Why von Braun want it canceled ?
Quote from: spaceStalker on 05/09/2012 12:14 pmWhy von Braun want it canceled ?MSFC was focused on Saturn -- Centaur was a distraction. IIRC, MSFC proposed Saturn-Agena in place of Centaur.
Yes, and you have to remember that at the time Centaur was a vehicle looking for a mission. Surveyor was the only scheduled mission for it, and that could be done with a combination of existing stages (despite how goofy Saturn-Agena would have looked).
I wonder how that scenario fit with the fact that the original Saturn 1 second stage was configured with 6 RL-10 engines and flew successfully on several missions. Was the Agena to be a 3rd stage?
I've never seen a proposed Saturn configuration with an Agena third stage. To my knowledge, in fact, every early Saturn configuration from the time of the Silverstein Report in December 1959 (see the attachment to this message) featured a Centaur as a final stage. Ironic, isn't it?
Titan II had about the same performance to LEO as the initial Atlas-Centaur, and was already in NASA's sights for Gemini. IMHO, it could easily have filled the role of Centaur for OAO,..
And it's not ironic that many potential Saturn configurations used Centaur (S-V) as an upper stage....
EDIT: I take that back, you couldn't just use Agena as a second stage, as it would send just 11 kg to TLI! On the other hand, the standard two-stage Saturn (S-I + S-IV) would send 1.5 tonnes to TLI, and adding an Agena third stage would bump that up to 3 tonnes. Surveyor only weighed 1 tonne at launch, so I'm not sure what the plan was, or why the suggestion wasn't just for a standard Saturn I...
Yes, and you have to remember that at the time Centaur was a vehicle looking for a mission. Surveyor was the only scheduled mission for it, and that could be done with a combination of existing stages (despite how goofy Saturn-Agena would have looked). With so much on its plate, an unnecessary, expensive, and failing project like Centaur was not what NASA needed at all. So despite how we all like Centaur in retrospect, from the perspective of 1962, von Braun's suggestion was probably the better management decision.