Apix, Florida was a former rocket testing facility created as part of Project Suntan during the Space Race, including a fake town in Palm Beach County, Florida, the primary feature of which was an alleged fertilizer plant set among the surrounding swamplands. Very little details have been revealed about the rocket testing facility.
Starting in 1945, there was heavy research into hydrogen as a fuel source. [1] The Air Force wanted to create a faster plane for spying than the U-2.
In 1956, Pratt and Whitney along with the United States Air Force decided to buy a 10 square mile piece of land in Western Palm Beach County, and development plans included a main street called Hawthorn Road surrounded by housing plats (lots).
Apix was alleged to exist several miles west of Jupiter, near the intersection of the western terminus of West Indiantown Road and State Road 710 on the Beeline Highway. Apix never had a downtown area, post office, population, or government. Apix appeared on some contemporary maps from 1959 and 1960; one map listed "Apix" alongside location markers for the Pratt & Whitney plant, William R. Gwinn Airport, and Palm Beach Racetrack. [2] [3]
At the time, the western part of Palm Beach County was sparsely populated. Authorities said it was a fertilizer producing town to cover up the operation so that residents would not be suspicious. The name Apix meant Air Products Inc, Experimental. There was also commercial protection to make sure that potential speculators and buyers stayed clear. Land nearby was also platted and had a census marker. Pratt & Whitney bought 9,000 acres near what would today be the J.W. Corbett Wildlife Refuge. For buyers to not know it was United Aircraft (now United Technologies) a third party had bought a ranch and gave it to the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission which then was given to the U.S. Air Force.
The project's main goal was to test liquid hydrogen as a fuel source for rockets which had been in interest of the United States government since the late 1940s. [4] Apix was part of what was called Project Suntan that was carried out in extreme secrecy from 1956–1958. The plant could liquefy Hydrogen at approximately rate of a half a ton a day, costing $6.2 million a day ($53,580,135.23 in 2017) [5] and would be transported in an underground pipeline to a testing facility. A second plant was built in 1959 and had a capacity of 30 tons and cost about $27 million. In February 1959 the managers had decided that transporting liquid hydrogen in the underground pipeline took too much energy and decided to close it. Instead, they decided to ship hydrogen in insulated tanks on the Beeline Highway. [6]
As of 2024, Pratt & Whitney still has an active campus on site, along with Aerojet Rocketdyne. [7]
Pratt & Whitney is an American aerospace manufacturer with global service operations. It is a subsidiary of RTX Corporation. Pratt & Whitney's aircraft engines are widely used in both civil aviation and military aviation. Its headquarters are in East Hartford, Connecticut. The company is the world's second largest commercial aircraft engine manufacturer, with a 35% market share as of 2020. In addition to aircraft engines, Pratt & Whitney manufactures gas turbine engines for industrial use, marine propulsion, and power generation. In 2017, the company reported that it supported more than 11,000 customers in 180 countries around the world.
Rocketdyne was an American rocket engine design and production company headquartered in Canoga Park, in the western San Fernando Valley of suburban Los Angeles, in southern California.
The Saturn family of American rockets was developed by a team of former German rocket engineers and scientists led by Wernher von Braun to launch heavy payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. The Saturn family used liquid hydrogen as fuel in the upper stages. Originally proposed as a military satellite launcher, they were adopted as the launch vehicles for the Apollo Moon program. Three versions were built and flown: the medium-lift Saturn I, the heavy-lift Saturn IB, and the super heavy-lift Saturn V.
The S-II was the second stage of the Saturn V rocket. It was built by North American Aviation. Using liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) it had five J-2 engines in a quincunx pattern. The second stage accelerated the Saturn V through the upper atmosphere with 1,000,000 pounds-force (4.4 MN) of thrust.
The Saturn I was a rocket designed as the United States' first medium lift launch vehicle for up to 20,000-pound (9,100 kg) low Earth orbit payloads. The rocket's first stage was built as a cluster of propellant tanks engineered from older rocket tank designs, leading critics to jokingly refer to it as "Cluster's Last Stand". Its development was taken over from the Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1958 by the newly formed civilian NASA. Its design proved sound and flexible. It was successful in initiating the development of liquid hydrogen-fueled rocket propulsion, launching the Pegasus satellites, and flight verification of the Apollo command and service module launch phase aerodynamics. Ten Saturn I rockets were flown before it was replaced by the heavy lift derivative Saturn IB, which used a larger, higher total impulse second stage and an improved guidance and control system. It also led the way to development of the super-heavy lift Saturn V which carried the first men to landings on the Moon in the Apollo program.
