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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.
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.
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