Apollo 7 Mission

This excerpt from a Saturn Quarterly Film Report covers the October 11, 1968 launch of Apollo 7. The mission was successful in every respect. All spacecraft systems operated satisfactorily, and all but one of the detailed test objectives were met. As an engineering test flight, Apollo 7 demonstrated the performance of the orbital safing experiment, the adequacy of attitude control in both the manual and automatic modes, and that the vehicle systems could perform for extended periods in orbit. For the first time, a mixed cabin atmosphere consisting of 65 percent oxygen and 35 percent nitrogen was used aboard an American piloted spacecraft. All previous flights had used 100 percent oxygen, a procedure changed as a result of recommendations made by the Apollo 1 fire investigation board. Another “first” was the availability of hot and cold drinking water for the crew as a by-product of the service module fuel cells, an important element for piloted lunar excursions. Consumables usage was maintained at safe levels, and permitted the introduction of additional flight activities toward the end of the mission.The Saturn IB launch vehicle was developed by the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.