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Photographer: Cosmos Mariner
Taken: June 28, 2018
Caption: A Race into Space (interpretive panel inside Rocky Mountain Arsenal Visitor Center)
Additional Description: Concerns on the Ground
As the Arsenal's manufacturing operations expanded, concerns about waste disposal and contamination grew. The U.S. Army constructed a deep injection well in 1961 to dispose of liquid manufacturing waste from Basin F. Approximately 165 million gallons of waste were pumped to a depth of more than 12,000 feet underground (below the groundwater). Deep well injection had been safely used elsewhere as a waste disposal method for many years. A series of earthquakes shook the Denver metropolitan area, and some experts believed that injecting fluid into the Arsenal's underground well caused the tremors. The U.S. Army stopped using the well in 1966.

To the Moon and Beyond
In October 1957, the USSR successfully launched Sputnik 1, the first-ever Earth orbiting satellite, and the space race began. To support the United States space program, the U.S. Army built a rocket fuel blending facility at South Plants in 1959. Two years later, on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the Moon and back within the decade. The development and production of powerful rocket propellants was a central focus of the Arsenal throughout the 1960s, culminating in Neil Armstrong's landing on the Moon in 1969. The Arsenal was responsible for providing rocket fuel that helped propel Apollo 11 to the Moon. The facility supplied fuel for U.S. Air Force Titan missiles as well.
Submitted: August 8, 2018, by Cosmos Mariner of Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Database Locator Identification Number: p439018
File Size: 4.575 Megabytes

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