before the saturn v rocket successfully
launched americans to the moon
its tremendously powerful first stage
was proven during testing here at nasa's
marshall space flight center
that was two decades ago but soon the
roar of rocket engines will echo again
from this massive concrete and steel
test stand
this historic site has now been restored
into a hotbed of rocket engine research
for the future it's called the
technology test bed and it will give
nasa engineers a chance to test theories
and hardware aimed at improving the
space shuttle main engine and the
engines that will follow the first thing
it's going to do is give us a much
better understanding of what's happening
inside the engine john mccarty is the
director of the propulsion lab here at
the marshall center it points out that
on standard flight models of the shuttle
engine there are 50 sensors on the test
engine here there can be more than 12
times that many the data generated
during these tests will be used to
improve the engines that will propel the
nation's space program for decades to
come the bottom line is going to be a
reduction in the cost of the engines but
by i project at least 50
along with increased safety and
reliability mccarty says that building a
new test facility would have cost 10
times as much as refurbishing this one
soon this artifact of the past which
helped put man on the moon will roar
back to life to help nasa make manned
flights safe and reliable far into the
future
percent
well i think if we look off five to ten
years into the future
we would expect that then
that we could see engines that are 50
percent of the cost of of these current
engines
that are safer and have higher
reliability than what we have today and
that's the whole thrust of the program
is to reduce the opportunity for
something to go wrong
you