PIONEER 5 DEEP SPACE PROBE 1960 NASA DOCUMENTARY " THE PATH OF VENUS " FILM ATLAS ROCKET 85064

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This color educational film is about America's first deep space probe, Pioneer V. Animation depicts the path the spacecraft takes on its journey. This is copyright circa 1960.
Opening: model planet Earth spins round. Scientific engineers at work on a solar panel on a satellite. A rocket. In the distance, the planet Venus (:55). Title: The Path of Venus (:06-1:09). It is 1960, a Thor DM 18-Able IV rocket is on a launchpad. A man with a radio relays information. Construction helmets. Planet Earth in space. A boy looks through a telescope at the moon. Closeup of the moon. The sun. Solar flares on the surface of the sun (1:10-3:24). The planet Jupiter in the distance, followed by Saturn then Mars. A boy looks through a telescope. Solar system still photo. The Milky Way. A boy looks in an observatory. Water vapor moves over a photo of Venus (3:25-5:19). A rocket is on a launchpad. Engineers look up at the rocket. Able 4 was designed to launch Pioneer V into deep space. Men inside mission control. Spot lights turn on. The Pioneer 5 / Able 4 rocket is on the launchpad. A man races down the stairs (5:20-7:29). The rocket is in the countdown stage and ready to take off. Engine start is pressed. The Able 4 rocket leaves the launchpad. Vapor trail as the space probe climbs into the upper layers of the atmosphere. Men inside mission control. Lights on the switchboard. Separation in space between the rocket and the space probe (7:30-9:11). Stars in space. A model of the space probe heads for Venus. A model of the planet Venus spins. Back on earth, Men sit. Women type. Antennas aimed skyward. Giant radar antennas (9:12-10:59). The space probe travels through space. An asteroid in space. Models of planets in space. Launch pad for a rocket. Rocket on the launch pad, smoke billows from it as it's ready to go (11:00-13:20). End credits (13:21-13:33).
Pioneer 5 (also known as Pioneer P-2, and Able 4, and nicknamed the "Paddle-Wheel Satellite") was a spin-stabilized space probe in the NASA Pioneer program used to investigate interplanetary space between the orbits of Earth and Venus. It was launched on 11 March 1960 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 17A at 13:00:00 UTC with an on-orbit dry mass of 43 kg. It was a 0.66 m diameter sphere with 1.4 m span across its four solar panels and achieved a solar orbit of 0.806 × 0.995 AU (121,000,000 by 149,000,000 km). Data was received until 30 April 1960. Among other accomplishments, the probe confirmed the existence of interplanetary magnetic fields. Pioneer 5 was the most successful probe in the Pioneer/Able series. The original mission plan was for a launch in November 1959 where Pioneer 5 would conduct a flyby of Venus, but technical issues prevented the launch from occurring until early 1960 by which time the Venus window for the year had closed. Since it was not possible to send the probe to Venus, it would instead merely investigate interplanetary space and an actual mission to the planet would have to wait another three years.
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[@KennyG_420]

Very interesting video. 1960 video before all the missions were sent to planets and moons. Cool to watch this now in 2021, and know what the future was for the missions by NASA

[@joekerr6874]

Wow, man... that's far out!

[@swedichboy1000]

Probably just the notion of nostalgia, but the 50s and 60s always felt so far ahead, always optimistic of the future and what awaits humanity. These days, it feels so stagnant and pessimistic, even though our current technology should be superior to what they had in those earlies decades.

[@geemanbmw]

The stagnation is due in large part by no competition like we had with the Russians bank in this era.

[@lukestrawwalker]

