I agree, seeing any of the Apollo moon launches would have been awesome to say the least!
I've read the book "Genesis" the story of Apollo 8. They orbited the moon without landing. The author pointed out something about the power of the Saturn V, that just around 3 minutes after liftoff, the rocket had already passed 30 miles in altitude and was just over 6 miles down range already! This is what Astronaut Bill Anders said at the time, concerning liftoff-
The first seconds of flight were a total surprise to everybody because the Saturn V, which is a big tall rocket (kind of skinny) and we were like a bug on the end of a whip. It gets very massive near the bottom, with the centre of gravity near the bottom, so if you rotate it what little wiggle at the bottom translates to a big wiggle at the top.
Those giant F-1 engines were trying to keep the rocket going straight so it was being thrashed at the bottom and we were getting really thrashed at the top I mean violent sideways movement and massive noise that had nowhere near been simulated properly in our simulations. For the first ten seconds (it seemed more like 40) we could not communicate with each other. Had there been a need to abort detected on my instruments I could not have relayed that to Borman;:doh:
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