Thor (rocket) - Thor (rocket) Also see Thor (missile) Thor Ablestar rocket Thor was the United States's first operational ballistic missile. It was deployed with thermonuclear warheads in the U.K between 1959 and 1963. It went on to spawn a string of space launch vehicles. Its decendants fly to this day as the Delta series of rockets. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Initial development as an IRBM 2 Launch Pad 3 First Launches 4 Deployment 5 Noteworthy Thor IRBM flights 6 Thor becomes a launch vehicle 7 Thor and the Corona program 8 Thor becomes Delta 8.1 Early Delta flights 9 Delta Evolution 10 Delta A 11 Delta B 12 Delta C 13 Thrust Augumented Thor-Agena D 14 Delta D 15 Delta E 16 Delta G 17 Delta J.
Thor (missile) - Thor (missile) RAF Thor IRBM - Deployed 1959-63 Thor was the United States's first operational ballistic missile. Also see Thor (rocket) Fearful that the Soviet Union would deploy a long-range ballistic missile before the United States, in January 1956 the Air Force began developing the Thor, a 1,500~mile intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). The Thor program unfolded with amazing speed, and within 3-years of the program’s inception the first Thor squadron became operational in Great Britain. The Thor was a stop-gap measure, however, and once the first generation of ICBMs based in the United States became operational, the Thor missiles were quickly retired. The last of the missiles was withdrawn from operational alert in 1963. System Operation All sixty of the Thor missiles deployed in Great Britain.
Saturn (rocket family) - Saturn (rocket family) The Saturn family of rockets were developed to launch heavy payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. They were adopted as the launch vehicles for the Apollo program. The two most important members of the family were the Saturn IB and the Saturn V. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Early development 2 Silverstein Committee 3 Project Apollo Early development The original Saturn design originated with a concept developed by Wernher von Braun in 1957. He submitted a proposal to the United States Department of Defence, outlining a need to develop a heavy booster with thrust in the 1.5 million pound range. Such a booster would be able to place a payload of 20,000-40,000 pounds in Earth orbit, or 6,000-12,000 pounds elsewhere in the Solar System..
List of rockets - List of rockets This is a list of rockets. Aerobee rocket AGM-84 Harpoon AIM-120 AMRAAM AIM-132 ASRAAM Al-Samoud 2 Ariane Ariane 1 Ariane 2 Ariane 3 Ariane 4 Ariane 5 Atlas (rocket family) Atlas (rocket) Black Knight (rocket) Blue Steel missile Blue Streak missile Centaur rocket Condor missile Congreve rocket CSS-2 missile Delta (rocket family) Diamant Dongfeng missile EGBU-15 Enzian missile Europa (rocket) H-2A rocket Jericho missile Jupiter-C IRBM Katyusha Long March rocket MBDA Meteor MBDA Exocet SM39 missile MIM-104 Patriot Minuteman missile Minuteman I (rocket) Minuteman II (rocket) Model rocket Peacekeeper missile Penguin missile Polaris missile Poseidon missile Proton (rocket) Qassam rocket R-7 rocket Rapier missile Redstone (rocket) Regulus missile Saturn (rocket family) Scud Shillelagh missile Skybolt ALBM SS-18 missile SS-24 missile Starstreak Thor (rocket) Titan rocket Tomahawk missile Trident.
John F. Kennedy Space Center - since 1949 when president Truman established the Joint Long Range Proving Grounds at Cape Canaveral to test missiles. The location was ideal for this purpose as it allowed for launches out toward the Atlantic Ocean, and it was closer to the equator than most other parts of the United States allowing for rockets to get a boost from the earth's rotation. In 1951 the US Air Force established the Air Force Missile Test Center at nearby Banana River Naval Air Station. The first American sub-orbital rocket flights were achieved at Cape Canaveral in 1957. Following Sputnik the first attempted satellite launch blew-up on December 6, 1957. NASA was founded in 1958 and the site was transformed into a major launch site. Redstone, Jupiter, Pershing, Polaris, Thor, Atlas, Titan and Minuteman missiles.
Deaths in 2002 - Ricci, Utah, Handyman, suspected of the kidnapping of 14 year old Elizabeth Smart 25 Dorothy Hewett, Australian poet, playwright and novelist 24 Wayne Simmons, American Football Ex Lions NFL player 24 Hoyt Wilhelm, Baseball Hall of Fame member 19 Abu Nidal, terrorist 19 Sunday Silence, thoroughbred race horse, winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes 15 Jesse Brown, former United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs 14 Larry Rivers, American painter 14 Dave Williams, singer of Drowning Pool 12 Enos Slaughter, baseball Hall of Famer 10 Doris Wishman, cult movie director 6 Edsger Dijkstra, computer scientist 5 Josh Ryan Evans, Actor, played Timmy on Passions 5 Chick Hearn, television and radio announcer for the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team since 1960 3 Carmen Silvera, UK television and theatre actress. Played.
