Genesis of the Saturn Program

America took its first step toward the moon in the spring of 1957, four years before President Kennedy declared the lunar expedition a national mission. While still preparing for the launch of its first Jupiter (31 May 1957), the Army rocket team at Huntsville, Alabama, began studies of a booster ten times more powerful than the 667,200-newton (150,000-pound thrust) Jupiter. The tenfold increase in thrust could put a weather and communications satellite into orbit around the earth, or propel a space probe out of earth’s orbit.

The change of emphasis from intermediate range and intercontinental ballistic missiles (Jupiter, Thor, Atlas) to a super-rocket capable of space exploration signified a change of attitudes at the Department of Defense. The change was also grounded in interservice politics: the previous November, Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson had assigned responsibility for all intermediate and long-range missiles to the Air Force. If the Army was to stay in the big-rocket business, it would have to find new tasks for its Wernher von Braun team of rocket experts at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville.^*

Maj. Gen. John B. Medaris, commander of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), set his sights on the new super-rocket, subsequently to be named Saturn.^{1 **}

Medaris’s effort to gain Defense Department support for the big rocket was bolstered by the Soviet Union’s accomplishments in the fall of 1957. The contrast between the 500-kilogram Sputnik 2 and America’s 8-kilogram Explorer 1 was persuasive. In December von Braun’s group (officially known as the Development Operations Division of the ABMA) set out arguments for the new booster program. The super-rocket would develop 6,672,000 newtons (1,500,000 pounds of thrust) and serve as a steppingstone to an even larger rocket capable of manned lunar missions. Its early development and adaptation in a multistage vehicle could accomplish a number of space objectives pointing toward a landing on the moon in 1967.²

Although the ABMA proposal was reinforced by the public’s embarrassment over Sputnik, approval for the Huntsville project was delayed for several months. Medaris’s program faced two obstacles: the Eisenhower administration’s fiscal conservatism and the priority given to intercontinental missiles. While Medaris pressed his campaign, the von Braun team was far from idle. Between April 1957 and August 1958, ABMA logged 50,000 manhours on the project. Finally, in July 1958, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, established earlier that year to coordinate Defense Department space activities, announced its intention to develop a super-rocket. The following month ABMA was directed to start on the Saturn.³

In September 1958, General Medaris and Roy Johnson, the Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, established a flight-test schedule of four Saturn launches. The first was set for September 1960. The third, eight months later, would employ an upper stage to place limited payloads in orbit. The written agreement between the two men was still shadowed by the Eisenhower administration’s reluctance to spend money on non-military space ventures. Johnson promised to provide $72.3 million over a three-year period. (The Saturn I program would eventually cost more than a billion dollars.) The size of the commitment meant that, at least in the beginning, Saturn would operate on a shoestring.⁴

The original Saturn design reflected a concern to save time and money, and to employ components that could be moved by air transport. The booster made extensive use of available Army hardware. It used eight engines and a cylindrical center tank copied after the Jupiter, a single-stage rocket with a range of 2,700 kilometers. For its eight clustered tanks, the von Braun team went back to their favorite Redstone rocket. The propellants would be RP-1 (kerosene) and liquid oxygen.

Early plans included a stipulation that no component could exceed 11,340 kilograms or a cross-sectional dimension of 3 meters, the maximum limits of aircraft transport at the time. To meet these limitations, the booster was initially designed with the center and eight outer tanks separate from the frame and engine assembly. The fuel tanks were to be mated with the frame on the launch pad. The idea was discarded in early 1959 for two reasons. Huntsville engineers agreed that flying out a disassembled thrust unit and rebuilding it on the pad would reduce reliability; and transportation studies indicated that air freight by 11 C-124s would cost more than construction of a cradle to carry the Saturn down the Tennessee River by barge.⁵