The PGM-19 Jupiter was the first nuclear armed, medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). It was a liquid-propellant rocket using RP-1 fuel and LOX oxidizer, with a single Rocketdyne LR79-NA rocket engine producing 667 kilonewtons (150,000 lbf) of thrust. It was armed with the 1.44 megatons of TNT (6.0 PJ) W49 nuclear warhead. The prime contractor was the Chrysler Corporation.
The RL10 is a liquid-fuel cryogenic rocket engine built in the United States by Aerojet Rocketdyne that burns cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. Modern versions produce up to 110 kN (24,729 lbf) of thrust per engine in vacuum. Three RL10 versions are in production for the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V and the DCSS of the Delta IV. Three more versions are in development for the Exploration Upper Stage of the Space Launch System and the Centaur V of the Vulcan rocket.
Aerojet was an American rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer based primarily in Rancho Cordova, California, with divisions in Redmond, Washington, Orange and Gainesville in Virginia, and Camden, Arkansas. Aerojet was owned by GenCorp. In 2013, Aerojet was merged by GenCorp with the former Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to form Aerojet Rocketdyne.
Suntan was the code-name of a prototype reconnaissance aircraft program, with the goal of creating a much faster and higher-altitude successor to the U-2, enabled by the use of liquid hydrogen (LH2) as aircraft fuel. The program was cancelled in 1958.
Indiantown Road is a 17-mile (27 km) east–west road connecting inner Palm Beach County, with Florida's Turnpike, Interstate 95, and U.S. Route 1 in Jupiter, Florida. The road was formerly entirely designated as State Road 706 (SR 706), but majority of it has been transferred to local jurisdiction and is signed as County Road 706.
Rocket Engine Test Facility was the name of a facility at the NASA Glenn Research Center, formerly known as the Lewis Research Center, in Ohio. The purpose of the Rocket Engine Test Facility was to test full-scale liquid hydrogen rockets at thrust chamber pressures of up to 2100 psia and thrust levels to at least 20,000 pounds. Work on the design of the facility began in 1954 under the auspices of NACA's Rocket Branch of the Fuels and Combustion Research Division. It was built at a cost of $2.5 million and completed in 1957. The facility was located at the south end of the center, adjacent to Abrams Creek 41.404°N 81.868°W. It was demolished in 2003 in order to make way for the runway expansion of the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
A hydrogen infrastructure is the infrastructure of hydrogen pipeline transport, points of hydrogen production and hydrogen stations for distribution as well as the sale of hydrogen fuel, and thus a crucial prerequisite before a successful commercialization of automotive fuel cell technology.
Project Isinglass was the code name given to two heavily classified, crewed reconnaissance aircraft studied by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as potential replacements for the Lockheed A-12 and SR-71 during the mid-1960s. The first proposal under the Isinglass name, a high-altitude plane to fly at Mach 4 – Mach 5, was considered an insufficient advancement over existing aircraft; the second, much more advanced design, sometimes referred to as Project Rheinberry, was an air-launched, Mach 20 rocket-powered boost-glide aircraft that would use a very-high-altitude trajectory to avoid defenses. This aircraft was considered too costly for development, and the project was abandoned in 1967.
This is a timeline of the history of hydrogen technology.
The RL60 was a planned liquid-fuel cryogenic rocket engine designed in the United States by Pratt & Whitney, burning cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. The engine runs on an expander cycle, running the turbopumps with waste heat absorbed from the main combustion process. This high-efficiency, waste heat based combustion cycle combined with the high-performance liquid hydrogen fuel enables the engine to reach a very high specific impulse of up to 465 seconds in a vacuum. The engine was planned to be a more capable successor to the Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10, providing improved performance and efficiency while maintaining the installation envelope of the RL10.
RD AMROSS, a limited liability company, is a U.S. joint venture between Pratt & Whitney of West Palm Beach, Florida and NPO Energomash of Khimki, Russia based in Jupiter, Florida.
The RD-0146 (РД-0146) is a liquid-fuel cryogenic rocket engine developed by KBKhA Kosberg in Voronezh, Russia.
Engineers Designers Fabricators, Incorporated also known as EDF, Inc is an engineering and technical services company located in Riviera Beach, Florida, United States.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) was an American company that designed and produced rocket engines that use liquid propellants. It was a division of Pratt & Whitney, a fully owned subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation. It was headquartered in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California. In 2013, the company was sold to GenCorp, becoming part of Aerojet Rocketdyne.
Heysham oil refinery was located between Heysham and Middleton on the Heysham peninsula, Lancashire. It was built during the Second World War to produce high octane fuel for combat aircraft. It was later adapted to refine crude oil with a processing capacity of two million tonnes per year and was in operation from 1948 to 1976. It worked in conjunction with a chemical plant which produced ammonium nitrate fertilizer and other products, using feedstocks from the refinery.
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