Word: liquidly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...spidery wires and connect the delicate electronic mechanisms that will control the bird. Capsule specialists poise their instrument-packed pod atop the rocket to check it out. If all goes well, fuel specialists attach the plumbing that will fill the projectile's maw with explosive cargoes of liquid oxygen and kerosene, or intractable liquid hydrogen...
...Space Administration, who watched the firing, pronounced the test "an unmitigated, unqualified, unequivocal, unadulterated success." Such strong language does not match NASA's traditional coolness toward solid-propellant boosters. Its ambitious Apollo program to land men on the moon by 1970 is based on North American's liquid-fueled F-l engine, which generates only 1,500,000 Ibs. of thrust. Five Fls will have to be clustered together to boost the Apollo rocket off the ground...
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...
...booster stage are training vehicles on which U.S. engineers are learning to handle the five much larger engines that will boost the Apollo spaceship on its voyage to the moon. Saturn's second stage teaches an even more difficult art. Its six Pratt & Whitney RL-10 engines burn liquid hydrogen, which is incredibly touchy to handle, but has an added efficiency that is considered essential for the moon project. The smooth success of last week's launch suggests that LH2 has at last become a routine fuel...