Word: saturns
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...Launch Complex 34 of Cape Kennedy stood Saturn IB, the mightiest rocket the U.S. - and most likely the world - has ever known. The 224-ft.tall bird, with a fantastic initial thrust of 1,600,000 lbs. to hurl its 650-ton bulk into space, was ready for its first crucial test. Atop Saturn's nose sat the payload: the 33,800-lb. Apollo three-man command capsule and service module that will transport U.S. astronauts to the moon and back. If the U.S. is to achieve its goal by 1969, now was the time to start ironing out the bugs...
Roar & a Crackle. Its eight booster engines spitting a 150-ft. tail of flame, Saturn 1B burned for 2 min. 26 sec., at which point it was 35 miles up and moving at 5,400 m.p.h. Next came the tricky second stage, a single 225,000-lb.-thrust engine powered by an exotic combination of liquid oxygen (lox) and liquid hydrogen (LH2). While lox boils off at a difficult -290° F., LH2 boils at -423° F., thus requires extreme pressurization to keep cool. Moreover, in weightless space, LH2, like mercury, tends to gather into a ball or spin...
...Lockheed, it all looked too good to be true-and it was. Saturn, a 16-passenger feeder transport, and the Constitution, a 168-passenger behemoth, proved to be expensive flops. After a disastrous crash, Washington grounded all Constellations, and order cancellations piled on top of rewiring costs. Though Lockheed eventually lost $35 million on commercial sales of the Connie, the plane returned to the air, set speed records for four-engine piston craft that may never be broken, and airlines still fly 455 Constellations in a day when anything that isn't a jet is considered a creep. Again...
...North American dropped to second in sales ($2.01 billion) and third in profits ($45.8 million, behind both Boeing and Lockheed) in 1965. North American's bread and butter is space-NASA's Apollo moon vehicles, Saturn space boosters, Air Force rocket engines and missile-guidance systems. But its fortunes started skidding in 1964 when the Government canceled development of the XB-70 supersonic bomber, into which the company had plunged $1.4 billion. Now the escalation of the Viet Nam war is bringing cutbacks in NASA spending, and North American is not even in the running...
...building where the Saturn V will be assembled. "You could put the Pentagon and the Chicago Merchandise Mart inside it," said NASA guide Henry Decker, who can tell you every detail of every building on the Cape...