A view of the side of a Saturn-V Rocket, displaying the letters USA on the side.
The Saturn-V Rocket was used to send up the Apollo missions, and also the Skylab. Originally, the Iconic paint was used in WWII Germany on the Vergeltungswaffe Zwei, or the V2, that fell on London in the closing months of WWII. They were painted as such not because of style, but for data recording. The pattern on the rocket would make it obvious if the rocket rolled during its flight. Later on, during the Apollo-Saturn missions in the 1960’s, the NASA organization organized to paint the iconic design on the Saturn-V rocket, the Apollo-Saturn 500F. This rocket was white with black stripes rising about a third of the way up the first stage and continued on the upper part of the stage and onto the aft interstage, ending at a black ring. It also had a black and white checkered pattern on the upper interstage and a black instrument unit. But that black ring caused a lot of problems. The paint absorbed enough heat from the Sun that the fuel tanks underneath got dangerously hot. The upper upper part of the black stripes and the band on the first stage was painted over in white on all subsequent Saturn 5 rockets. (Source: http://www.popsci.com/why-was-saturn-v-black-and-white )
This page last updated August 2016
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