CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING
NEWS VOLUME 40, NUMBER 2i
The Chemical World This Week
MAY 21, 1962
Liquid Propellant Makers Vie for Space Plum NASA's growing propellant needs touch off hot competition for production contracts, attract new bidders This week, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will call in bids on a new liquid hydrogen plant for the West Coast. The 60 ton-aday plant will be NASA's fourth for liquid hydrogen on the coast. Simultaneously in Hancock County, Miss., and Hunts ville, Ala., this week design and initial planning studies for the space agency's huge Mississippi Test Facility (MTF) at Pearl River, swing into full stride. Here, NASA will run static tests - on production liquid booster stages of the giant Saturn and Nova launch vehicles, including stages which use the new 1.2 million-pound-thrust M-l engine—largest liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen power plant planned to date. MTF's propellant requirements be-
ginning in the mid-60's will be significant. Cryogenic needs alone will probably run on the order of 15 million pounds a year of liquid hydrogen and 75 million pounds of liquid oxygen at least. These burgeoning requirements for the space effort are touching off a bitter competitive battle among liquid propellant producers. More than a dozen companies—many of them freshmen in the space program—already are vying for the propellant complex at MTF, even though the facility isn't on the drawing board yet. The stakes are impressive. M T F will be the proving ground for such monsters as: • The Nova booster, a cluster of eight 1.5 million-pound-thmst Rocket-
Liquid Hydrogen Capacity Buildup Reflects Growing Space Needs Operator and Location
Capacity (tons per day)
Date on Stream
Remarks
Air Products West Palm Beach, Fla. Painesville, Ohio Long Beach, Calif.
30
1957
1
1956 1963
Air Force-owned; 4 tons per day of standby capacity in addition Air Force-owned Company-owned, to supply NASA
1957
Air Force-owned
7 30
1960 1962
Company-owned, to supply NASA Company-owned, to supply NASA
6
1963
Company-owned, no NASA supply commitments
32.5-45
Stearns-Roger Bakersfield, Calif.
1.5
Linde Torrance, Calif. Fontana, Calif.
Air Reduction Pedricktown, NJ.
UPl Photo
National Cylinder Gas Chicago, III.
National Bureau of Standards Boulder, Colo. Sources:
J
1
1962
Company-owned, no NASA supply commitments
A
1952
Pilot plant
National Aeronautics and Space Administration;
Arthur D. Little, Inc.
FIRST TEST FOR LIQUID H2. Less than a minute after blast-off, in what was to have been the initial in-flight test for liquid hydrogen, Centaur blew up. Despite this failure, the space program's plans for manned space probes are still pinned on liquid hydrogen MAY
21, 1962
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dyne F - l engines, which feed on RPI (upgraded kerosine) and liquid oxygen. • Nova's second stage, made up of four M-l's. • The advanced (C-5 configuration) Saturn booster with its five F-l's. • The advanced Saturn second stage -five 200,000-pound-thrust liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engines (the socalled J-2 engine under development by the Rocketdyne division of North American Aviation). These stages—so large they can be transported only by water—will be fabricated at NASA's newly acquired Michoud Ordnance Plant near New Orleans, shipped up the Mississippi to MTF for static testing, then on to Cape Canaveral for actual in-flight tests. The advanced Saturn is the mainstay of the rendezvous approach for sending the three-man Apollo capsule to the moon. This approach calls for putting the capsule and power plant into orbit around the earth separately, joining them together there, then launching the new vehicle from earth orbit to the moon. Nova, the direct ascent approach, is the alternative. Big H2 Market. An inkling of the potential market at M T F for cryogenics producers can be gained from considering the M-l alone. A single one-minute firing eats up about 85 tons of propellant—more than 14 tons of liquid hydrogen alone. Engines and components must be checked out thoroughly on the ground before they are ready for flight. M T F also will have a static test stand for RIFT (reactor in-flight testing), another big consumer of liquid hydrogen. The new propellant complex may mark NASA's first entry into the liquid oxygen picture. Currently, NASA depends entirely on the Air Force for its LOX. This arrangement has been quite satisfactory to the space agency. But there are no LOX plants near MTF. Since any liquid hydrogen facility at M T F will require an air separation plant to produce liquid nitrogen needed to produce liquid hydrogen, NASA officials are considering an oversized air separation plant to produce LOX at the same time. Primarily because of its Gulf Coast location, MTF's propellant complex is the object of the most intense competition to date in the field. "A whole new category of firms—new, at least, to the space business—are out to snare this one," a NASA official says. "Petro28
