H-1 (rocket Engine) - History

History

When Heinz-Hermann Koelle first drew up plans for what would become the Saturn, he selected Rocketdyne's E-1 to power it, with four engines in the lower stage. Rocketdyne was developing this 400,000 lbf (1,800 kN) engine for the Titan missile, and it was the largest engine nearing introduction within the time frame that ARPA gave Wernher von Braun to develop what was then known as the "Juno V". In 1957, after the launch of Sputnik 1, the U.S. developed plans to start a civilian space agency, which quickly developed into NASA. As the Army had lost interest in large rockets, they agreed to turn over von Braun's ABMA team to NASA, becoming the Marshall Space Flight Center. The handover would take place in 1960.

Shortly after these plans were made, ARPA visited ABMA and told von Braun that they still had $10 million in their budget to spend before the handover. They asked if there was anything they could do before the handover that could effectively use the money. Von Braun called in Koelle and showed them a model of the Juno V, but the ARPA visitors noted that the E-1 engine wouldn't be ready by 1960. Brainstorming, they decided that the best approach was to make a minor upgrade to Rocketdyne's existing 175,000 lbf engines to boost them to 200,000 lbf (890 kN), and use eight of these new H-1 engines instead of four E-1s. A contract for development was tendered on 15 August 1958, and by early 1959 the name had changed from Juno to Saturn, referring to the succession as the planet after Jupiter, the Jupiter missile being the previous ABMA design. Rocketdyne had several engine designs in the pipeline at that point, the E-1 and the F-1 being developed for the US Air Force.