The 50's and 60's were a very special time... the frontier of space was just being opened, it was the dawn of the space age, and we were in a severe and vital competition with the communists here on Earth (the Space Race). Therefore space exploration took on a vitality and an importance and priority it hasn't held since. We won the Moon Race, but once the "easy firsts" were gone, our only competitor, the Soviets, pretty much dropped out and dropped into a "slow burn" of space station programs orbiting Earth, which has pretty much become "looking at stars and peeing in jars" as the astronauts put it. The US for its part abandoned its lunar goal after planting the flag, dumped all its hard-won Saturn and Apollo capabilities, in favor of following the Soviets with a souped up version of their low Earth orbit program, only in a reusable shuttle. Eventually that grew slightly (more like morphed) into ISS. We've been stuck there ever since. Politics took control of the space program, it became "just another bureaucracy" in an overly inflated gubmint, and it's been all downhill from there, more or less. The technology is there, but the spirit, the will, the desire is gone. Oh we get some fantastic missions and pictures and new knowledge to be sure... we can do things that the pioneers of the 50's and 60's could hardly have dreamed of, but it's more scientific capability and curiosity coupled with political chicanery steering the ship now. The (mostly) men of the 50's and 60's had a totally different mindset from today. They were doers, achievers, who had a "can do" attitude and did whatever it took to get it done. They had fought a world war to save the world from fascism and militarist conquest, and space was "the next job" or arena of competition to demonstrate the capabilities of their society, and they attacked the problem with equal gusto. "Things were only impossible until they weren't". SO starting virtually with nothing but a basic understanding and experience with small rockets and missiles, using nothing but slide rules and their brains and building what they needed to design, build, test, analyze, integrate, construct, and launch the rockets and spacecraft that opened the new frontier of space. Look how the mighty have fallen! In 1961 we started with a surborbital hop with a guy in a tiny capsule powered by batteries on top of a slightly modified ballistic missile, and decided to go to the Moon, and learning as they went, people (mostly men) using only slide rules and the knowledge and experience they had coupled with the brilliant insight of a few gifted individuals, CREATED *EVERYTHING* needed to successfully go to the Moon and land men there, and safely return them to Earth, not once, but six times. The Saturn V first flew only six years later, and the entire program was completed and done within 11 years when the narrow-minded navel-gazing US gubmint decided to walk away from it all. Now, using pre-existing shuttle engines and boosters and other components, having the benefit of over 50 years of prior experience and expertise, having unlimited computer power for analysis and design, miracle materials at their fingertips that couldn't have been dreamt of in the 60's, and all the knowledge and infrastructure built during that time at the ready, it's taken NASA nearly 20 years just to REPLICATE the Apollo capsule (Orion) and a lousy imitation of Saturn V (SLS). SLS itself is a bad joke-- according to NASA's own Inspector General's office, it will cost over $4 billion dollars per launch, JUST for the rocket and launch, NOT including ANY mission costs or hardware costs launched by the rocket to complete the mission. Where Saturns were designed to be launched every couple months, which by the end of the program had slowed to once every six months roughly to give more time between missions, SLS is only designed to launch once about every 2-3 YEARS... NASA's own Mars "design reference mission", their plans about how to actually go to Mars, requires six SLS launches to assemble, provision, and fuel the Mars-bound spacecraft in orbit... IOW it would take 12 years to accomplish all the launches just to assemble the spacecraft LOL:) The main construction phase of ISS took 13 years using Shuttle! IF we had Saturn V's available, we could have assembled a station the size (mass) of ISS in just six launches over a period of 3 years, even at the slow rate of 2 launches per year used in the later Apollo lunar missions! Will things ever change?? Will there be a new vitality and a new "space race"? I wouldn't bet on it. The Chinese have leapfrogged us both. The Soviets collapsed the the Russians are a mere shadow of their former USSR glories. The Chinese are methodically doing each mission in turn they need to build capabilities one atop another like bricks. They don't fly a whole series of missions dedicated to one goal-- they fly a single mission, get it right, or fly another until they get it right, then move on to the next goal, that next brick in the wall. They're not in a race but in logical, methodical progress. The US has turned inward to navel gazing stupidity, content to rest on our laurels and beat our chest about what a great country we are, what a great civilization we've created, though now people cannot even figure out which bathroom they're going to use. We're dedicated to war and commit atrocities around the globe calling it fighting for freedom. It's become so bad now our gubmint foolishly is provoking the other world powers and pushing them into corners in their own backyards "because we can" and for no other apparent reason, never a good idea with world powers that have thousands of nuclear weapons on missiles pointed at us capable of being launched at a moment's notice. In the 50's and 60's, we thought in 20 years we'd be riding in flying cars and living on the Moon and Mars. Now in the early 2020's, we worry that in 20 years we'll be riding on donkeys and living in caves... Later! OL J R :)

[@robertschorry1052]

Not an Atlas. A Thor - Able IV launcher.

[@damxgopak457]

Big dreams.