Milton Rosen - NASA and The Apollo Program

NASA and The Apollo Program

Rosen went on after Vanguard to be involved in a number of important NASA studies and committees that helped to define the family of large launch vehicles, designed from the beginning not as missiles, but as space launchers, that were eventually to be key components of the Apollo program. He was the principal author of a report to President Eisenhower, dated 27 January 1959, which proposed three families of vehicles needed to support an ambitious National Space Program.

The smallest, based on the Atlas missile, included an ambitious variant with a liquid hydrogen (LH2) – liquid oxygen (LOX) upper stage. This Atlas–Centaur launcher was developed, after many difficulties, into the rocket that carried the critical Surveyor series of lunar landers, used to investigate the mechanical properties of the lunar surface, and to demonstrate the capability of soft-landing on rocket power which was an essential element of the lunar program. The early development of LH2–LOX technology also later proved critical to the capabilities of the Saturn family of large high-performance boosters.

The second family discussed, called Juno V at the time, eventually evolved into the Saturn I rockets, using clusters of eight medium-sized, 188,000 lbf (840 kN) thrust H-1 engines to yield 1,500,000 lbf (6,700 kN) liftoff thrust, and nine clustered propellant tanks adapted from the Army's existing Jupiter and Juno rockets. Although based on available component hardware in order to speed development, these boosters were substantially larger than any in use anywhere at that time, and promised to give the US parity in launch capability in the developing space race. The third family was based on the very large, 1,500,000 lbf (6,700 kN) single-chambered F-1 engine then beginning development. These featured two to four engines clustered to yield up to 6 million lbf of lift-off thrust, and were the start of a series of designs that eventually led to the final five-engined, 7,500,000 lbf (33,000 kN) lift-off thrust Saturn V moon rocket.