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SM-65A Atlas
The Convair SM-65A Atlas, or Atlas A was the first full-scale prototype of the Atlas missile, which first flew on 11 June 1957. Unlike later versions of the Atlas missile, the Atlas A did not feature the stage and a half design. Instead, the booster engines were fixed in place, and the sustainer engine was omitted. The propulsion system used on the initial Atlas As was an early version of the Rocketdyne MA-1 engines with conical thrust chambers that produced a mere 135,000 pounds of thrust, compared with the 360,000 pounds of the fully operational Atlas D. Several pieces of hardware found on the operational Atlas were either missing on the A-series or only partially implemented. Powered flight on the A-series would last about two minutes and compared to later Atlases, long pad hold-down times, with up to 11 seconds between engine start and launcher release. The first three Atlases built were used merely for static firing tests with Missile 4A being the first flight article. It was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convair
Convair, previously Consolidated Vultee, was an American aircraft manufacturing company that later expanded into rockets and spacecraft. The company was formed in 1943 by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft. In 1953, it was purchased by General Dynamics, and operated as their Convair Division for most of its corporate history. Convair is best known for its military aircraft; it produced aircraft such as the Convair B-36 Peacemaker and Convair B-58 Hustler strategic bombers, and the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger and Convair F-106 Delta Dart interceptors. It also manufactured the first Atlas rockets, including the rockets that were used for the crewed orbital flights of Project Mercury. The company's subsequent Atlas-Centaur design continued this success and derivatives of the design remain in use as of 2020. The company also entered the jet airliner business with its Convair 880 and Convair 990 designs. These were smaller than contemporary aircraft like ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ICBM
An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons can also be delivered with varying effectiveness, but have never been deployed on ICBMs. Most modern designs support multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), allowing a single missile to carry several warheads, each of which can strike a different target. Russia, the United States, China, France, India, the United Kingdom, and North Korea are the only countries known to have operational ICBMs. Early ICBMs had limited precision, which made them suitable for use only against the largest targets, such as cities. They were seen as a "safe" basing option, one that would keep the deterrent force close to home where it would be difficult to attack. Attacks against military targets (especially hardened ones) still demanded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 12
Launch Complex 12 (LC-12) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida was a launch pad used by Atlas rockets and missiles between 1958 and 1967. It was the second-most southern of the pads known as Missile Row, between LC-11 to the south and LC-13 to the north. Along with Complexes 11, 13 and 14, 12 featured a more robust design than many contemporary pads, due to the greater power of the Atlas compared to other rockets of the time. It was larger, and featured a concrete launch pedestal that was tall and a reinforced blockhouse. The rockets were delivered to the launch pad by means of a ramp on the southwest side of the launch pedestal. Atlas A, C and D missiles were tested from the site. It was also used for orbital launches of Atlas-Able and later Atlas-Agena rockets, and two Project FIRE suborbital tests for Project Apollo, using Atlas D rockets. LC-12's first launch was Atlas 10A on January 10, 1958. During the second half of the year, a larger umbilical service ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 14
Launch Complex 14 (LC-14) is a launch site at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. LC-14 was used for various manned and unmanned Atlas launches, including the February 1962, '' Friendship 7'' flight aboard which John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. History LC-14 was the first Atlas pad in operation and hosted the test flights in 1957–58. It was also the only one of the original four pads to never have a booster explode on it. By 1959, it was decided to convert the pad for the Atlas D missile and space launches, and a large service tower was added early in the year. The first Atlas flown from the renovated LC-14 was Missile 7D on May 18; however, a problem with the launcher hold-down arms damaged the missile and caused its explosion shortly after launch. This was traced to improper procedures during the renovation of the pad and was quickly fixed. The first space launch off of LC-14 was the Big Joe Mercury test in September. As the designated Me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the station is the primary launch site for the Space Force's Eastern RangeCAST 1999, p. 1-12. with three launch pads currently active (Space Launch Complexes 37B, 40, and 41). The facility is south-southeast of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island, with the two linked by bridges and causeways. The Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Skid Strip provides a runway close to the launch complexes for military airlift aircraft delivering heavy and outsized payloads to the Cape. A number of American space exploration pioneers were launched from CCSFS, including the first U.S. Earth satellite (1958), first U.S. astronaut (1961), first U.S. astronaut in orbit (1962), first two-man U.S. spacecraft (1965), first U.S. unmanned lunar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SM-65 Atlas
