Test Labs Hold Space Secrets

Abstract

> NO OTHER MAJOR scientific program in the United States is as exposed to the public eye as the race to the moon. But even that has its secrets. But the few that remain are kept in 1,700 acres of steep, craggy hills, insulated from the rest of the world by miles of undrivable, winding roads, interrupted by several security check points. In 18 huge test stands, literally carved out of the rocky hillside in Santa Susana, Calif., many of the engines that will carry the first Americans to the moon are developed and tested. The three-stage Saturn V booster that will power the lunar flight will contain 92 rocket engines of various shapes and sizes. These will range from the tiny attitude control motors built into the Apollo spacecraft itself and capable of being turned on or off in one-sixtieth of a second, to the huge, first-stage main engines, three times as high as a man, which produce 1.5 million pounds of thrust. Scene of all this testing is the Santa Susana Field Laboratory of North American Aviation, Inc.'s Rocketdyne division. Since 1950 there have been some 270,000 test firings of engines and components. The rocky crags are quite photogenic. In fact, the laboratory used to be a favorite setting for Hollywood movie crews, who regularly made the 30-mile trek from Los Angeles to film Westerns. A test firing is quite a spectacle. Often the first sign visible to observers in blockhouses hundreds or even thousands of feet away is a huge cloud of steam. This does not come from the rocket at all, but from water used for cooling. The first sound, the initial shock wave, is as abrupt as a slap in the face, followed by a continuous roar that never lasts more than a few hundred seconds. The first large contract ever issued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was for the F-i engine, five of which will power the first stage of the Saturn V moon rocket. Developed by Rocketdyne, the F-i1 now produces roughly 10 times as much thrust as was indicated by its original design. * Science News, 89:391 May 27, 1966 391