Agena - Agena The Agena was a rocket upper stage developed by Lockheed for the ill-fated WS-117L US reconnaissance satellite program. It lived on to see extensive use as the upper stage/spacecraft for the Corona spy satellite program and as an upper stage on the Thor, Atlas, and Titan boosters. It was also used by the manned Gemini program to practice rendezvous and docking. An agena outfitted as a Gemini program Agena Target Vehicle. It was 5 feet in diameter, three axis stabilized (for the benefit of the reconnaissance system cameras) and its Bell 8096 engine produced 16,000 lbs thrust using hydrazine (UDMH) and nitrogen tetroxide as propellants. The engine could be restarted multiple times in orbit. This engine started life as the power plant for the canceled rocket-propelled nuclear.
Corona (satellite) - the cameras could resolve images down to 7.5 m. The two KH-4 systems improved the resolution to 2.75 m and 1.8 m respectively and used a lower altitude pass. The initial Corona launches were obscured as part a space technology program called Discoverer. The first test launches were in early 1959. The first launch with a camera was June 1959 as Discoverer 4, which was a 750 kg satellite launched by a Thor-Agena rocket. The key issue with the early satellites was the recovery of the exposed film. Radio link technology did not exist, and so film canisters were returned to Earth in capsules, called "buckets", which were recovered in mid-air by a specially equipped aircraft during their parachute descent. The first camera-fitted Discoverer missions failed to return usable film, but.
Staging - to be accelerated. As the rockets, known as stages, run out of fuel, they are discarded. With this system the final mass of the rocket is lower than it would otherwise be, as empty fuel tanks are thrown away. On the downside, staging requires you to loft engines which are not being used until later, as well as making the entire rocket more complex and harder to build. Nevertheless the savings are so great that every rocket that launches payloads into orbit uses staging. Most rockets use linear staging, in which a number of rockets are stacked on top of each other and fire one after the other. An example of such a rocket is the Saturn V. In order to increase the effciency of the staging, the "upper stages" were.
Pioneer 0 - Pioneer 0 The Pioneer 0 (also known as Thor-Able 1) probe was designed to go into orbit around the Moon and carried a TV camera and other instruments as part of the first International Geophysical Year (IGY) science payload. It was the first attempt by the USA at a lunar mission. The spacecraft was destroyed by an explosion of the first (Thor booster) stage 77 seconds after launch at 16 km altitude, 16 km downrange over the Atlantic. Failure was suspected to be due to a ruptured fuel or oxygen line. Erratic telemetry signals were received from the payload and upper stages for 123 seconds after the explosion, and the upper stages were tracked to impact in the ocean. Spacecraft design Pioneer 0 consisted of a thin cylindrical midsection with.
Pioneer P-3 - images of the lunar surface with a television-like system, estimate the Moon's mass and topography of the poles, record the distribution and velocity of micrometeorites, and study radiation, magnetic fields, and low frequency electromagnetic waves in space. A mid-course propulsion system and injection rocket would have been the first U.S. self-contained propulsion system capable of operation many months after launch at great distances from Earth and the first U.S. tests of maneuvering a satellite in space. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Mission 2 Spacecraft design 3 Onboard equipment Mission The spacecraft was launched on an Air Force-Convair Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile coupled to Thor-Able upper stages including an Able x 248 rocket third stage. The plastic payload shroud broke away 45 seconds after launch, subjecting the payload and third stage rocket.
Pioneer P-30 - was equipped to estimate the Moon's mass and topography of the poles, record the distribution and velocity of micrometeorites, and study radiation, magnetic fields, and low frequency electromagnetic waves in space. A mid-course propulsion system and injection rocket would have been the first U.S. self-contained propulsion system capable of operation many months after launch at great distances from Earth and the first U.S. tests of maneuvering a satellite in space. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Mission 2 Spacecraft design 3 Onboard equipment Mission The spacecraft was launched on an Air Force-Convair Atlas D intercontinental ballistic missile coupled to Thor-Able upper stages including a Hercules ABL solid propellant third stage. The first stage burned normally for 275 seconds, the two Atlas booster engines were jettisonned as planned after ~250 seconds. At an.