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chemicaj companies, gas producers— almost anyone with a waste gas process—are competing," he adds. Last month, the space agency awarded a contract to provide the first design criteria and initial planning of MTF to the St. Louis consulting firm of Sverdrup and Parcel. Sverdrup and Parcel farmed out the propellant study to Air Products. And this stirred up quite a bit of anxiety on the part of rival Linde. Who Should Own. Air Products favors the so-called GOCO approachgovernment owned, company operated facilities. Air Reduction, too, has tried to sell NASA on the benefits of GOCO over the long haul. But Linde staunchly opposes GOCO. Rumors persist that NASA plans to enter the liquid hydrogen business with a GOCO unit in the Gulf area and possibly even one on the West Coast. While NASA officials present a strong case which would seem to rule out the West Coast portion of the rumor, they do not close the door entirely on the possibility of a GOCO facility on the Gulf. "Right now, except for the Air Force's West Palm Beach, Fla., plant, we are entirely beholden to industry for our liquid hydrogen needs," one official points out. "Some in NASA feel we should have a little insurance and possibly more bargaining power. But the question is how much would we be willing to pay for this insurance. We would be hardpressed to justify sinking anywhere from $12 million to $25 million into a standby GOCO unit on the West Coast." NASA has shied away from investing this much in facilities which could be handled by industry. Except for MTF, NASA has been hard pressed for time in getting its liquid hydrogen sources on stream. GOCO, NASA officials point out, would be more time-consuming than the current approach of using company-owned facilities. Much longer lead times are needed to get a plant into operation. And NASA would have new administrative headaches. NASA's only East Coast liquid hydrogen source at present, the obsolete and costly West Palm Beach facility, is GOCO—built and operated for the Air Force by Air Products. NASA takes 97% of its output. Its hydrogen costs from 85 cents to $1.25 a pound. By contrast, NASA will pay less than 35 cents a pound for liquid hydrogen under its latest contract with Air Products.
New Plants. In NASA's last liquid hydrogen go-round on the West Coast back in December, Air Products nosed out Linde, Air Reduction, and Allied Chemical's General Chemicals Division for the business. The five-year contract, worth about $35 million, calls for delivery of about 100 million pounds of liquid hydrogen. Air Products' 32.5 to 40 ton-a-day unit is contracted to come on stream at Long Beach, Calif., in February 1963. Next month, Linde's 30 ton-a-day liquid hydrogen plant at Fontana, Calif., goes into operation. Under a $31 million contract, Linde is to supply some 60 million pounds of liquid hydrogen through 1966 for the space agency's West Coast needs. In addition, under an earlier five-year contract signed in April 1959, Linde is supplying up to 3.3 million pounds of liquid hydrogen per year to NASA from its Torrance, Calif., plant. NASA's current liquid hydrogen procurement goes to the Sacramento, Calif., area, primarily to feed AerojetGeneral's rapidly blossoming needs. Contract negotiations just completed call for Aerojet to design and develop the M-l engine. The engine is expected to be ready by 1965. Aerojet also needs large quantities of liquid hydrogen for NERVA (nuclear engine for rocket vehicle application), which also is under development at Sacramento. In addition, the new facility will help supply the needs of Douglas Aircraft, located nearby. Douglas holds the contract for the second, or S-IV, stage of the early Saturn (the C-1 configuration). S-IV will be made up of six A-3 liquid hydrogenliquid oxygen engines, each generating 15,000 pounds of thrust. A-3 was developed initially for the second stage of the bug-ridden Atlas-Centaur vehicle. Rounding out the liquid hydrogen supply picture on the West Coast is the Air Force's small unit at Bakersfield, Calif. Originally able to turn out 1500 pounds a day, the Bakersfield plant's capacity has just been doubled. The upcoming contract probably will be able to satisfy NASA's liquid hydrogen requirements on the West Coast for several years, NASA estimates. Liquid hydrogen needs for Project Rover—the big nuclear rocket development program under way at Jackass Flats, Nev.—will be filled from the four West Coast plants. A liquid hydrogen plant for Nevada is still years off, NASA sources say.
