By Willy. In Archeology and monuments , Space. Far from being a center of information technology or mass culture, Sacramento is surrounded by miles and miles of irrigated farmland in the Central Valley. I have been visiting Sacramento my entire life, because one branch of my family has lived there since Apart from the state capitol complex, Sacramento always seemed a generic place to me.
I was a space nut growing up, and I was thus astonished when I learned just recently that Sacramento played a small but crucial role in the Apollo moon-landing program.
Between and , Douglas Aircraft Company tested upper stages of the Saturn rockets at a test range south of the city. For the past three years, I have lived just two counties west of Sacramento, in Napa County. Thus I headed down to Sacramento one weekend for a bit of space-age technological tourism. Here is what I saw. It was carved out of a larger facility owned by Aerojet, the rocket engine manufacturer. This was a precaution for safety, in case the rocket stages were to explode during testing which happened a couple of times.
In the early sixties, Douglas shifted to test Saturn upper stages there. The Saturns were some of the largest rockets ever flown, and they were developed in three phases:. The lower stages of the first Saturn rockets were built in-house at Marshall, while later stages were built by contractors.
All three rockets had upper stages built by Douglas and tested in Sacramento. Source: NASA. The Douglas Aircraft Company won the contract to build the upper stages for all three versions of the Saturn. It used liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for propellants, which were considered to be high-tech at that time and required some special attention in the design process.
