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A giant, untested rocket lifts off Pad 34; engineers gave it a 75 percent chance
SA-1 carried no crew and no real upper stages, only a plan to find out if the booster would hold together.
By the fall of 1961, the United States had orbited a satellite but still had nothing close to the power needed to reach the Moon. On October 27, NASA launched SA-1, the first Saturn I rocket, from Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral, carrying dummy upper stages instead of a working payload. The booster's eight engines fired for the full flight apart from a brief early cutoff, pushing the vehicle to 136.5 kilometers before it fell into the Atlantic 345.7 kilometers downrange…
