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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 1075.PDF
FLIGHT International, 5 July 1962 Missiles and Spaceflight The California sun beets down upon Stand I al Sacramento and its associated liquid- hydrogen tank. A diagram of the entire Douglas Aircraft facility for S-4 testing appears on page 27 25 TESTING S-4 ANY day now, static firing tests will begin on the largest piece of space hardware ever designed and built by a private company. It is S-4, second stage of the Saturn C-l, trie huge vehicle which will have to provide the "brute force" for all non- Russian space exploration for the next five or six years. As related in our April 19 issue, page 617, the S-4 stage has a length of 41 ft 6in, diameter of 18ft 4in, empty weight of 11,5021b and a fuelled weight of 111,5021b. It is powered by six Pratt & Whitney Aircraft RL-10A3 engines each burning liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, with a sea-level rating of 15,0001b. A National Aeronautics and Space Administration project, Saturn is being developed under the direction of NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama. Douglas Aircraft was selected by NASA from among 11 competing manu facturers to build the S-4 stage. A S68m contract covering design, research and development, and manufacturing phases of the project, was signed with NASA in July 1960. Under the contract, Douglas will build ten S-4 stages at its Missile and Space Systems Division. The vehicles will undergo acceptance firings in static test stands at the Douglas Sacramento (California) facility. First flight test of the combined S-l (Saturn first stage) and the "live" S-4 is scheduled for 1963 from Cape Canaveral. S-l, with inert upper stage, has twice been flight-tested successfully. The complete S-4 stage, seen in cutaway form on the right, has six RL-I0A3 engines, which in the photograph below are mounted on the "battleship tank" for static testing. Each engine is arranged to fire into a vacuum steam-ejector The first C-l version of the Saturn is expected to be operational after ten development flights ending in 1964. It will vary from 160 to 170ft in height, and will weigh about 1,000.0001b at lift-off. Of this weight, 90 per cent will consist of fuel and oxidizer. The S-l first stage is 82ft tall and almost 22ft wide. A cluster of eight Rocketdyne H-l engines burning RP-1 and liquid oxygen will provide a total thrust of 1,500,0001b. For some missions, the S-4 second stage of the C-l may be topped by a modified Centaur vehicle. This lOft-diameter third stage would be propelled by two of the S-4 type-engines. The C-l will be capable of placing a 20,0001b payload in a low Earth orbit. Such scientific payloads as the Prospector, an instrumented vehicle for the exploration of the moon's surface, and the Voyager, an
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