Pioneer P-31 - lunar surface with a television-like system, estimate the Moon's mass and topography of the poles, record the distribution and velocity of micrometeorites, and study radiation, magnetic fields, and low frequency electromagnetic waves in space. A mid-course propulsion system and injection rocket would have been the first U.S. self-contained propulsion system capable of operation many months after launch at great distances from Earth and the first U.S. tests of maneuvering a satellite in space. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Mission 2 Spacecraft design 3 Onboard equipment Mission The spacecraft was launched on an Air Force-Convair Atlas D intercontinental ballistic missile coupled to Thor-Able upper stages including an Able solid propellant third stage. The vehicle exploded 68 seconds after launch at an altitude of 12 km due to a malfunction in the first.
Project Nike - operational anti-aircraft missile system in 1953, the Nike Ajax. A huge number of the technologies and rocket systems used to develop the Nike Ajax were re-used in a number of roles, many of which gained the "Nike" name. The missile's first-stage solid rocket booster became the basis for everything from the Nike Hercules missile to NASA's Nike Smoke rocket, used for upper-atmosphere research. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 History 2 Nike Ajax 2..1 Specifications (Nike Ajax) 3 Nike Hercules 4 Nike Zeus 5 See also History Project Nike began in 1944 when the US military demanded a new defense system to combat the potential new jet aircraft, as existing gun-based systems proved completely incapable of dealing with the speeds and altitudes that such planes operated at. Two proposals were accepted, Bell.
McDonnell Douglas - - the conventional F3D Skyknight in 1948 and then the more 'jet age' F4D Skyray in 1951. Douglas also made commercial jets, producing the DC-8 in 1958 to compete with the new Boeing 707. McDonnell was also developing jets, but being smaller they were prepared to be more radical, building on their successful FH-1 Phantom to become a major supplier to the Navy with the Banshee, Demon, and the Voodoo. The advent of the Korean War helped push McDonnell into a major military fighter supply role, especially with the noted F-4 Phantom II (1958). Both companies were eager to enter the new missile business, Douglas moving from producing air-to-air rockets and missiles to entire missile systems under the 1956 Nike program and becoming the main contractor of the Skybolt ALBM program.
List of missiles - missile Blue Streak missile Skybolt ALBM Scud missile V2 rocket sorted by alphabetical order of countries: China: Dongfeng missile European AIM-132 ASRAAM MBDA Meteor France MBDA Exocet SM39 missile Germany (see also German missiles of WW2) V-1 V-2 rocket Enzian missile Norway Penguin missile Russia Scud United Kingdom Blue Streak missile Rapier missile Skybolt ALBM Trident missile Starstreak United States: AGM-84 Harpoon Atlas ICBM Minuteman missile Patriot missile system Peacekeeper missile Polaris missile Poseidon missile SSM-N-8A Regulus cruise missile Shillelagh missile Thor_(missile) Titan missile Tomahawk missile AIM-120 AMRAAM EGBU-15 See also http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/index.html.
JATO Rocket Car - JATO Rocket Car The famous JATO Rocket Car story was one of the original Darwin Awards but has now been debunked as an urban legend. It was originally circulated as forwarded email. The following version was edited by Wendy Northcutt. This legend was again convincingly debunked in 2003 on the Discovery Channel show "MythBusters". They replicated the scene and the thrust of the JATO with several commercially-available amateur rocket motors. The car did go very fast, maybe 150 MPH, but did not go anywhere near 300 MPH, and did not become airborne. Jet Assisted Take-Off The Arizona Highway Patrol were mystified when they came upon a pile of smoldering wreckage embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve..
H-2A rocket - H-2A rocket The H-2A or H-IIA is a family of rockets providing an expendable launch system for NASDA, the National Space Development Agency of Japan. They are launched from the Tanegashima Space Center, which is located on Tanegashima Island, 115 kilometers south of Kyushu..
Vostok rocket - Vostok rocket The Vostok rocket (Russian Восток, translated as "East") was a derivative of the Soviet R-7 ICBM designed for the human spaceflight programme but later used for other satellite launches. The major versions of the rocket were: 8K72 - used to launch the prototype Vostok spacecraft 8K72K - a refined version of the above. This was the version actually used for human spaceflight 8A92 - used for launching Zenit spy satellites throughout the 1960s 8A92M - modified version for launching Meteor weather satellites into high orbits. On March 18, 1980 a Vostok-2M rocket exploded on its launch pad at Plesetsk during a fueling operation, killing 48. An investigation into a similar -- but avoided -- accident revealed that the substitution of lead-based for tin-based solder in.
Voskhod rocket - Voskhod rocket The Voskhod rocket (Russian: Восход, translated as "Sunrise") was a derivative of the Soviet R-7 ICBM designed for the human spaceflight programme but later used for launching Zenit spy satellites. It combined the R-7 with an upper stage that had been originally designed to launch interplanetary probes. There was only one main variant of the Voskhod, designated 11A57. Between 1963 and 1976 it was used for some 300 launches..
