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.

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."

This document was generated for the NASA Glenn Research Center, in accordance with a Memorandum of Agreement among the Federal Aviation Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), The Ohio State Historic Preservation Officer, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. The City of Cleveland's goal to expand the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport required the NASA Glenn Research Center's Rocket Engine Test Facility, located adjacent to the airport, to be removed before this expansion could be realized. To mitigate the removal of this registered National Historic Landmark, the National Park Service stipulated that the Rocket Engine Test Facility be documented to Level I standards of the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER). This history project was initiated to fulfill and supplement that requirement.

When Francis Bacon wrote the New Atlantis in the early 17th century, he envisioned a state-supported research institution in which knowledge could be applied to 'enlarge the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible." Among the research facilities to increase the protection and material comforts of the inhabitants of his imaginary island, Bacon imagined an Engine House to study all types of motion, including flight. National aeronautical research laboratories in Europe and the United States in the early 20th century reflected Bacon's vision of science applied to the practical problems of flight. Commitment to innovation accompanied Bacon's belief in progress. His utopia honored inventors, not politicians or academics. In 1941 the same commitment to innovation and industrial progress won federal funding for a laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio. Local and national leaders expected the new laboratory to promote innovations in aircraft engine technology to help win the war against Germany. Contributions to the development of superior engines for military and passenger aircraft after World War II justified the large federal investment in research facilities and personnel. Today this laboratory is the NASA Lewis Research Center. In contrast to the isolation of the ideal research institution of Bacon's vision, Lewis took shape in a flesh-and-blood world of personalities, national security concerns, and postwar capitalism. Two transitions, both precipitated by advances in propulsion technology, provide the structure for my history: the revolution in jet propulsion during World War II, and the launch of Sputnik in October 1957. Each had significant national political, military, and economic repercussions. Each forced the laboratory to restructure its research program and to redefine its relationships with its three constituencies--the military, industry, and academia. Within this framework I have distinguished one theme that recurs throughout the laboratory's history--the tension between fundamental or basic research and development. In the process of writing my history I found that these terms could not be defined in any absolute sense. Their meaning is enmeshed in the history of Lewis, and the definitions of research and development changed as Lewis evolved. As an institution, Lewis engaged in a continuing reevaluation of its role within the American propulsion community and, after the formation of NASA in 1958, within a vastly expanded federal bureaucracy.