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During its maiden voyage in May 1962, a Centaur upper stage rocket,
mated to an Atlas booster, exploded 54 seconds after launch,
engulfing the rocket in a huge fireball. Investigation revealed
that Centaur's light, stainless-steel tank had split open, spilling
its liquid-hydrogen fuel down its sides, where the flame of the
rocket exhaust immediately ignited it. Coming less than a year
after President Kennedy had made landing human beings on the Moon a
national priority, the loss of Centaur was regarded as a serious
setback for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA). During the failure investigation, Homer Newell, Director of
Space Sciences, ruefully declared: "Taming liquid hydrogen to the
point where expensive operational space missions can be committed
to it has turned out to be more difficult than anyone supposed at
the outset." .After this failure, Centaur critics, led by Wernher
von Braun, mounted a campaign to cancel the program. In addition to
the unknowns associated with liquid hydrogen, he objected to the
unusual design of Centaur. Like the Atlas rocket, Centaur depended
on pressure to keep its paper thin, stainless-steel shell from
collapsing. It was literally inflated with its propellants like a
football or balloon and needed no internal structure to give it
added strength and stability. The so-called "pressure-stabilized
structure" of Centaur, coupled with the light weight of its
high-energy cryogenic propellants, made Centaur lighter and more
powerful than upper stages that used conventional fuel. But, the
critics argued, it would never become the reliable rocket that the
United States needed. Others, especially military proponents of
Centaur, believed that accepting the challenge of developing
liquid-hydrogen technology was an important risk to take. Despite
criticism and early technical failures, the taming of liquid
hydrogen proved to be one of NASA's most significant technical
accomplishments. Centaur not only succeeded in demonstrating the
feasibility of liquid hydrogen as a rocket fuel, but it also went
on to a brilliant career as an upper stage for a series of
spectacular planetary missions in the 1970s. Ironically, this
success did little to ensure the future of the Centaur rocket. Once
the Shuttle became operational in the early 1980s, all expendable
launch vehicles like Centaur were slated for termination. Centaur
advocates fought to keep the program alive.
While growing up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Milton Wright, the Wright
Brothers' father, liked to purchase toys for his sons that he hoped
would stimulate their imagination. One of the most memorable gifts
was a toy helicopter that was designed by the French aeronautical
experimenter Alphonse Penaud. Milton gave his sons this gift in
1878, and, though it was a simple device with a stick bound to a
four-blade rotor set in a spindle, it had the intended effect-it
caused them to dream. Twenty-five years separated the gift of this
toy and their invention of the airplane, yet the Wright brothers
were convinced it had exerted an important influence. Tom Crouch
argued in The Bishop's Boys that toys like these perfectly
illustrated the significance of play for technological innovation.
He wrote, "rotary-wing toys were to intrigue and inspire
generations of children, a few of whom would, as adults, attempt to
realize the dream of flight for themselves." If the first powered
flight on 17 December 1903 represented a childhood dream realized,
it was only the first step in the rapid evolution of the airplane
from their flimsy kite-like contraption of wood and cloth to jet
airliners and rockets in space. And, as extraordinary as the
achievement of powered flight seemed in 1903, before the end of the
century, space travel also would become a dream realized. Soviet
astronaut Yuri Gagarin first circumnavigated Earth in April 1961,
and, eight years later, American astronauts took the first steps
for humankind on the Moon. It is with great pleasure that we
introduce Realizing the Dream: Biographical Essays in Honor of the
Centennial of Flight. These essays in celebration of the Wright
brothers' first flight 100 years ago grew out of presentations by a
group of prominent scholars in 2003 at a conference sponsored by
the NASA History Division and held at the Great Lakes Science
Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The volume focuses on the careers of
some of the many men and women who helped to realize the dream of
flight both through the atmosphere and beyond. These accounts are
original and compelling because they examine the history of flight
through the lens of biography. Collectively, these individuals
helped to shape American aerospace history. There are obviously
many other individuals that could, and arguably should, have been
included in this collection, but we believe that the cross section
of diverse individuals contained in this volume is important
because it is symbolic of the dream of flight as a whole. These
people all devoted their lives, and sometimes even sacrificed them,
to the demands required for its realization. The reasons behind the
dreams were diverse. The technological potential first demonstrated
by the Wright brothers enabled those who followed them to use
flight as a means of racial uplift, gender equalization, personal
adventure, commercial gain, military superiority, and space
exploration. The history of flight is more than a story of
technology; it had important cultural consequences as well, and
these are some of the themes that the following biographies
explore. We have arranged the essays roughly chronologically,
though the careers of the people described here often span more
than one period of history. None of the people in this volume were
inventors like the Wright brothers, but their contributions to
flight were nevertheless significant. They were daredevil pilots,
entrepreneurs, business men and women, military strategists, and
managers of large-scale technology who advanced the art, science,
and business of air and space travel, often through sheer force of
character. The final paper serves as an epilogue as well as a
tribute to the Wright brothers. It describes a reenactment of their
important glider experiments at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where
the Wrights' childhood dream was first realized.