The SM-65 Atlas was the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed by the United States and the first member of the Atlas rocket family. It was built for the U.S. Air Force by the Convair Division of General Dynamics at an assembly plant located in Kearny Mesa, San Diego. Atlas became operational in October 1959, but was soon made obsolete as an ICBM by new development, and was retired from this role by 1965. Atlas required long preparation times which made it unsuitable for a quick launch ICBM. However, this was not a requirement for planned space launches, and so Atlas-derived launch vehicles served a long history as space launchers. Even before its ICBM use ended in 1965, Atlas had placed four Project Mercury astronauts in orbit and was becoming the foundation for a family of successful space launch vehicles, most notably Atlas Agena and Atlas Centaur. Mergers led to the acquisition of the Atlas Centaur line by the United Launch Alliance. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stage And A Half
A single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle reaches orbit from the surface of a body using only propellants and fluids and without expending tanks, engines, or other major hardware. The term usually, but not exclusively, refers to reusable vehicles. To date, no Earth-launched SSTO launch vehicles have ever been flown; orbital launches from Earth have been performed by either fully or partially expendable multi-stage rockets. The main projected advantage of the SSTO concept is elimination of the hardware replacement inherent in expendable launch systems. However, the non-recurring costs associated with design, development, research and engineering (DDR&E) of reusable SSTO systems are much higher than expendable systems due to the substantial technical challenges of SSTO, assuming that those technical issues can in fact be solved. SSTO vehicles may also require a significantly higher degree of regular maintenance. It is considered to be marginally possible to launch a single-stage ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Range Safety
In the field of rocketry, range safety may be assured by a system which is intended to protect people and assets on both the rocket range and downrange in cases when a launch vehicle might endanger them. For a rocket deemed to be ''off course'', range safety may be implemented by something as simple as commanding the rocket to shut down the propulsion system or by something as sophisticated as an independent ''Flight Termination System'' (FTS), which has redundant transceivers in the launch vehicle that can receive a command to self-destruct then set off charges in the launch vehicle to combust the rocket propellants at altitude. Not all national space programs use flight termination systems on launch vehicles. Range safety officers or RSOs are also present in the hobby of model rocketry and then are usually responsible for ensuring a rocket is built correctly, using a safe engine/recovery device, and launched correctly. Flight termination Ground controlled termination Some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aerodynamic Heating
Aerodynamic heating is the heating of a solid body produced by its high-speed passage through air. In science and engineering, an understanding of aerodynamic heating is necessary for predicting the behaviour of meteoroids which enter the earth's atmosphere, to ensure spacecraft safely survive atmospheric reentry, and for the design of high-speed aircraft and missiles. Aircraft The effects of aerodynamic heating on the temperature of the skin, and subsequent heat transfer into the structure, the cabin, the equipment bays and the electrical, hydraulic and fuel systems, have to be incorporated in the design of supersonic and hypersonic aircraft and missiles. One of the main concerns caused by aerodynamic heating arises in the design of the wing. For subsonic speeds, two main goals of wing design are minimizing weight and maximizing strength. Aerodynamic heating, which occurs at supersonic and hypersonic speeds, adds an additional consideration in wing structure analysis. An idealiz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apogee
An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any elliptic orbit. The name for each apsis is created from the prefixes ''ap-'', ''apo-'' (), or ''peri-'' (), each referring to the farthest and closest point to the primary body the affixing necessary suffix that describes the primary body in the orbit. In this case, the suffix for Earth is ''-gee'', so the apsides' names are ''apogee'' and ''perigee''. For the Sun, its suffix is ''-helion'', so the names are ''aphelion'' and ''perihelion''. According to Newton's laws of motion, all periodic orbits are ellipses. The barycenter of the two bodies may lie well within the bigger body—e.g., the Earth–Moon barycenter is about 75% of the way from Earth's center to its surface. If, compared to the larger mass, the smaller mass is negligible (e. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rockets And Missiles
A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely from propellant carried within the vehicle; therefore a rocket can fly in the vacuum of space. Rockets work more efficiently in a vacuum and incur a loss of thrust due to the opposing pressure of the atmosphere. Multistage rockets are capable of attaining escape velocity from Earth and therefore can achieve unlimited maximum altitude. Compared with airbreathing engines, rockets are lightweight and powerful and capable of generating large accelerations. To control their flight, rockets rely on momentum, airfoils, auxiliary reaction engines, gimballed thrust, momentum wheels, deflection of the exhaust stream, propellant flow, spin, or gravity. Rockets for military and recreational uses date back to at least 13th-century China. Significant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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