Taming Liquid Hydrogen: The Centaur: Upper Stage Rocket, 1958-2002
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.22 (803 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1478266538 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 306 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-02-27 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Puff piece for NASA Maury "The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket" presumes to relate the joint efforts of the NASA Lewis Research Center and "industry" to develop the Centaur missile. Instead, it presents a slanted report of how Abe Silverstein, NASA's Centaur Project Director, designed the Centaur. He is cited on thirty pages, as compared with the single citation for the Gen
Coming less thana year after President Kennedy had made landing human beings on the Moon a national p r i o r i t y, the loss of Centaur was regarded as a serious setback for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). During its maiden voyage in May 1962, a Centaur upper stage rocket, mated to an At l a sb o o s t e r, exploded 54 seconds after launch, engulfing the rocket in a huge fireball. During the failure investigation, Homer Newell, Di rector of Space Sciences, ruefully declared: “Taming liquid hydrogen to the point where expensive oper-ational space missions can be committed to it has turned out to be more difficult than anyone supposed at the outset.”. In ve s t i g a t i o nre vealed that Centaur’s light, stainless-steel tank had split open, spilling its liquid-hyd rogen fueld own its sides, where the flame of the rocket exhaust immediately ignited it