A Saturn Launch Site

With better than 20 years’ experience, the von Braun team preached and practiced that rocket and launch pad must be mated on the drawing board, if they were to be compatible at the launching. The new rocket went hand in hand with its launching facility. The short-lived plan to transport the Saturn by air was prompted by ABMA’s interest in launching a rocket into equatorial orbit from a site near the Equator; Christmas Island in the Central Pacific was a likely choice. Equatorial launch sites offered certain advantages over facilities within the continental United States. A launching due east from a site on the Equator could take advantage of the earth’s maximum rotational velocity (460 meters per second) to achieve orbital speed. The more frequent overhead passage of the orbiting vehicle above an equatorial base would facilitate tracking and communications. Most important, an equatorial launch site would avoid the costly dogleg technique, a prerequisite for placing rockets into equatorial orbit from sites such as Cape Canaveral, Florida (28 degrees north latitude). The necessary correction in the space vehicle’s trajectory could be very expensive - engineers estimated that doglegging a Saturn vehicle into a low-altitude equatorial orbit from Cape Canaveral used enough extra propellant to reduce the payload by as much as 80%. In higher orbits, the penalty was less severe but still involved at least a 20% loss of payload. There were also significant disadvantages to an equatorial launch base: higher construction costs (about 100% greater), logistics problems, and the hazards of setting up an American base on foreign soil. Moreover in 1959 there was a question as to how many U.S. space missions would require equatorial orbits. The only definite plans for equatorial orbits were in connection with communications and meteorological satellites operating at 35,000 kilometers. ⁶

While there was disagreement over the merits of an equatorial base for future Saturn operations, the Atlantic Missile Range was the clear choice for the developmental launchings. At the range’s launch site, Cape Canaveral, the Air Force Missile Test Center provided administrative and logistical support. The range’s ten tracking stations, stretching into the South Atlantic, gave good coverage of test flights. Moreover, ABMA’s launch team, the Missile Firing Laboratory (MFL), had launched missiles from Cape Canaveral since 1953. Cost and time considerations agreed. As an MFL study noted, the Atlantic Missile Range met “the established [launch] criteria in the most efficient, timely manner at a minimum cost.⁷

The Making of “the Cape”

Cape Canaveral, better known as “the Cape,” had been earmarked as a missile testing range in 1947. ^* An elbow of land jutting out into the Atlantic midway between Jacksonville and Miami, the Cape covers about 60 square kilometers. Early Spanish sailors, marking it down as the only major feature of the long Florida coast line, named it for its abundance of cane reeds. Its choice as a missile range was dictated by several factors: the planners could set up a line of tracking stations stretching southeasterly over the Atlantic to provide the longest range necessary for missile testing; the Banana River Naval Air Station could serve as a support base; and the launch area was accessible to water transportation. The Air Force took over the Banana River Naval Air Station on 1 September 1948, contemplating its use as a headquarters for a Joint Long Range Proving Ground. The Coast Guard opened its 2.5 square kilometers on Cape Canaveral to missile use in February 1950. The government obtained the remainder from private owners by negotiation or condemnation.

Cape Canaveral was a scenic but comparatively unsettled place - beautiful beaches, excellent fishing areas, a lighthouse, scattered private residences, an inn that became the Cape Canaveral Auxiliary Air Force Base Headquarters, a few unpaved roads or trails, a dock used by shrimpers, and welcome and unwelcome wildlife including deer, alligators, rattlesnakes, and many millions of the pests that gave their name to Mosquito Lagoon to the north. In a clearing, made by burning the underbrush and uprooting the palmettos with bulldozers, construction workers completed a concrete pad on 20 June 1950. They also cleared all land within 1.6 kilometers of the pad.

Few pictures reflect the state of American rocketry in 1950 so accurately as the first launch pad at Cape Canaveral. It was a 30-meter-wide layer of concrete, poured on top of sandy soil a little more than a kilometer north of the lighthouse. When a dozen jeeps and delivery trucks sank to their axles on the sandy paths that passed for roads, a layer of gravel was laid over the sand. Steel scaffolding, purchased from painters, surrounded the missile to form the first gantry, or service support tower. Plywood platforms stood at various levels of the scaffolding. If more than ten workers climbed the piping at the same time, the whole rickety framework seemed ready to fall down. The crew stacked sandbags around an old shack, a onetime dressing room for swimmers, and turned it into a launch control block house. It stood a scant 91 meters from the pad. A row of trailers contained additional facilities to coordinate countdown, information, and reports from tracking sites. Heat and humidity sapped men’s energy. Mosquitoes saturated the air.

