Space: Flight of the Hangar Queen

Two catastrophic failures out of five firings, an accidental explosion on a test stand, a three-year lag in the development schedule, and a $552 million price tag have all earned NASA’s liquid-hydrogen-fueled Centaur rocket such derisive nicknames as “the Hangar Queen” and “the Edsel of the Missile Industry.” But as it separated from its Atlas booster and ignited in a burst of pale blue flame high above the Atlantic Ocean last week, Centaur took on its proper dignity. The most powerful rocket of its size in the world, built to fire a one-ton Surveyor spacecraft to the moon, the 48-ft. Centaur shoved a dum my Surveyor into a perfect flight toward a preselected point in space, 240,000 miles from earth.

Not only did the trouble-plagued Pratt & Whitney hydrogen engines take full charge in flight, but the guidance for the General Dynamics rocket sys tem checked out perfectly. Centaur soared into an orbit that was so exact that had Surveyor carried the proper equipment, it could have made a slight mid-course correction and been on its way to the moon.