated 11,500 pounds of thrust, pulling seven G's. "I don't know what words to use," said Michael Williams of Maryland, who was in the spectator area with his grandchildren. "It was incredible. As the rocket was climbing I was in total awe, which is probably why my pictures were not focused!"

At one second into launch, the thirty-six-foot-tall Saturn V was several hundred feet in the air, its motors trailing an incandescent white light. The exhaust flame stretched out more than fifty feet in its wake. The thundering noise, and the air blast from the motors, was chest-pounding. For those in the crowd old enough to remember, it was the moon race again. For the rest, it was a living history lesson.

"My initial thought was how amazing it would have been to see an actual Saturn V launch," said Kendra Jochum of College Park, Maryland, who made the trip with her father, husband, and seven-month-old son. "The launch itself was incredible to watch, although my son did not share the enthusiasm—given the volume of the roar from the rocket at such a distance, his cry was as loud as our cheers."

The rocket continued upward in a perfect trajectory, the thick white smoke trail an exclamation mark against the blue sky, as the Saturn V was soon traveling more than four hundred and fifty feet per second. The N motors burned white hot for almost four seconds, but the P motor continued its burn for almost twice as long—nearly eight seconds from ignition. Although most people in the crowd knew what to expect, the actual sight, sound, and fury of the blastoff and the climbing rocket left most of the spectators—and many of the crew members—wide-eyed and stunned.

"The sound of the rocket taking off reminded me of the launches that I had seen on television as part of the U.S. Space Program," said Jackie Cullen. "I know the real Saturn V rocket was bigger, but this rocket was really big, no matter how you look at it—and to be at the Higgs Farm to witness this launch was very exciting."

Reaching speeds of hundred miles per hour, Steve Eves's Saturn V was, in the air, indistinguishable from the real thing. "After accelerating the rocket to over three hundred miles per hour, the N motors burned out," said motor-maker Jeff Taylor, "leaving the P motor to continue pushing the rocket skyward for another five seconds."

Even thousands of feet in the air, the massive Saturn V was easy to see, and the cheering from the crowd slowly subsided as the big rocket's exhaust plume faded away and the rocket coasted to apogee. They say that in high-power rocketry the "up" part is easy. The devil is in the recovery. More so for big rockets.

And especially so for the biggest model rocket in history.

Eves said that the most challenging aspect of building the Saturn V was constructing a recovery system that would bring the rocket back safely. To accomplish this task, he relied on his more than thirty years of auto body collision expertise. Eves scratch-built a system, based partly on automotive airbags and seat belt tensioners, that would not only separate the rocket at apogee—where it would be moving slowly, with a better chance for the parachutes to deploy safely—but also lower its massive weight gently to the ground. At least that was the theory.

The Saturn V relied primarily on multiple on-board altimeters to sense apogee and then fire the charges that would activate the unique recovery system, separate the rocket, and deploy the parachutes. But as a backup, the rocket also had a remote control unit—a sort of panic button—that could be remotely triggered from the ground to ensure that the charges were fired to separate the rocket parts. At the launch control table, as the rocket seemed to linger at apogee of just under 4,500 feet, Tom Erb asked aloud, "Should I push the button?"

"Push the button, push the button, push the button!" yelled everyone in unison.

Suddenly, whether by on-board altimeters or by remote control, the rocket came apart. Within several seconds, there burst forth in the air numerous colorful displays of bright orange, green, brown, and white fabric, which, against the sky, looked like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

The crowd roared its approval, five thousand voices cheering and ten thousand hands clapping, as Eves and his crew whooped and hollered, jumped and screamed, and raised their hands in the air in celebration.

But the recovery wasn't over yet.

The thousand-pound main airframe was supposed to be lowered by four twenty-eight-foot-diameter parachutes, each chute attached to the rocket by a long recovery harness. The parachutes were out in the air—that was clear—but only two were fully deployed; a third was only partially deployed, and its lengthy harness was looped under the fins of the rocket. The fourth parachute was flailing about, unopened. Meanwhile, the upper two sections had failed to fully separate. But they were drifting down just fine under a single twenty-eight-foot-diameter canopy that appeared to be more than a match for the section's three-hundred-pound weight.

As the main airframe continued to descend, the third parachute unfurled, slowing the massive vehicle considerably more. It was now clear that even without the fourth parachute, the landing would be fine. The cheering and celebrating continued. The rocket was getting close to the ground now, and clearly this flight was a success. But what happened next surprised everyone on the field, especially Steve Eves and his crew.

The rocket stuck the landing—standing straight up on all four fins as the parachutes gently fell around it, about a mile from the launch pad. A little more than a hundred yards away from the main airframe, the upper section and the Apollo capsule landed safely also, the astronauts' signatures completely intact.

The total time in the air from ignition to landing was less than three minutes. But the excitement would last a lifetime.

Spectator Jeff Williams could hardly believe his eyes. "That was the most amazing launch I have ever seen," he said. "I think everyone will agree that the recovery just made the launch ten times better. Nobody could believe that the rocket landed straight up!"

"It was all more than I expected," echoed Michael Roth of Maryland who made the trip with his son. "The whole experience was like Disney World for me. The bigger the rocket, the bigger the excitement. Landing upright was like frosting on the cake."

Within minutes, scores of people converged on the landing site, examining the rocket and just wanting to be close up again with a piece of history. Steve Eves and his wife, Waneda, with their son Ben, were all smiles at the scene. The rocket had sustained some minimal cosmetic damage on landing and had a partial, nondisplaced zipper on the main airframe, but it was in great shape. For the next two hours the celebration continued, as Eves was interviewed by local and international news media, and spectators continued their trek over several hundred yards of farmland to touch a piece of the rocket that they had all come so far to see.

Fifteen-year-old Christopher Kondi had made the ten-hour trip to the Higgs Farm from Canaan, New Hampshire. "As the rocket climbed into the sky, I discovered how a dream can really come true, and for Steve Eves, it did," observed Kondi. "There was no part of the day that was not exciting, between getting up close to the rocket and the absolutely fantastic landing, when it stood back up, as if to say, let's go again!"

It is 5:30 now at the Higgs Farm, and the crane has come and gone, and the Saturn V is packed up and heading back to Ohio. After some cosmetic repairs, the huge rocket will be shipped to the NASA museum at Huntsville, Alabama, where it will be on display surrounded by other rockets, including a full-scale Saturn V owned by NASA.

Back at the MDRA launch field on the farm in Maryland, things will return to normal with no trace of the rocket and its historic flight. Nor will there be any trace of the thousands of people who traveled there—from all over the country—on April 25, 2009, to be inspired by and to witness this incredible flight.

But we were all there, and we will always be ready to go again.

Note: Neil McGilvray of ROCKETS Magazine also contributed to this story.

Reader comments:

#1 Re: Article: Steve Eves’ Field of Dreams: The Launch of the Saturn V

Awesome write up! Made me feel as if I was there for the event!

pantherjon on 10-25-2009 11:45 PM

#2 Re: Article: Steve Eves’ Field of Dreams: The Launch of the Saturn V

Excellent article. Amazing build. Congratulations again to Steve Eves all involved.

dixontj on 10-26-2009 07:03 AM

#3 Re: Article: Steve Eves’s Field of Dreams: The Launch of the Saturn V

I'd like to add my kudos to the author! This was a great read. I'm happy to have at least seen the rocket at LDRS this year...

Awesome work all around

Dipstick on 10-26-2009 11:06 PM

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