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Apollo Expeditions To The Moon: Chapter 3 Saturn the Giant By Wernher von Braun
- Article from:
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U.S. History
- Author:
- Cortwright, Edgar M.
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Copyright informationProvided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Chapter 3 Saturn the Giant By Wernher von Braun
With the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union
had
inaugurated the Space Age. It had also presented American planners
with the
painful realization that there was no launch vehicle in the U.S. stable
capable of orbiting anything approaching Sputnik's weight.
Responding to a proposal submitted by the Army Ballistic Missile
Agency,
the Department of Defense was in just the right mood to authorize
ABMA to
develop a 1,500,000-pound-thrust booster. That unprecedented thrust
was to be
generated by clustering eight S-3D Rocketdyne engines used in the
Jupiter and
Thor missiles. The tankage for the ...