Staging

A trip to the moon is underway. The first stage of the mighty Saturn V has been expended, and the second stage is in the process of igniting its five J-2 engines. The separation motors are pushing the rocket away from the spent stage, and are forcing the second stage's liquid propellant to the bottom of it's tanks.

 

I'm not a graphic artist, but I tried to play one anyway because otherwise the flames of the separation motors look even worse.

 

I didn't change the official model much, so the image deviates from reality a bit. The two stages are actually held together by an interstage section, but the model makes the interstage part of the lower stage. That wouldn't work in reality since a torque on the lower stage could easily allow it to impact the nozzles of the J-2 engines. What really happened was the interstage detached the first stage and remained with the second stage for a while. That would cover up the engines in this picture. Also, the separation motors were on the interstage, not the second stage. After the J-2 engines were all running, the interstage was jettisoned.

 

This was filmed on at least one mission (Apollo 4), and the film successfully recovered.

Done