Taming Liquid Hydrogen The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket 1958 2002

NASA SP-2004-4230. NASA History Series. Chronicles the story of the Centaur, the world's first liquid-hydrogen rocket. Focuses on technical and political hurdles that Centaur faced over the three decades that it was managed by NASA Lewis Research Center. Explores NASA's effort to modify Centaur for launch from the Shuttle's cargo bay, a controversial project canceled in the wake of the Challenger accident.

During its maiden voyage in May 1962, a Centaur upper stage rocket, mated to an Atlas booster, exploded 54 seconds after launch, engulfing the rocket in a huge fireball. Investigation revealed that Centaur's light, stainless-steel tank had split open, spilling its liquid-hydrogen fuel down its sides, where the flame of the rocket exhaust immediately ignited it. Coming less than a year after President Kennedy had made landing human beings on the Moon a national priority, the loss of Centaur was regarded as a serious setback for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). During the failure investigation, Homer Newell, Director of Space Sciences, ruefully declared: "Taming liquid hydrogen to the point where expensive operational space missions can be committed to it has turned out to be more difficult than anyone supposed at the outset." .After this failure, Centaur critics, led by Wernher von Braun, mounted a campaign to cancel the program. In addition to the unknowns associated with liquid hydrogen, he objected to the unusual design of Centaur. Like the Atlas rocket, Centaur depended on pressure to keep its paper thin, stainless-steel shell from collapsing. It was literally inflated with its propellants like a football or balloon and needed no internal structure to give it added strength and stability. The so-called "pressure-stabilized structure" of Centaur, coupled with the light weight of its high-energy cryogenic propellants, made Centaur lighter and more powerful than upper stages that used conventional fuel. But, the critics argued, it would never become the reliable rocket that the United States needed. Others, especially military proponents of Centaur, believed that accepting the challenge of developing liquid-hydrogen technology was an important risk to take. Despite criticism and early technical failures, the taming of liquid hydrogen proved to be one of NASA's most significant technical accomplishments. Centaur not only succeeded in demonstrating the feasibility of liquid hydrogen as a rocket fuel, but it also went on to a brilliant career as an upper stage for a series of spectacular planetary missions in the 1970s. Ironically, this success did little to ensure the future of the Centaur rocket. Once the Shuttle became operational in the early 1980s, all expendable launch vehicles like Centaur were slated for termination. Centaur advocates fought to keep the program alive.

The story of how liquid hydrogen was put to work is told in two great books. Part 1 is this book, "Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 1945-1959", by John L. Sloop (NASA SP-4404). Part 2 is "Taming Liquid Hydrogen: The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket: 1958-2002", by Virginia P. Dawson and Mark D. Bowles (NASA SP-2004-4230).

In 1957, when Russia launched the first satellite, the ability of the United States to respond depended on one small launch vehicle still under development, Vanguard, and modifications to ballistic missiles. The subsequent space race featured a rapid buildup of launch vehicle capability in this country during the 1960s, culminating with the giant Saturn V which launched the Apollo lunar expeditions beginning in 1968. A significant part of the increased launch capability resulted from technical decisions made in 1958 and 1959 to use liquid hydrogen in the upper stages of the Centaur and Saturn vehicles-and that story is not well known. The decision to use liquid hydrogen in developing the nation's largest launch vehicle was particularly bold, for many experienced engineers doubted the advisability of using a highly hazardous fuel associated with the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, a gas difficult to liquefy, a liquid so cold-close to absolute zero-that storage and handling are difficult, and so light-1/14 the density of water-that large tank volumes are required, with attendant problems of vehicle mass and drag. Hydrogen had been considered in astronautics and aeronautics several times before; but in each case, as the problems became better known, the attempt was abandoned, What was different in this case? Why was there so much confidence about hydrogen within the young space agency to warrant risking the success of the nation's manned spaceflight program? The decision, of course, turned out to be the right one. Subsequent advancements in the technologies of liquefying, storing, transporting, and using large quantities of liquid hydrogen made it just another flammable liquid that could be handled and used safely with reasonable caution. The key role that liquid hydrogen played in the success of the Centaur and Saturn launch vehicles has long interested the author. As a participant in research on hydrogen for rockets in the 1950s and a proponent for its use, the author understood the potential as well as the risks and in recent years wanted to investigate more fully the circumstances leading to the 1958 and 1959 decisions. In digging into the background for the decisions and the status of hydrogen technology that influenced those decisions, the question arose: how far back to investigate? The flammability of gaseous hydrogen has been known for centuries; its large heat content was measured in the 18th century; and it was liquefied by Dewar in 1898. Five years later, Tsiolkovskiy, the Russian rocket pioneer, proposed its use in a space rocket, as did Goddard in 1910. In the 1920s, Oberth correctly assessed the advantage of using hydrogen in the upper stages of space vehicles. None of these rocket pioneers experimented with hydrogen; other fuels appeared more attractive in the face of hydrogen's disadvantages, particularly its low density. One German experimenter, Walter Theil, tried to use liquid hydrogen in a small rocket engine a few years before World War II, but numerous leaks and higher priority tasks ended the experiments. The first systematic investigations of liquid hydrogen to propel aircraft and rockets began in the United States in 1945 and although earlier developments undoubtedly had an influence, where the author chose to start this book at that point. In describing the history of rocket technology, it is easy for an engineer-author to become immersed in the technical aspects that may be of little interest to some readers. The author tried to minimize mathematics, technical language, and other specialized details, but some are unavoidable if propulsion research is to be presented fairly and accurately. Adding to this problem has been the conversion of many familiar English units into the metric system. Those accustomed to thinking of rocket performance in terms of specific impulse will not find it here; instead, they will have to settle for its equivalent, exhaust velocity.

On 29 July 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which became operational on 1 October of that year. Over the next 50 years, NASA achieved a set of spectacular feats, ranging from advancing the well-established field of aeronautics to pioneering the new fields of Earth and space science and human spaceflight. In the midst of the geopolitical context of the Cold War, 12 Americans walked on the Moon, arriving in peace “for all mankind.” Humans saw their home planet from a new perspective, with unforgettable Apollo images of Earthrise and the “Blue Marble,” as well as the “pale blue dot” from the edge of the solar system. A flotilla of spacecraft has studied Earth, while other spacecraft have probed the depths of the solar system and the universe beyond. In the 1980s, the evolution of aeronautics gave us the first winged human spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station stands as a symbol of human cooperation in space as well as a possible way station to the stars. With the Apollo fire and two Space Shuttle accidents, NASA has also seen the depths of tragedy. In this volume, a wide array of scholars turn a critical eye toward NASA’s first 50 years, probing an institution widely seen as the premier agency for exploration in the world, carrying on a long tradition of exploration by the United States and the human species in general. Fifty years after its founding, NASA finds itself at a crossroads that historical perspectives can only help to illuminate.