The primitive spaceport was inaugurated 19 July 1950 by Bumper 7, a modified V-2 first stage combined with a WAC Corporal second stage. While the launch crew - Army, General Electric, and California Institute of Technology people - and 100 newsmen waited on the beach, Bumper 7 sputtered and fizzled at countdown. An autopsy revealed that salt air had corroded some of its elements. Five days later, the launch crew tried again with Bumper 8, a sister missile. The missile rose steadily into the air while a thundering roar rolled across the Cape. At 15,500 meters, the WAC Corporal second stage ignited and accelerated to 4,350 kilometers per hour before dropping into the sea. Thereafter, the Cape was in almost continuous use as the armed services brought missiles to Florida for testing - the Lark, Matador, Snark, Bomarc.⁸

The Cape had its share of growing pains. The Korean War diverted funds. The multi-service operation posed problems. On 30 June 1951, the Defense Department changed the official title of the Air Force unit managing the Cape from Headquarters, Joint Long Range Proving Ground Division, to Headquarters, Air Force Missile Test Center, with the Air Force in sole charge. The Cape was designated the Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex. The Navy had Point Mugu, California, and the Army had White Sands, New Mexico. But soon after the Army’s rocket team moved to Huntsville, a representative was knocking on the door at the Cape, asking for launch facilities.

In the meantime, negotiations with Great Britain resulted in the Bahamas Long Range Proving Ground Agreement on 21 July 1951. This pact and subsequent agreements gave the United States the use of a 1,600 kilometer range through the Bahamas with tracking stations at Point Jupiter, Florida; Grand Bahamas Bank; and Grand Turk Island. Subsequent negotiations extended the range to Ascension Island, more than 8,000 kilometers southeast of Cape Canaveral.⁹

While working out the downrange bases, the Air Force had to cope with a communications problem at home. The division of operations between the administrative headquarters at Patrick Air Force Base and the launch site at Cape Canaveral, 29 kilometers to the north, resulted in a costly duplication of effort. In the summer of 1953 Pan American World Airways, an old hand at operating bases around the world, convinced the Air Force that it could reduce the costs of running the range. Pan American was awarded a contract for day-to-day operations and was soon engaged in many activities from setting up cafeterias to providing security on the pads. The Radio Corporation of America received a subcontract for the technical aspects of range operations.

With the launch of Redstone #1 in August 1953, the Missile Firing Laboratory inaugurated the testing of ballistic missiles. In those days, launch procedures were unsophisticated. Albert Zeiler, one of the Peenemunde veterans, had to decide within a split second whether to shut off the engine immediately after ignition, basing his decision upon the color of the flames. An off-color indicated an improper mix of the propellants. A couple of minor delays had occurred earlier, but on the morning of 20 August 1953 the flame color met Zeiler’s approval, and the Redstone rose. The powered flight lasted only 76 seconds and fell far short of the anticipated 257-kilometer range. Still the missile met most of the test objectives, its structure proved sound, and the propulsion system worked well.¹⁰

Building a Launch Complex

By the late 1950s, the Cape Canaveral skyline already had distinctive features. Towering gantries rose along “ICBM Row.” The various missiles had certain similarities in ground environmental needs and operational requirements. In the test phase, each required an assembly and checkout building, transport from assembly area to launch complex, a launch pad, a gantry service tower, a blockhouse for on-site command and control of the launch, and a network of power, fuel, and communication links that would bring it to life. For a long while, the complexes resembled each other. Igloo shaped blockhouses stood 230 meters from the pads and looked like the pillboxes of World War II. They provided protection for the launch crew and the control consoles and instrumentation. In the case of complexes 11, 12, 13, and 14, designed for the Atlas ICBM, the inside walls of the 12-sided domed structures were 3.2 meters thick at the base with 12 meters of sand around them.

