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Originally Posted by grmcdorman
To add my own $.02, I have heard it said that the press covering the Apollo launches were given, at their own request, a location closer than the NASA blockhouse to the pad.
After the first launch (presumably a test launch), they asked to be moved back.
Unfortunately I don't have a cite; I'll see if I can find it at home tonight. No guarantees though (so this may be just my own imagination).
Edit: Fixtated mispaling of NASA. :-(
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OK, found more details. My source doesn't say anything about being closer or moving back, but it does make quite clear how overwhelming the sound was. The launch was an unmanned launch on November 9, 1967 designated AS-501, with the empty CM/SM being designated Apollo 4.
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As viewed from the VIP stand or the press site holding 500 newsmen, the base of the Saturn boiled with fire. ... There was no sound. Saturn V was too far away ... And then the sound came - first in tremors through the ground that built up like a million Vikings thundering toward Valhalla, and then in a physically moving vibration magnified by the concrete stands. ... in all the world, the noise was second only to a Hydrogen Bomb.
Compressed air battered on the roofs of broadcasting vans near the press stand, reporters clapped their hands to deafened ears, some bowed over close to the ground, trying to escape the rising volume of noise - noise so loud that it pressed against the human rib cage and seemed to move right inside the chest. From the CBS news van, the usual calm, controlled, dialogue of Walter Cronkite broke down as the very structure of the vehicle threatened to collapse under the pressure of the thunder, pounding like fists on the roof: 'The building is shaking.... Boy it's terrific, the building's shaking. This big glass window is shaking as we're holding it with out hands ...'
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(
The History of Manned Spaceflight, David Baker, Ph.D., Crown Publishers Inc., 1982; page 294).
I can't find any reference to how far away this was, other than 1) the Launch Control Center was "nearly 5km away" and 2) the sound arrived at the viewing stands at
least sixteen seconds after ignition, based on the information in the book. At roughly 344 m/s for sound, that would make it more than 5km away. [344 m/s is the speed of sound in 21C dry air at sea level, according to Wikipedia.] Presumably, based on this, the stands were in the vicinity of the Launch Control Center.
As I said, there's no reference to the stands or press being moved back, but again, based on the description, I doubt very much they'd want to be that close for the next launch.
Further, based on this description of the physical discomfort and just plain
force of the sound, it's pretty clear that being closer would be stupid - if not suicidal - as earlier posters have explained.
There's also an interesting passage I came across a few pages later:
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As 1968 moved to its spring, few people in America, or any foreign state, were as concerned about the Apollo program as they had been about Alan Shepard or John Glenn. ... So many felt that having stood up in challenge and defiance to the threatened pre-eminence of Soviet technology, the end was an unnecessary step, the actual moon landing an untimely event out of context and not a little irrelevant.
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(ibid, page 304.) So if Apollo was irrelevant, the HB claims that it was to
distract from other events such as Vietnam are weak. (Not that such claims were strong to begin with, of course.)
-GRM