[fingpilot]

You have to remember that the astronauts had watched all the test firings of both the S-IV-B and the F-1 main engines. And those did not always go well.

I had an uncle, (recently passed) who was the main turbopump engineer for the F-1. He said every time he would successfully get an engine to run at 100% for the required 150 seconds.... yes seconds (design life), he would get a call from Rocketdyne and ask if 103% was possible. Then 105% and so on. Something like every per cent above 100 was a order of magnitude power level increase. Of course, they blew up on the test stand, and they went back to work strengthening the part that broke until something else gave up.

I wish I had gotten Uncle Karl (Krebs) to write down all of his stories. He is mentioned in any record of liquid fuel propulsion, including the restartable and throttleable Shuttle system. He was awarded just about every science award for aerospace there was. I miss him a lot. And for KevinP73? He was a Corvair nut, had several Spyder convertibles.

Anyone that lived in the SoCal deserts in the 60's and 70's remembers the nightime firings and explosions. They did it at night because it was easier to track the pieces as they exploded for analysis later.

And they found guys with 'junk' big enough to climb aboard the top of this pile of explosive potential and ride it into the vacuum and void of space.