Besides the blockhouse or launch control center, the essential features of a fixed-pad complex included a concrete or steel pedestal on which to erect and launch the vehicle, a steel umbilical tower to provide fluid and electrical connections to the vehicle, a flame deflector, and a mobile service structure that moved around the vehicle so ground crews on platforms could service and test various components. Other features of the complex included an operations support building, storage facilities for kerosene and liquid oxygen, a tunnel for instrumentation and control cables, roads, camera sites, utilities services, and security.

Three factors largely determined the choice of sites for the launch complexes: explosive hazards, the dangers of overflight, and lines of sight. In 1959 the launch planners assumed that the first five or ten missiles in a new program would have a high rate of failure on the pad or shortly after launch. Approximately 5% of the Cape’s previous developmental launches had exploded a few seconds after takeoff, most of them in an area 10 degrees to either side of the intended azimuth (direction) of launch. Experience thus showed the wisdom of locating a pad in an area where there were no permanent facilities immediately downrange. Likewise, the frequency of accidents during test programs made backup pads desirable. The explosive hazard further influenced the placement of facilities within the launch site to minimize damage to “long-lead-time” equipment. Planners also had to maintain a clear line of sight from the launch vehicle to the launch control center, and to electronic and optical instrumentation sites.¹¹

To meet the constantly expanding needs of the many missile groups, the Corps of Engineers eventually built 21 missile assembly buildings patterned after Marine Corps hangars at El Toro, California. Shop, office, and assembly area met the requirements of the early missiles; inside, a maze of power and instrumentation circuits ran through covered trenches. Criteria prepared by the Facilities Division of the Joint Long Range Proving Ground standardized the basic framework of the last 18 of these assembly buildings and developed overhead cranes that were interchangeable in all structures.¹² As missiles grew more complicated over the years, the assembly buildings began to reflect the characteristics of the individual vehicles they would service.¹³

Missions for Saturn

In the fall of 1958, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency’s Missile Firing Laboratory (MFL), after five years at Cape Canaveral, was concluding its Redstone research and development program; the launch on 5 November was the last in a series of 38. A parallel program, training field artillery units to launch Redstone, was also nearing completion. With Redstone attaining operational status, MFL’s Cape activities would center around Jupiter launches and the preparation of Pershing facilities. Big on the horizon was its greatest challenge - Saturn. Although Defense Department officials had approved the Saturn rocket and its Cape Canaveral launch site, wheels at Washington would grind another 18 months before the program was (to indulge in government jargon) finalized. The rocket teams at Huntsville and Cape Canaveral had to work, if not in the dark, at least in a twilight zone where there were few certainties. What was the United States going to do in space? What part would the Saturn have in the space program? What governmental agency would handle its development? How much money would be available? It was the beginning of the if-and-when planning that would bedevil the program for five years.

Even as initially set up by General Medaris and Roy Johnson, the project was dotted with question marks. Some were in the technological area, involving the working out of the overly simplified reference in the Medaris-Johnson pact to “booster flights which, without sophisticated upper stages, would be capable of placing limited payloads in orbit” (page 2). More questions developed from the involved process of transferring the Saturn project from the Army to NASA. In 1958, the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was dealing with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) concerning the Development Operations Division’s Saturn, and its Missile Firing Laboratory’s Saturn launch facilities. By 1960 NASA’s Office of Launch Vehicle Programs was handling the same subject matter with the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and its Launch Operations Directorate (LOD). All of this called for much clearing of the lines of authority.