"Science in Flux" traces the history of one of the most powerful
nuclear test reactors in the United States and the only nuclear
facility ever built by NASA. In the late 1950s NASA constructed
Plum Brook Station on a vast tract of undeveloped land near
Sandusky, Ohio. Once fully operational in 1963, it supported basic
research for NASA's nuclear rocket program (NERVA). Plum Brook
represents a significant, if largely forgotten, story of nuclear
research, political change, and the professional culture of the
scientists and engineers who devoted their lives to construct and
operate the facility. In 1973, after only a decade of research, the
government shut Plum Brook down before many of its experiments
could be completed. Even the valiant attempt to redefine the
reactor as an environmental analysis tool failed, and the facility
went silent. The reactors lay in costly, but quiet standby for
nearly a quarter-century before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
decided to decommission the reactors and clean up the site. The
history of Plum Brook reveals the perils and potentials of that
nuclear technology. As NASA, Congress, and space enthusiasts all
begin looking once again at the nuclear option for sending humans
to Mars, the echoes of Plum Brook's past will resonate with current
policy and space initiatives.
The NASA History Program was first established in 1959 (a year
after NASA itself was formed) and has continued to document and
preserve the agency's remarkable history through a variety of
products. The NASA History Division serves two key functions:
fulfilling the mandate of the 1958 "Space Act" calling for NASA to
disseminate aerospace information as widely as possible, and
helping NASA managers understand and thus benefit from the study of
past accomplishment and difficulties. NASA publishes documents on
topics such as: Documentary History, Memoirs, Aeronautics and Space
Report of the President, and many more. This is one of those
documents.
During its maiden voyage in May 1962, a Centaur upper stage rocket,
mated to an At l a sb o o s t e r, exploded 54 seconds after
launch, engulfing the rocket in a huge fireball. In ve s t i g a t
i o nre vealed that Centaur's light, stainless-steel tank had split
open, spilling its liquid-hyd rogen fueld own its sides, where the
flame of the rocket exhaust immediately ignited it. Coming less
thana year after President Kennedy had made landing human beings on
the Moon a national p r i o r i t y, the loss of Centaur was
regarded as a serious setback for the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA). During the failure investigation,
Homer Newell, Di rector of Space Sciences, ruefully declared:
"Taming liquid hydrogen to the point where expensive oper-ational
space missions can be committed to it has turned out to be more
difficult than anyone supposed at the outset."
"Science in Flux" traces the history of one of the most
powerful nuclear test reactors in the United States and the only
nuclear facility ever built by NASA. In the late 1950s NASA
constructed Plum Brook Station on a vast tract of undeveloped land
near Sandusky, Ohio. Once fully operational in 1963, it supported
basic research for NASA's nuclear rocket program (NERVA). Plum
Brook represents a significant, if largely forgotten, story of
nuclear research, political change, and the professional culture of
the scientists and engineers who devoted their lives to construct
and operate the facility. In 1973, after only a decade of research,
the government shut Plum Brook down before many of its experiments
could be completed. Even the valiant attempt to redefine the
reactor as an environmental analysis tool failed, and the facility
went silent. The reactors lay in costly, but quiet standby for
nearly a quarter-century before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
decided to decommission the reactors and clean up the site. The
history of Plum Brook reveals the perils and potentials of that
nuclear technology. As NASA, Congress, and space enthusiasts all
begin looking once again at the nuclear option for sending humans
to Mars, the echoes of Plum Brook's past will resonate with current
policy and space initiatives.
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