In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

66 VVVVVVVVVVV Of the postwar fuel cell enterprises, the programs sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the 160s and early 170s were the largest, best funded, and had the highest profile until the automobile-centered boom of the 10s and 2000s. From 162, NASA served as a sponsor and customer of hydrogen fuel cells, paying contractors tens of millions of dollars to build systems for the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle spacecraft. More than any previous patron, the space agency introduced fuel cell technology to the public and informed broader expectations of its potential. As with the Bacon cell in Britain, American aerospace fuel cells became symbols of advanced technological prowess in NASA’s campaign to justify the elaborate set-piece pageantry of the Space Race. Little is known of how this project contributed to the fuel cell and alternative energy technology fields as well as energy research and development policy in general. Indeed, NASA’s broader economic legacy is largely terra incognita. In the 170s, aerospace history scholars including Vernon Van Dyke, John M. Logsdon, and the official NASA historian Eugene M. Emme interpreted NASA’s social influence mainly in political terms. To Logsdon, the key question was how science and technology were employed for national goals, rather than how space policy shaped science, technology, and the economy.1 Joan Lisa Bromberg’s study of NASA’s relationship with the aerospace industry was a notable effort to address this lacuna.2 But Bromberg revealed little of how America’s adventure in space influenced non-aerospace science, technology, and commerce. Fuel cell researchers A. J. Appleby and F. R. Foulkes hold that NASA was responsible for making the fuel cell concept a practical reality, contributing “enormously” to the fields of electrochemistry and electrochemical engineering science in the process.3 It is true that NASA did do much to advance the development of terrestrial fuel cell power, although not directly. Fuel cell 3 Fuel Cells and the Final Frontier Like so many revolutionary technical concepts, the fuel cell is the direct result of the extraordinary demands of the space age. —Wernher von Braun, August 1964 FUEL CELLS AND THE FINAL FRONTIER 67 technology was important to the agency in two ways. Planners regarded it as suitably advanced but essentially proven space-age hardware capable of meeting certain demanding aerospace requirements. In a program laden with superlatives, the fuel cell also became an important marker of engineering virtuosity , not least because NASA managers claimed the device would benefit the civilian marketplace. The space spin-off was an important political consideration for NASA as the 160s progressed and the agency faced increasing criticism that the science and engineering it supported were irrelevant to social realities. These expectations were outlined in a promotional pamphlet prepared for the NASA-sponsored Second National Conference on Peaceful Uses of Space at the Seattle World’s Fair in May 162. Among the range of space techniques and technologies that promised broader terrestrial use were “amazing new sources of power” including the fuel cell. With further development, indicated the pamphlet, the technology would allow homes and businesses to generate their own heat and power, reducing dependence on the centralized gas and electricity grid and presenting a business opportunity as potentially lucrative as space communications.4 The reality was that NASA had neither the capabilities nor the mandate to directly develop a terrestrial fuel cell. Still, as we have seen in the case of Project Lorraine, the space fuel cell program was of crucial ideological significance to managers of terrestrial fuel cell programs because it established the precedent of practicality. With the Pentagon’s fuel cell effort faltering by the mid-160s, NASA’s aerospace variants became the leading technological exemplars. Like ARPA, the agency helped popularize the notion of a general-purpose electrochemical engine but to a much larger audience owing to the highly public nature of the space program. Far from spinning off a terrestrial fuel cell variant, however, NASA and its contractors sought to adapt technology originally developed for terrestrial purposes for use in spacecraft, a costly process fraught with difficulty and not at all a good indicator of the odds of successfully developing an efficient and affordable commercial fuel cell. As applied in spacecraft, fuel cells operated in conditions more akin to a controlled laboratory environment than those they would encounter in daily use on earth. Powering the Space Age Of the government agencies interested in...

Share