In the 1960s, an engine test 15 miles away shattered a bank window in Picayune, Mississippi. The machine behind that roar was the Saturn V. This episode treats the rocket as a historical figure, tracing its birth in the panic after Sputnik, its astonishing anatomy, its explosive testing phase, and its brief but legendary working life from 1967 to 1973.

We start with Operation Paperclip and Wernher von Braun's early years counting pennies in Texas, then the three-way debate between direct ascent, Earth orbit rendezvous, and John Houbolt's lunar orbit rendezvous that set the rocket's size. We walk through the three stages and their contractors, why the F-1 engines burned kerosene while the upper stages used liquid hydrogen, the IBM instrument unit, and the crawler that kept a 363-foot vehicle level within 0.16 degrees. We then follow a launch ...