Taming Liquid Hydrogen - NASA's History Office

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Taming Liquid Hydrogen
By the late 1960s, the Civil Rights movement and President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty
had turned national attention away from the imperatives of a space race with the Soviet Union. The
war in Vietnam sapped the energies of the Johnson administration, leading to the President’s decision
not to run for another term. At the same time, James Webb, NASA’s capable Administrator,
lost President Johnson’s ear. He had kept alive Kennedy’s dream of landing human beings on the
Moon, but he resigned before the historic flight of Apollo 11 in August 1969.
Krafft Ehricke still firmly believed in industrialization of the Moon and piloted flight to the
planets. However, in the face of environmentalists and zero-growth advocates of the early 1970s,
his enthusiasm for space tourism, orbiting hotels, and zero-gravity sports may have seemed more
eccentric than prophetic. He continued to promote space travel as a means of transcending the
petty divisions among human beings on Earth, but with the imminent cancellation of Centaur
and diminishing support for NASA’s nuclear propulsion program (which he thought held the key
to distant travels in space), he sensed “a new kind of disillusion” that eroded confidence in what
he referred to as man’s “extraterrestrial imperative.” 93
Ironically, although Centaur’s close identification with the Apollo program had initially saved it
from cancellation, the successful conclusion of the Surveyor program increased its vulnerability.
Centaur had won funding during a time when the urgency of the space race with Soviet Union had
provided the NASA with ample funding for facilities and personnel to support the development of a
radical technology. Centaur had proven not only the feasibility of liquid hydrogen, but also the
viability of the concept of government partnership with industry in developing the space agency’s
technical competence. However, declining budgets for the space program and lack of unity among
scientists over long-term planning threw the planetary program temporarily into limbo. 94 With no
future orders for Atlas-Centaur, General Dynamics prepared to shut down its factory. On 6
February 1968, W. L. Gorton, Division Vice-President and General Manager of the Pratt &
Whitney Development Center, informed Abe Silverstein at Lewis Research Center that within
months, they would complete delivery of all RL10 engines on order. Key RL10 engine personnel
would have to be reassigned and production space turned over to other projects. He lamented that
the nation was about to lose a precious technical capability in liquid hydrogen. “Although the
special manufacturing and testing facilities can be retained and stored in whatever fashion is most
practical, there is no way to mothball the know-how, the production team, and the factory space,”
he wrote. “Previous experience with other engines has demonstrated that once the production
team is dispersed, it is most difficult and costly to assemble and train a new team with the required
expertise.” 95
93 Quoted by Marsha Freeman, How We Got to the Moon, 314.
94 Robert S. Kraemer, Beyond the Moon: A Golden Age of Planetary Exploration: 1971–1978 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 2000), xiv.
95 W. L. Gorton to Abe Silverstein, 6 February 1968, Box 59, Old RL10 Records (Goette files), DEB Vault, NASA Glenn.