Word: centaure
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...living and dead were hauled aboard. On the Salta, which picked up 478 people from the sea, cognac and blankets were passed out to the shivering survivors, but the crush was so great that soon there was not enough of either to go around. The British aircraft carrier Centaur picked up 55 bodies, then dispatched a helicopter to the Lakonia to see if anyone was still on board; from the vessel, a British officer reported that the liner was a burnt-out hulk. As the rescue ships sped from the scene toward the port of Funchal in Madeira, the ruined...
...Lewis, extensive design changes quickly reshod the limping space horse. Fuel-tank baffles were added to cut down sloshing; a new separation system was developed to cut Centaur loose from its first-stage Atlas; a critical operation in the engine-start procedure was cut from 24 to four seconds. Last week, in new harness, the second Centaur charged out of its stable and into space without a hitch. Its engines burned clear and blue for the programmed 380 seconds, sent the rocket tumbling into an elliptical orbit ranging from 340 to 1,050 miles above the earth...
...Bootstraps. Designed to hurl more than a ton of instrument payloads all the way to the moon, the 28½-ft. Centaur generates 30,000 Ibs. of thrust with its two restartable Pratt & Whitney engines. The hydrogen fuel they burn has been the key-and the curse-of the Centaur system from the time it was born on engineers' drawing boards. As early as 1909, U.S. Rocket Pioneer Robert Goddard noted that hydrogen (in liquid form, known as LH.,) might prove to be the optimum chemical rocket fuel. Its light molecular weight, less than half that of standard liquid...
...when Pratt & Whitney engineers set out to develop the Centaur's engines, they boldly planned to turn that touchy temperament to their advantage. In the final product, frigid LH2 does two jobs as it courses toward ignition. First, it is pumped through an outer jacket where it cools the thrust chamber's fierce 6,000° heat, and in the process vaporizes itself for ultimate burning. But before it reaches the chamber, the gas is expanding fast enough to spin an auxiliary turbine, which pumps more fuel and oxidizer into the cooling jacket. Thus the LH2 practically lifts...
...firings, the engine seemed ready for a test in the weightless environment of space. But the crucial first shot ended in naming failure before the engines could ignite. Just 55 seconds after liftoff, a weather shield tore loose, followed by a blazing rupture in a hydrogen fuel tank. With Centaur already 18 months behind schedule and Congressmen crying inept management NASA shifted the program from Marshall Space Flight Center, where Wernher von Braun's team was primarily concerned with the Saturn program, to the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. There tough-minded Director Abe Silverstein, 55, took charge...