Marshall Highlights for 1966

(Source Note: The following information is presented here as published in a news release issued in late 1966 by the Marshall Center Public Affairs Office.)

The Marshall Center ended 1966 on a note of diversification and expansion of interests.

Launch vehicle development, which has long been the major interest here, headed the list of achievements in an eventful and productive year. Three Uprated Saturn I launch vehicles were sent into space, making the Saturn success string 13 straight.

Signs of expansion of interests were evidenced by:

Assignment of the Apollo Telescope Mount project management responsibility to the Marshall Center.

Start of some preliminary work on other missions for the Apollo-Saturn hardware after the first lunar landing.

The Marshall Center's economic impact on the Huntsville community was also important in 1966. The Center's 7,500 civil service employees earned in excess of $82 million. Some 650 of these government employees are working at other locations throughout the United States.

At the year's end, there were some 4,085 support contractor employees working at the Center's Redstone Arsenal complex. They earned an estimated $55 million, bringing the direct and indirect payroll for 1966 to about $137 million.

Several thousand workers are employed by contractors in Huntsville in connection with MSFC programs.

Marshall Center officials foresee no significant change in personnel numbers in the coming year.

The budget for fiscal year 1967, which began July 1, is $1.5 billion, a decrease of about $150 million from fiscal year 1966. More than 90 percent of the total MSFC budget is spent with industry.

The Marshall Center's first Uprated Saturn I lofted an Apollo spacecraft on Feb. 26 from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., to start the successful year. The suborbital flight was to evaluate the Apollo spacecraft's re-entry heat shield.

On July 5, the second vehicle sent a stage into orbit to evaluate the behavior of cryogenic liquid hydrogen during weightlessness. The third unmanned Apollo Saturn test on Aug. 25 sent the spacecraft on a suborbital flight of some 18,000 miles for a landing in the Pacific Ocean.

A milestone in the Saturn V program was reached in 1966. A Saturn V vehicle and Apollo spacecraft were erected for the first time at KSC. The "facilities checkout vehicle" was used to try out launch complex ground support equipment.

Another three-stage Saturn V vehicle was also assembled in a test stand at the Marshall Center. Called the dynamic test vehicle, this 365-foot tall rocket is being put through

"shake" tests to determine its bending and vibration characteristics. Most of the elements of the first flight Saturn V are at the launch complex.

In the Apollo Applications area, the Marshall Center's two main projects are the Apollo Telescope Mount and the Orbital Workshop. The ATM, a manned solar astronomical mission to fly during the period of maximum solar activity that begins in 1968, will carry astronomical instruments. MSFC will design and build the telescope mounting frame, and astronomy specialists - as principal investigators - will provide the instruments. The Orbital Workshop calls for a "spent" Saturn upper stage to be used as an early space workshop. Astronauts will live and work for 30 days or more in this space laboratory.

Marshall can look forward to the launch early in 1967 of the fourth Apollo Saturn vehicle, which is to be manned, and the first Saturn V launch vehicle on an unmanned mission.

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