Word: centaur
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...catastrophic failures out of five firings, an accidental explosion on a test stand, a three-year lag in the development schedule, and a $552 million price tag have all earned NASA's liquid-hydrogen-fueled Centaur rocket such derisive nicknames as "the Hangar Queen" and "the Edsel of the Missile Industry." But as it separated from its Atlas booster and ignited in a burst of pale blue flame high above the Atlantic Ocean last week, Centaur took on its proper dignity. The most powerful rocket of its size in the world, built to fire a one-ton Surveyor spacecraft...
Liquid hydrogen is the fuel for two important U.S. rocket engines-Pratt & Whitney's RL-10 and Rocketdyne's J2. The RL-10 powers the second stage of Saturn 1, scheduled for early Apollo flights; two RL-10s combine to form the Centaur stage of the Atlas-Centaur system built to soft-land Surveyor spacecraft on the moon. J-2 forms the second and third stages of the Saturn V designed for Apollo's man-carrying lunar missions. In the near future, violent but versatile liquid hydrogen may become still more familiar as a fuel for supersonic...
After its big boom in Georgia, the U.S. space program ran afoul of a fizzle in Florida. At Cape Kennedy the three liquid-fuel motors of an Atlas-Centaur rocket ignited on schedule, but the missile that was supposed to toss a dummy Surveyor (soft-landing vehicle) to the moon's orbit, climbed only a few feet before a valve misfunctioned and the rocket fell back on its pad. Thin-walled fuel tanks ruptured, and more than 100 tons of liquid oxygen and kerosene burst into flames. The hydrogen-burning second stage added tons of liquid hydrogen...
This spring a "floating trade fair," consisting of 100 businessmen and 400 trade exhibits aboard the merchant ship Centaur, dropped anchor in Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Osaka, Tokyo and Singapore, piped 90,000 visitors aboard and transacted $1,125,000 worth of business right on deck. Australia's enterprising businessmen miss few opportunities to mold their exports to their customers' specific habits and needs: in a wily and woolly coup in Thailand, they recently landed a large order for plastic sneakers by producing them in a shade of orange that matched the robes worn by the country...
...revitalized giant. In Miami last week, General Dynamics showed off the first scale model of its TFX adjustable-wing plane, for which orders may reach as high as $8 billion in the next five years, and in Washington the company was awarded a $237 million contract to build the Centaur mooncraft. In Quincy, Mass., it laid the keel for the first vessel-an attack submarine-that it will build in the shipyard it bought last January from Bethlehem Steel. In Groton, Conn., General Dynamics launched its first civilian submarine, a research sub for the University of Pennsylvania. It also broke...