Silverstein Committee - Saturn Emerges

Saturn Emerges

Ironically, the Saturn C vehicles imagined in the Silverstein Committee report were never built. As soon as the Saturn became a NASA-tuned design of high performance, the DoD became less interested in it for their own needs. Development of the Titan continued for these roles, and as a result the flexibility offered by the variety of Saturn C-model intermediate stages simply wasn't needed, and were eventually abandoned.

All that survived was the smallest of the new upper stages, the S-IV. It was originally intended that this would be equipped with four upgraded Centaur engines, but to further lower risk it was decided to used the existing engines and increase their number from four to six. A new engine, the famed J-2, was already in the pipeline that could replace these anyway. Even the original S-IV design, the 220" with six engines, was used only for a short period until a larger diameter 260" version was created for the Saturn Block II models, and then finally replaced with the J-2 powered S-IVB of the Saturn IB. Centaur was never used on Saturn.

Equally ironically, neither the Titan C nor SLS would ever be built. Instead, the solid-fuel boosters of the SLS were combined with the existing Titan II and Centaur to produce the Titan III, which was the workhorse of the DoD's space launch needs for decades. Filling a role very similar to the original Titan C, the III was also used by NASA for a number of launches.