Editing Apollo abort modes (section)

== Mode I ==
An abort using the LES, this abort mode could be conducted from launch until the LES was jettisoned 30 seconds after the ignition of the second stage.

=== Mode IA (one alpha) ===
During the first 42 seconds of flight for the Saturn V or 60 seconds of the flight for the Saturn IB, the rocket is still relatively upright and an abort is much like a pad abort, lasting up to {{convert|3000|m}}. During the abort, the main pitch control motors move the CM out of the flight path of the possibly exploding rocket. At 14 seconds into the abort, the LES is jettisoned in the lead up to the splashdown.

=== Mode IB (one bravo) ===
From {{convert|3000|m}} to 30.5 km <!--That's 100,000 ft in the original-->(100,000 ft), the rocket is tilted eastwards far enough that firing the pitch control motor is unnecessary. After the LES main motor moves the CM away from the rocket, the tower would deploy [[Canard (aeronautics)|canards]] (small wings at the tip). They would force the CM-LES combination to pitch over with the CM bottom forward (blunt-end forward or BEF attitude.) This was necessary because the parachutes stowed at the CM top were only designed to be deployed in a [[downwind]] direction.{{refn|group=note|name=parachutes|As it turned out, however, the parachutes would still successfully deploy even with the CM traveling nose-forward; this was discovered during the [[A-003]] abort test, when the canards deployed, but failed to flip the spacecraft blunt-end-forward due to an extremely high roll rate resulting from a booster malfunction.}}

=== Mode IC (one charlie) ===
From 30.5 km (100,000 ft) until the LES is jettisoned, pitching the CM-LES combination over into the CM-forward position would still be necessary, but in the now thin air the canards are useless. Instead, the small engines of the CM's reaction control system ([[Reaction control system|RCS]]) would do the job. During One-Charlie, the first staging occurs, that is the jettisoning of the spent first stage and ignition of the second stage. One-Charlie ceases about 30 seconds after the staging when the LES is jettisoned, at an altitude of about 90 km (295,000 ft or 55 miles).