Word: liquid-fuel
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President Harold Ritchie of Thiokol is confident that in 2½ years he can have a cluster of four solid-fuel motors with 28 million Ibs. of thrust flying at a cost far below the price of an equivalent liquid-fuel booster. A cheap backup booster with such enormous power might easily save the moon program from half a decade of frustration...
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...
...sharp contrast to the long, costly, gingerly testing of big liquid-fuel engines, which are festooned with intricate plumbing and normally require years of development before they work properly. "Solids won't be second in the booster field much longer," said Lockheed Propulsion's President Robert F. Hurt. "One of these days the big boosters will all be solids." General Joseph S. Bleymaier, deputy commander of the Air Force's Space Systems Division, for which the engine was built, seconded the motion: "I believe this will usher in a new era of solid-propellant rocket motors...
Inevitably, the 120's success reopened the long squabble among experts over the merits of solid fuel and liquid fuel in rocket-engine design. In the desperate effort to produce very large boosters such as those the Russians have, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration several years ago committed the civilian space program to rockets powered by kerosene and liquid oxygen, and its present hopes are pinned on a liquid-fuel engine called the Fl, which North American Aviation, Inc. has been developing for five years. It is a big, impressive machine, which will generate...
Success & Statistics. Saturn, the largest of U.S. missiles now ready for flight, and the one officially designated to take U.S. astronauts on their first flight as far out as the moon, passed its second test in a row with a perfect score. Its cluster of eight liquid-fuel engines lifted the 20-story, 927,000-lb. missile off the launch pad in a spectacular display of steam and ear-shattering sound. And since the test was concerned only with Saturn's first-stage booster, scientists were free to use the dummy upper stages for an ingenious experiment. Stored...