Saturn V

Those who hear the story now, some forty years after the event, simply don’t believe it. Others believe it, but think there must have been some misinterpretation. But I was there. I read the newspaper reports. I listened to the radio. I was also proud that our country was going into space in the wake of the Russians and Americans. Our astronauts had been chosen. Incredibly, they were being rolled down hills in oil drums to get them used to the ‘G’ forces and buffeting that they would experience on lift off. This wasn’t fantasy or play acting. This was for real. Sadly, our space programme stalled amongst howls of derisive laughter from a sceptical public. It lay dormant for the next thirty years when suddenly it re-emerged with the accidental discovery of how the fabled Saturn V rocket, which blasted men to the moon, was fuelled.

To offload liquid propane (the household gas) from a road tanker into storage, the procedure is to force it out with inert nitrogen gas at high pressure to ensure that the propane remains in liquid form during the transfer. Having struggled in vain for over an hour to connect the nitrogen supply line to the road tanker, the three technicians decided that oxygen under equally high pressure would be a perfectly suitable alternative – liquid propane and oxygen - the lethal cocktail that fuelled the first stage of the Saturn V rocket.

The rest, as they say, is history. Only one wheel of the road tanker was ever found. It landed five miles away in a shanty town where, fortunately, nobody was hurt, but a number of shacks were razed as it bounced around on impact. The rest of the road tanker and the three technicians were never found and were presumed to have made it successfully into orbit, although that has never been officially claimed.