How Randolph Rae put America on the Moon?

I was just rereading my "Lockheed Skunk Works" book by Jay Miller, and
had a odd thought.
Back in 1954, British engineer Randolph Rae gave the Air Force Projects
Office a proposal for a radical new type aircraft engine he called the
"Rex-1" using Lox and LH-2 to drive a turbine, which in turn was to a
propeller on a high altitude reconnaissance plane he had designed (later
versions of the Rex engine dropped the propeller, and became closer to a
turbofan in concept):http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4404/ch7-3.htm
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4404/ch7-9.htm
The idea proved interesting to the Air Force, and after patent squabbles
with Garret Corporation, Lockheed decided to use it in a modified
version which used external air instead of Lox to power their LH2 fueled
CL-400 "Suntan" reconnaissance aircraft proposal. A working engine
based on the Rae "hydrogen expander" concept was developed as the Pratt
& Whitney Model 304: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4404/ch8-9.htm
Suntan never panned out due to the problems of getting enough LH2
storage capacity in the a fuselage streamlined enough to travel at Mach
2.5 while carrying the insulation needed to keep the LH2 cold enough to
remain in a liquid state.
But the hydrogen expander cycle and work on the turbines for the PW 304
led directly to the very successful LR10 Lox/LH2 engine used on the
Centaur upper stage... and the LR-10 let us get the experience with
cryogenic engines that let us build the J-2 for the Saturn V. Without
the high energy upper stages on the Saturn V, it would have turned into
a real monster to have the payload capacity it needed for a single
launch Moon mission like Apollo used. The Soviet N-1 had a much inferior
payload at far greater weight, and required more rocket stages to
complete its planned landing of a single person on the Moon.
Development of a Saturn V payload capacity rocket using Lox/kerosene
would have been very difficult to accomplish prior to the end of the
decade, and the Soviets might have beaten us to the Moon if they could
have worked all of the bugs out of the N-1.
So did Randolph Rae unintentionally become the man who had a lot to do
with America beating the Soviets to the Moon?

Pat

On Tuesday, September 18, 2007 11:16:20 AM UTC-7, Pat Flannery wrote:
I was just rereading my "Lockheed Skunk Works" book by Jay Miller, and
had a odd thought.
Back in 1954, British engineer Randolph Rae gave the Air Force Projects
Office a proposal for a radical new type aircraft engine he called the
"Rex-1" using Lox and LH-2 to drive a turbine, which in turn was to a
propeller on a high altitude reconnaissance plane he had designed (later
versions of the Rex engine dropped the propeller, and became closer to a
turbofan in concept):http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4404/ch7-3.htm
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4404/ch7-9.htm
The idea proved interesting to the Air Force, and after patent squabbles
with Garret Corporation, Lockheed decided to use it in a modified
version which used external air instead of Lox to power their LH2 fueled
CL-400 "Suntan" reconnaissance aircraft proposal. A working engine
based on the Rae "hydrogen expander" concept was developed as the Pratt
& Whitney Model 304: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4404/ch8-9.htm
Suntan never panned out due to the problems of getting enough LH2
storage capacity in the a fuselage streamlined enough to travel at Mach
2.5 while carrying the insulation needed to keep the LH2 cold enough to
remain in a liquid state.
But the hydrogen expander cycle and work on the turbines for the PW 304
led directly to the very successful LR10 Lox/LH2 engine used on the
Centaur upper stage... and the LR-10 let us get the experience with
cryogenic engines that let us build the J-2 for the Saturn V. Without
the high energy upper stages on the Saturn V, it would have turned into
a real monster to have the payload capacity it needed for a single
launch Moon mission like Apollo used. The Soviet N-1 had a much inferior
payload at far greater weight, and required more rocket stages to
complete its planned landing of a single person on the Moon.
Development of a Saturn V payload capacity rocket using Lox/kerosene
would have been very difficult to accomplish prior to the end of the
decade, and the Soviets might have beaten us to the Moon if they could
have worked all of the bugs out of the N-1.
So did Randolph Rae unintentionally become the man who had a lot to do
with America beating the Soviets to the Moon?

Pat

That's a persuasive argument. He may be one of the unsung heroes of spaceflight (and I suspect there are others, maybe many).

JD

On Sunday, August 12, 2012 10:11:34 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Tuesday, September 18, 2007 11:16:20 AM UTC-7, Pat Flannery wrote:

I was just rereading my "Lockheed Skunk Works" book by Jay Miller, and
Pat

That's a persuasive argument. He may be one of the unsung heroes of spaceflight (and I suspect there are others, maybe many).

JD

....Oh dear God/Yahweh/Roddenberry. I clicked on this post, and it threw up Pat's post from over *five* years ago. This guy replied not only to a post that's a half-decade old, but the original author of the thread has been sadly deceased for over a year.

I mean, I'm all for archiving, but this one...frack, until I checked the date, for about three seconds I thought Pat had somehow managed to come back from the grave, and I'd missed the post telling us all about his trip...

OM