How Long to Read Taming Liquid Hydrogen

How Long Does it Take to Read Taming Liquid Hydrogen?

It takes the average reader 5 hours and 13 minutes to read Taming Liquid Hydrogen by Virginia P. Dawson

Assuming a reading speed of 250 words per minute. Learn more

Description

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."1 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. Others, especially military proponents of Centaur, believed that accepting the challenge of developing liquid-hydrogen technology was an important risk to take. Herbert York, Chief Scientist for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), had urged NASA Administrator T. Keith Glennan to expedite the program in 1959 because Centaur was "the only vehicle that has the capability of meeting our payload requirements for high altitude orbits."2 Six months after Centaur's aborted first flight, President John F. Kennedy demanded to know what NASA hoped to achieve with Centaur. Administrator James Webb's response was unequivocal. With the Apollo program already committed to using liquid hydrogen in the upper stages of the giant Saturn vehicle, Centaur would prove the fuel's feasibility.3 The Agency was also counting on Atlas- Centaur to launch Surveyor, a robotic spacecraft with a mission to determine whether the Moon's surface was hard enough to land future spacecraft with human beings aboard. 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. Iro n i c a l l y, 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 we re 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.

How long is Taming Liquid Hydrogen?

Taming Liquid Hydrogen by Virginia P. Dawson is 306 pages long, and a total of 78,336 words.

This makes it 103% the length of the average book. It also has 96% more words than the average book.

How Long Does it Take to Read Taming Liquid Hydrogen Aloud?

The average oral reading speed is 183 words per minute. This means it takes 7 hours and 8 minutes to read Taming Liquid Hydrogen aloud.

What Reading Level is Taming Liquid Hydrogen?

Taming Liquid Hydrogen is suitable for students ages 12 and up.

Note that there may be other factors that effect this rating besides length that are not factored in on this page. This may include things like complex language or sensitive topics not suitable for students of certain ages.

When deciding what to show young students always use your best judgement and consult a professional.

Where Can I Buy Taming Liquid Hydrogen?

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