The Apollo 11 Launch, In Slow Motion From Ground Level, Is Still Extraordinary

Even a half-century later, the Apollo program stands up as an incredible feat of engineering. I suspect it will always be considering one of the pinnacle achievements of human engineering. Just think: the Wright Brothers had only just gotten humanity off the ground 66 years before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. The fact that NASA took Kennedy's pledge of putting a man on the moon and made it into reality in less than a decade is nothing less than a turning point in history. 

We've all heard Neil Armstrong's famous lines when he finally set foot on the surface of the moon, but little did we realize just how big a leap it would be for mankind. And little did we realize just how much had gone into that moonshot, still humbling when looking back from the 21st century.

On July 16, 1969, NASA set up a camera to catch the launch of Apollo 11, running 16mm film at a rate of 500 frames per second, right at the base of the rocket.

It started filming five seconds before liftoff, just as the kerosene and liquid oxygen mixed to get the rocket's engines ignited. 

The five engines on the Saturn V rocket created 7.5 million pounds of thrust.

Note: the video isn't going backwards here. As the engines powered up and created thrust, those flames on the launch pad were sucked back, redirected downward and out the flame trench.

There's all kinds of engineering going on here that few of us have considered, like what happens to all that equipment on the pad when the engines blast down on them as the rocket lifts off.

Turns out NASA developed a coating that would get burned instead of the equipment. They thought of everything!

The full video below has all kinds of amazing behind-the-scenes insights that will answer all your questions!

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