Meanwhile, the space experts debated the use of the new booster in multistage vehicles. In December 1958, with Saturn still an Army project, ARPA ordered ABMA to study future Saturn configurations with second and third stages. Herman Koelle, chief of the Future Projects Office, directed a task group in an examination of 1375 configurations during the next three months. The study concluded that a modified version of the Atlas, the 3-meter-diameter Titan, or the 4-meter Titan could be used as a second stage on top of the Saturn booster already on the drawing boards at Huntsville. The Centaur was recommended as the logical choice for the third stage.^* An ARPA evaluation committee, composed of NASA and Defense Department members, accepted the study findings and selected the 3-meter Titan for the second stage. In May 1959, ABMA was directed to develop the three-stage Saturn.¹⁴

Within days after completing the Saturn systems study, the Koelle group was attempting to devise an appropriate mission for the super-rocket. A 24-hour communications satellite, the only firm requirement for Saturn, did not justify ABMA’s large expenditures. Koelle’s answer was Project Horizon, a plan to place a military colony on the moon. The summary of the five-volume Horizon study appeared in June 1959. The report proposed a manned lunar landing in 1965, with establishment of a 12-man lunar outpost the following year. As logistical support for a lunar base would require the launching of 64 Saturns annually, approval of the Horizon project would secure ABMA’s position for at least a decade.¹⁵

While ABMA and the Army examined ways to employ the Saturn, NASA was drawing up its own plans for programs beyond Mercury.^** Suggestions included an earth-orbiting manned space station, manned circumlunar flights, manned lunar landings, and ultimately interplanetary flights.

NASA appointed the Research Steering Committee on Manned Space Flight, chaired by Harry J. Goett of Ames Research Center, to study those suggestions. On 25 May 1959, the committee recommended manned interplanetary travel as NASA’s ultimate goal. As a more immediate objective, some members wanted manned flights around the moon; others wanted to land on the moon. George Low of Space Flight Development strongly urged the latter objective. He believed that, among other advantages, Congress would more readily fund this package. He further urged using existing vehicles, such as the Army’s Saturn booster, rather than developing a completely new and larger launch vehicle. ¹⁶

Meanwhile, NASA’s Office of Program Planning and Evaluation, under the direction of Dr. Homer Joe Stewart, whose specific task was to formulate an overall program, set up a Long Range Objectives and Program Planning Committee. With the assistance of the Goett Committee, the Planning Committee submitted a working draft on 1 June 1959, spelling out the problems, costs, and equipment required for landing one or two men on the moon and returning them safely to earth after a period of exploration.¹⁷

A Marriage of Convenience

At this point the Army had a Saturn vehicle for which it was seeking a mission, and NASA had a mission for which it was seeking a vehicle. A marriage of convenience was indicated. Dr. T. Keith Glennan, first NASA administrator, had attempted to bring half of the von Braun team into his new organization on 15 October 1958. Secretary of the Army Wilbur Brucker and General Medaris successfully rebuffed that effort; the Army still had military projects to supervise (Jupiter and Pershing) and did not want to break up the von Braun team. Brucker suggested, as a compromise, that NASA place a liaison group at Huntsville and plan to use the Redstone Arsenal facilities for certain programs. Coveting the Saturn program, NASA accepted Brucker’s proposal as the best of a bad bargain. In January 1959, ARPA and NASA representatives established a National Space Program. NASA would concentrate on smaller vehicles while the Defense Department developed larger ones including the Saturn. Although this understanding appeared to secure a role for Saturn, it actually spelled trouble for ABMA. The Huntsville organization had hoped that NASA would provide financial assistance for Saturn since the new space agency would likely use the big booster. NASA, however, unable to direct the Saturn program, refused to underwrite any of its costs.¹⁸

Saturn’s prospects worsened after a key Defense Department official opposed the Army program. In the spring of 1959, Dr. Herbert F. York, newly appointed Deputy Secretary for Research and Engineering, assigned responsibility for future military space activities to the Air Force. Having previously disclaimed any Defense interest in moon exploration, York in April indicated a desire to cancel the Saturn.^* He could see no military justification for the big rocket. ARPA, perhaps influenced by York, suspended studies of the second stage on 31 July, directing ABMA to conduct a new series of cost and time estimates based on a 4-meter Titan. The larger Titan offered several advantages, including compatibility with the Air Force DynaSoar, a manned space-glider program.¹⁹

