This is another book in the NASA History series, specifically in the Project History sub series. It won the 2004 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics History Manuscript Award.

Introduction:

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-hyd rogen 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 re g a rded as a serious setback for the National Ae ronautics and Space Administration (NASA). During the failure investigation, Homer Newell, Di rector of Space Sciences, ruefully declared: “Taming liquid hyd rogen 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 paperthin, 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.

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. They won funding for the redesign of Centaur as an upper stage for the Shuttle, spent nearly $1 billion integrate them, and then witnessed the cancellation of the program within weeks of the first scheduled flight of Shuttle/ Centaur.

Miraculously, Centaur survived into the commercial era of the 1990s and is still flying as the upper stage for the Atlas. Although unthinkable at the height of the Cold War, the idea of privatizing the delivery of launch vehicle services gained currency in the early 1980s because it dovetailed with the free-enterprise, small-government ideology of the Reagan administration.

Now NASA is just a customer—albeit a favored one—of a new service that rocket manufacturers offer to a variety of customers, including foreign governments. A competitor of the European Ariane rocket and the Boeing Delta, Centaur continues as the upper stage for a redesigned Lockheed Martin Atlas. ...

Download Taming Liquid Hydrogen: The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket, 1958-2002

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Taming Liquid Hydrogen: The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket, 1958-2002. By Virginia P. Dawson and Mark D. Bowles. Washington, D.C.: NASA History Office [NASA SP-2004-4230], 2004.

Centaur: America's Workhorse in Space (NASA History)

The immediate exchange of information that we take for granted today is one of man's greatest accomplishments. One of the key elements in this achievement has been our ability to place communication satellites into orbit high above the earth to relay complex electronic messages and images. Paralleling this effort has been our quest for even more information about the very nature of our universe. The exploration of space continues to provide us with an ever expanding view that was not even dreamed possible only decades ago.

A high-energy rocket is greatly responsible for advancing the quest for knowledge and the revolution in global communications. It's name is Centaur, and it is America's Workhorse in Space. Centaur is one of NASA Lewis' most significant achievements. In all, NASA Lewis has used Centaur for 80 of its 119 unmanned launches.

For the complete history of the Centaur rocket, see Taming Liquid Hydrogen: The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket 1958 - 2002. Co-authored by Drs. Virginia Dawson and Mark Bowles, this historic manuscript won the prestigious 2004 History Manuscript of the Year Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Below is a brief history of Centaur.

The Genesis of Centaur
The development of the modern chemical rocket was a major innovation in space technology. Rockets have enabled man to explore space and its wonders. Probes and orbiters have traveled beyond the Earth's obscuring atmosphere to expand our observations of the vast universe.

Chemical rockets have evolved from the simple fireworks of the early Chinese to the highly complex space transportation systems of today. The Centaur launch vehicle with its high energy capabilities has allowed us to shrink our worked of communications and expand the frontiers of space.

In 1957, almost one year before Congress created NASA, the Air Force studied an exhaustive proposal from General Dynamics/Astronautics Corp. to develop a new space booster that could give the U.S., in the shortest possible time, a means of orbiting heavy payloads. That vehicle was to become Centaur, a high-energy second stage with a new propulsion system using liquid hydrogen. Mixed with liquid oxygen, this new fuel afforded the promise of boosting payloads as great as 8,500 pounds.

By August of 1958, the Government's Advanced Research Products Agency accepted from the Air Force a more elaborate proposal for the Centaur and assigned authority for its development to the Air Force.

Centaur promised new muscle in space. The U.S. needed it. The Soviet Union had taken the lead with the very first space flight: Sputnik I launched into earth orbit on October 4, 1957, its "Bleep, Bleep" being heard around the world. Centaur became an official hardware development program the same year NASA was established, in 1958. At that time, the heaviest Soviet satellite orbiting the earth was the 3,000-pound Sputnik III.

Reflecting long-range U.S. space strategy, on July 1, 1959, NASA took over the jurisdiction of Centaur from the Department of Defense. Soon after, the first Centaur flight test was set for January, 1961. Centaur was not to be just another booster, but "the" rocket by which NASA would conduct extensive earth orbit missions, lunar investigations and planetary studies. Aside from military satellite mission assigned to Centaur, which were to be considerable, NASA planned to launch one operational Centaur every month for a period extending well into the 1970's and beyond.

That schedule became hopelessly over-optimistic, dogged by an avalanche of problems, failures, test-stand explosions and other delays. On May 8, 1962, the first Centaur rose, a perfect launch for the first 54 seconds. Then, the Centaur upper stage exploded. DoD officials became convinced that operational Centaurs would not be available until 1966.  ...

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