NASA got control of Centaur on July 1, 1959, in the general shift of all propulsion development to the new space agency and Marshall got it by default. NASA/JPL picked it up and assigned it to Mariner and Surveyor in July 1960 with flights planned for 1962 and 1964 and Saturn/Centaur planetary flights from 1966.
There was a real scandal when von Braun lobbied Jim Webb direct to cancel Centaur, going right over the heads of his bosses and even Max Faget thought the missions it was to carry should be canceled to free funds for Apollo!
Remember, Vega was canceled when the Air Force suddenly and unexpectedly made known to NASA late in 1959 the existence, and availability, of the restartable Agena B.
Quote from: dbaker on 07/02/2012 05:52 pmI suspect that the restart capability was not exactly secret. Lots of surprises happen because people aren't paying attention.Absolutely! But interesting to note that in 1959 Vega was positioned at the performance it had specifically so as to be a step to (and lower capability than) the existing centaur (ordered by ARPA in August 1958). When in late 1959 the Air Force told NASA it could have the Agena B, while knowledge of it was 'known' to a few outside the circled wagons of classified defense projects the imminent availability of it killed Vega as an unnecessary duplication. Agena B was already in existence, Centaur was (supposedly) coming along for 1962 missions (!) and this gave the hurry-up to JPL and confidence to NASA for an accelerated Moon/planetary missions model.
I suspect that the restart capability was not exactly secret. Lots of surprises happen because people aren't paying attention.
In too much of a hurry! That quote was from Blackstar not dbaker!
1-One thing I've been wondering for a while: Did Advent ever actually fly? Or was it superseded/replaced/downgraded into other geostationary communications programs?2-Also, here is Taming Liquid Hydrogen, aka SP-4230, the official NASA history of the Centaur from a while back (early 2000s, IIRC). A good read if you're interested in this stuff (albeit with a few glaring errors).
1-No. Never flew. Too ambitious. I've never seen a good history article on Advent. Indeed, the most I've seen is short references to it. I thought it never got anywhere, which is why I was really surprised when the San Diego Air and Space Museum posted some photos of a high fidelity Advent mockup on their flickr page a few months ago.There's also a congressional report on Advent that I think I posted here awhile back. Lots of detail about the overall program, although not much on the technology. Apparently Advent got so expensive and behind schedule that Congress took a look--around 1960 or so (proof that schedule slips and cost overruns go back to the beginning of the space age). Search for it and see if it pops up on the site.
2-What "glaring errors"? Somebody posted here awhile back that they thought the book gave too much credit to the govt. and not enough to the contractors. It has been a long time since I read the book, and actually, I'm not sure that I read the final product. I was a reviewer for the manuscript and helped out the author a lot with documents, which I think got me mentioned in the acknoledgment section.
If there were histories about Magellan and Ulysses around, those would be good as well, but I'm not sure there are.
Quote from: Blackstar on 07/03/2012 05:56 pm1-No. Never flew. Too ambitious. I've never seen a good history article on Advent. Indeed, the most I've seen is short references to it. I thought it never got anywhere, which is why I was really surprised when the San Diego Air and Space Museum posted some photos of a high fidelity Advent mockup on their flickr page a few months ago.There's also a congressional report on Advent that I think I posted here awhile back. Lots of detail about the overall program, although not much on the technology. Apparently Advent got so expensive and behind schedule that Congress took a look--around 1960 or so (proof that schedule slips and cost overruns go back to the beginning of the space age). Search for it and see if it pops up on the site.Will do. Another one of those programs that you have to dig around in obscure (quasi-)primary sources to get any information about...