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U.S. Space And Rocket Center
The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama is a museum operated by the government of Alabama, showcasing rockets, achievements, and artifacts of the U.S. space program. Sometimes billed as "Earth's largest space museum", astronaut Owen Garriott described the place as, "a great way to learn about space in a town that has embraced the space program from the very beginning." The center opened in 1970, just after the Apollo 12 Moon landing, the second crewed mission to the lunar surface. It showcases Apollo Program hardware and also houses interactive science exhibits, Space Shuttle exhibits, and Army rocketry and aircraft. With more than 1,500 permanent rocketry and space exploration artifacts, as well as many rotating rocketry and space-related exhibits, the center occupies land carved out of Redstone Arsenal adjacent to Huntsville Botanical Garden at exit 15 on Interstate 565. The center offers bus tours of nearby NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Two camp pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Huntsville, Alabama
Huntsville is a city in Madison County, Limestone County, and Morgan County, Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Madison County. Located in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama, Huntsville is the most populous city in the state. Huntsville was founded within the Mississippi Territory in 1805 and became an incorporated town in 1811. When Alabama was admitted as a state in 1819, Huntsville was designated for a year as the first capital, before that was moved to more central settlements. The city developed across nearby hills north of the Tennessee River, adding textile mills in the late nineteenth century. Its major growth has taken place since World War II. During the war, the Army established Redstone Arsenal near here with a chemical weapons plant, and nearby related facilities. After the war, additional research was conducted at Redstone Arsenal on rockets, followed by adaptations for space exploration. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the Unit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
V-1 Flying Bomb Facilities
To carry out the planned V-1 "flying bomb" attacks on the United Kingdom, Germany built a number of military installations including launching sites and depots. Some of the installations were huge concrete fortifications. The Allies became aware of the sites at an early stage and carried out numerous bombing raids to destroy them before they came into use. Production The unpiloted aircraft was assembled at the KdF-StadtA different source puts the Fallersleben ''KdF-Stadt'' V-1 factory in Wolfsburg; Fallersleben become a district of Wolfsburg in 1972. The Allies also bombed the Opel plant at Rüsselsheim in the incorrect belief that it was a V-1 plant. ''Volkswagenwerke'' (described as "the largest pressed-steel works in Germany") near Fallersleben, at Cham/ Bruns Werke, and at the Mittelwerk, underground factory in central Germany. Production plants to modify several hundred standard V-1s to Reichenberg R-III manned aircraft were in the woods of Dannenburg and at Pulverhof, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermes (missile Program)
Project Hermes was a missile research program run by the Ordnance Corps of the United States Army from November 15, 1944, to December 31, 1954, in response to Germany's rocket attacks in Europe during World War II. The program was to determine the missile needs of army field forces. A research and development partnership between the Ordnance Corps and General Electric started November 20, 1944 and resulted in the "development of long-range missiles that could be used against both ground targets and high-altitude aircraft." History Hermes was the second missile program by the United States Army. In May 1944 the Army contracted with the California Institute of Technology's Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratories to start the ORDCIT project to research, test and develop guided missiles. The Hermes program was to originally have three phases: the first would be a literature search, the second a research group would be dispatched to Europe to investigate the German Missiles, and the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MIM-23 Hawk
The Raytheon MIM-23 HAWK ("Homing all the way killer") is an American medium-range surface-to-air missile. It was designed to be a much more mobile counterpart to the MIM-14 Nike Hercules, trading off range and altitude capability for a much smaller size and weight. Its low-level performance was greatly improved over Nike through the adoption of new radars and a continuous wave semi-active radar homing guidance system. It entered service with the US Army in 1959. In 1971 it underwent a major improvement program as the Improved Hawk, or I-Hawk, which made several improvements to the missile and replaced all of the radar systems with new models. Improvements continued throughout the next twenty years, adding improved ECCM, a potential home-on-jam feature, and in 1995, a new warhead that made it capable against short-range tactical missiles. ''Jane's'' reported that the original system's single shot kill probability was 0.56; I-Hawk improved this to 0.85. Hawk was superseded b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project Nike
Project Nike (Greek: Νίκη, "Victory") was a U.S. Army project, proposed in May 1945 by Bell Laboratories, to develop a line-of-sight anti-aircraft missile system. The project delivered the United States' first operational anti-aircraft missile system, the Nike Ajax, in 1953. A great number of the technologies and rocket systems used for developing the Nike Ajax were re-used for a number of functions, many of which were given the "Nike" name (after Nike, the goddess of victory from Greek mythology). The missile's first-stage solid rocket booster became the basis for many types of rocket including the Nike Hercules missile and NASA's Nike Smoke rocket, used for upper-atmosphere research. History Project Nike began during 1944 when the War Department demanded a new air defense system to combat new jet aircraft, as existing gun-based systems proved largely incapable of dealing with the speeds and altitudes at which jet aircraft operated. Two proposals were accepted. Bell La ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster
The Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) was the first solid-propellant rocket to be used for primary propulsion on a vehicle used for human spaceflight. A pair of these provided 85% of the Space Shuttle's thrust at liftoff and for the first two minutes of ascent. After burnout, they were jettisoned and parachuted into the Atlantic Ocean where they were recovered, examined, refurbished, and reused. The Space Shuttle SRBs were the most powerful solid rocket motors to ever launch humans. The Space Launch System (SLS) SRBs, adapted from the shuttle, surpassed it as the most powerful solid rocket motors ever flown, after the launch of the Artemis-1 mission. Each Space Shuttle SRB provided a maximum thrust, roughly double the most powerful single-combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever flown, the Rocketdyne F-1. With a combined mass of about , they comprised over half the mass of the Shuttle stack at liftoff. The motor segments of the SRBs were manufactured by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Shuttle External Tank
The Space Shuttle external tank (ET) was the component of the Space Shuttle launch vehicle that contained the liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer. During lift-off and ascent it supplied the fuel and oxidizer under pressure to the three RS-25 main engines in the orbiter. The ET was jettisoned just over 10 seconds after main engine cut-off (MECO) and it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. Unlike the Solid Rocket Boosters, external tanks were not re-used. They broke up before impact in the Indian Ocean (or Pacific Ocean in the case of direct-insertion launch trajectories), away from shipping lanes and were not recovered. Overview The ET was the largest element of the Space Shuttle, and when loaded, it was also the heaviest. It consisted of three major components: * the forward liquid oxygen (LOX) tank * an unpressurized intertank that contains most of the electrical components * the aft liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank; this was the largest part, but it was relatively ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saturn (rocket Family)
The Saturn family of American rockets was developed by a team of mostly German rocket engineers and scientists led by Wernher von Braun to launch heavy payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. The Saturn family used liquid hydrogen as fuel in the upper stages. Originally proposed as a military satellite launcher, they were adopted as the launch vehicles for the Apollo Moon program. Three versions were built and flown: the medium-lift Saturn I, the heavy-lift Saturn IB, and the super heavy-lift Saturn V. The Saturn name was proposed by von Braun in October 1958 as a logical successor to the Jupiter series as well as the Roman god's powerful position. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy identified the Saturn I SA-5 launch as being the point where US lift capability would surpass the Soviets, after having been behind since Sputnik. He last mentioned this in a speech given at Brooks AFB in San Antonio on the day before he was assassinated. To date, the Saturn V is the only launch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juno II
Juno II was an American space launch vehicle used during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was derived from the Jupiter missile, which was used as the first stage. Development Solid rocket motors derived from the MGM-29 Sergeant were used as upper stages, eleven for the second stage, three for the third stage, and one for the fourth stage, the same configuration as used for the upper stages of the smaller Juno I launch vehicle. On some launches to low Earth orbit the fourth stage was not flown, allowing the launch vehicle to carry an additional nine kilograms of payload. Development of the Juno II was extremely fast due to being completely built from existing hardware. The project began in early 1958 and the first vehicle flew at the end of the year. Chrysler were responsible for the overall contract, while Rocketdyne handled the first stage propulsion and Jet Propulsion Laboratory handled the upper stage propulsion. The first three were converted Jupiter missiles, however a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle
The Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle, designed for NASA's Project Mercury, was the first American crewed space booster. It was used for six sub-orbital Mercury flights from 1960–1961; culminating with the launch of the first, and 11 weeks later, the second American (and the second and third humans) in space. The four subsequent Mercury human spaceflights used the more powerful Atlas booster to enter low Earth orbit. A member of the Redstone rocket family, it was derived from the U.S. Army's Redstone ballistic missile and the first stage of the related Jupiter-C launch vehicle; but to human-rate it, the structure and systems were modified to improve safety and reliability. Modifications from the Redstone missile NASA chose the U.S. Army's Redstone liquid-fueled ballistic missile for its sub-orbital flights as it was the oldest one in the US fleet, having been active since 1953 and had many successful test flights.''The Mercury-Redstone Project'', p. 2-2, 3-1. The s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PGM-19 Jupiter
The PGM-19 Jupiter was the first nuclear armed, medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). It was a liquid-propellant rocket using RP-1 fuel and LOX oxidizer, with a single Rocketdyne LR79-NA (model S-3D) rocket engine producing of thrust. It was armed with the W49 nuclear warhead. The prime contractor was the Chrysler Corporation. The Jupiter was originally designed by the US Army, which was looking for a highly accurate missile designed to strike enemy states such as Communist China and USSR. The US Navy also expressed an interest in the design as an SLBM but left the collaboration to work on their Polaris. Jupiter retained the short, squat shape intended to fit in naval submarines. Development history Initial concept Jupiter traces its history ultimately to the PGM-11 Redstone missile, the US's first nuclear ballistic missile. While it was entering service, Wernher von Braun's Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) team at Redstone Ars ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
