Test Stand at the NACA’s Rocket Engine Test Facility

Mechanics prepare the 20,000-pound thrust stand in the Rocket Engine Test Facility for a test at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory. The Rocket Engine Test Facility was constructed in the mid-1950s to expand upon the smaller test cells built a decade before at the Rocket Laboratory. The original Rocket Lab included eight test cells to study rocket engine components and propellants. The $2.5 Rocket Engine Test Facility could test larger hydrogen-fluorine and hydrogen-oxygen rocket thrust chambers at chamber pressures to 2100 psia and thrust levels up to 20,000 pounds. Test Stand A, seen in this photograph, was designed to test vertically mounted rocket engines. The exhaust was sent into an exhaust gas scrubber and muffler before being vented into the atmosphere. The facility was built in a ravine off of a remote area of the laboratory due to the explosive propellants being used. A facility operator controlled the tests from a control room 1600 feet away. The Rocket Engine Test Facility was later designated a National Historic Landmark for its role in the development of liquid hydrogen as a rocket fuel. The facility was used in the development of the Pratt & Whitney RL‒10 engine for the Centaur rocket and the Rocketdyne J‒2 engine for the second stage of the Saturn V rocket and Space Shuttle Main Engine. The facility was demolished in 2003 as part of a runway expansion at the Cleveland Hopkins Airport.