Two decisions in September reaffirmed the Saturn program. An ARPA-NASA Large Booster Review Committee, after examining Army, Air Force, and industry programs, recommended the clustered Saturn booster as “the quickest and surest way to attain a large space booster capability in the million-pound thrust [4,448,000-newton] class.”²⁰ York and Dr. Hugh Dryden, NASA’s Deputy Administrator, reached a similar conclusion in their comparison of the Saturn and the Air Force’s Titan C proposal. (The latter would have employed a cluster of upgraded Titan I engines to provide a thrust comparable to the Saturn.)²¹ The York-Dryden committee also recommended that ABMA conduct a new study of second and third stages.

ABMA presented a second Saturn systems study to a Defense Department conference in Washington 29-30 October 1959. The report offered four alternative configurations, ranging from a Titan second stage and Centaur third stage to an optimum vehicle with a new 5.6-meter-diameter conventional second stage (burning RP-1), a new hydrogen-fueled third stage, and a Centaur fourth stage. Knowledge that President Eisenhower had decided to transfer Saturn and the Development Operations Division to NASA lessened the study’s impact. After assuming technical direction of the Saturn in November, NASA initiated still another study of upper stages. Dr. Abe Silverstein, NASA’s Director of Space Flight Development, headed a committee representing the Air Force, NASA, ARPA, and ABMA.²²

Upper Stages

The Silverstein Committee established two criteria for a successful Saturn program: development of a rocket with an early launch capability as well as growth potential. The group listed three missions for the initial Saturn vehicle: unmanned lunar and deep space missions with an escape payload of about 4,500 kilograms; 2,250-kilogram payloads for a 24-hour equatorial orbit; and manned spacecraft missions in low orbits, such as Dyna Soar. The committee matched a number of configurations against these missions. Current ICBMs such as the Titan were adjudged unsatisfactory; they would not generate sufficient thrust for the lunar mission. A larger, conventionally fueled second stage - 5.59-meter diameter - met mission requirements, but time and cost seemed excessive for a rocket stage with little growth potential. The solution lay with the early development of high-energy (liquid hydrogen) propellants for all stages above the first. In defense of this rather bold position the committee noted: “If these propellants are to be accepted for the difficult top-stage applications, there seems to be no valid engineering reasons for not accepting the use of high-energy propellants for the less difficult application to intermediate stages.” The committee also recommended a building block concept stating that “vehicle reliability will be emphasized... through a continued use of each development stage in later vehicle configurations.” The Saturn C-1^* would consist of the clustered booster, a new Douglas Corporation second stage with four hydrogen burning Centaur engines of 66,720-88,960 newtons (15,000-20,000 pounds of thrust) per engine, and a modified Centaur as a third stage. The C-1 would become the C-2 upon insertion of a new oxygen-hydrogen second stage with two 667,200-889,600-newton (150,000-200,000 pounds of thrust) engines. The top two stages of the Saturn C-1 would then become stages three and four on the C-2 version. The committee proposed to launch ten C-1s starting in the fall of 1961.²³

On the last day of 1959, Glennan approved the Silverstein recommendations, and Saturn got its upper stages. Chances of meeting the new schedule improved with two Eisenhower administration decisions in January 1960. The Saturn project received a DX rating, which designated a program of highest national priority. Besides reflecting the administration’s support, the rating gave program managers a privileged status in securing scarce materials. More important, the administration agreed to NASA’s request for additional funds. The Saturn FY 1961 budget was increased from $140 million to $230 million.²⁴ On 15 March 1960 President Eisenhower officially announced the transfer of the Army’s Development Operations Division to NASA. He took the occasion to name the Huntsville installation the Marshall Space Flight Center, for his wartime commander, General George C. Marshall. The DoD’s Missile Firing Laboratory at Cape Canaveral became the Launch Operations Directorate of the new organization.