‘Architect of America’s space program’ was an Ohioan
Silverstein promoted liquid hydrogen — key to reaching the moon.
Hear the word “Apollo” and people are likely to think of Neil Armstrong, the Ohioan who commanded the Apollo mission to the moon this month in 1969.
“Apollo” is less likely to evoke the name of another Ohioan — Abe Silverstein — but it should. For starters, the name was his idea.
Silverstein was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1908 and studied engineering in college. Hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics — forerunner of NASA — he worked at its Langley center in Virginia until 1943, when he moved to NACA’s Lewis propulsion lab (now NASA’s Glenn Research Center) in Cleveland.
Silverstein became a senior NACA official and in 1958 moved to Washington, D.C., to help create NASA. He became its space flight director, and among other things he named the Mercury and Apollo programs, according to NASA reports.
Returning to Cleveland in 1961, Silverstein supported propulsion research for Apollo’s Saturn rocket. He convinced a skeptical Wernher Von Braun to power Saturn’s upper stage with a new Lewis technology — liquid hydrogen. Lightweight and energetic, the liquid hydrogen rocket proved key to reaching the moon.
In 1969 — the same year Armstrong walked on the lunar surface — Silverstein retired. He died in 2001 at age 92 and is buried in Cuyahoga County. His contributions to spaceflight are too extensive for this space, but his peers and astronauts recognized him as “the architect of America’s space program,” according to the National Aviation Hall of Fame. It enshrined him in 2015. Every Monday, the Dayton Daily News celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo program.
To learn about Apollo-related events and exhibits around Ohio, visit apollo-moon.com.