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The Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) was formed to develop the
U.S. Army's The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
first large
ballistic missile A ballistic missile is a type of missile that uses projectile motion to deliver warheads on a target. These weapons are guided only during relatively brief periods—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles stay within t ...
. The agency was established at
Redstone Arsenal Redstone Arsenal (RSA) is a United States Army post and a census-designated place (CDP) adjacent to Huntsville in Madison County, Alabama, United States and is part of the Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area. The Arsenal is a garrison ...
on 1 February 1956, and commanded by Major General John B. Medaris with Wernher von Braun as technical director.


History

The Redstone missile was the first major project assigned to ABMA. The Redstone was a direct descendant of the
V-2 The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develope ...
missile developed by the von Braun team in Germany during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. After the
Naval Research Laboratory The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. It was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technologic ...
's Project Vanguard was chosen by the DoD Committee on Special Capabilities, over the ABMA's proposal to use a modified Redstone ballistic missile as a
satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...
launch vehicle, ABMA was ordered to stop work on launchers for satellites and focus, instead, on military missiles. Von Braun continued work on the design for what became the
Jupiter-C The Jupiter-C was an American research and development vehicle developed from the Jupiter-A. Jupiter-C was used for three unmanned sub-orbital spaceflights in 1956 and 1957 to test re-entry nosecones that were later to be deployed on the more ...
rocket. This was a three-stage rocket, designed to test
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousand ...
missile components which, by ''coincidence'', could be used to launch a satellite in the Juno I configuration (that is, with an added fourth stage). In September 1956, a Jupiter-C was launched with a dummy satellite on a suborbital flight. It was generally believed that the ABMA could have put a satellite into orbit at that time, had the U.S. government allowed ABMA to do so. A year later, the
Soviets Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Nationality policy in ...
launched
Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for ...
. When the Vanguard rocket failed, a Redstone-based Jupiter-C with an added fourth stage and thus designated as Juno I rocket, launched America's first satellite,
Explorer 1 Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States in 1958 and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The mission followed the first two satellites the previous year; the Soviet Union's S ...
, on 1 February 1958 ( GMT). Redstone was later used as a launch vehicle in Project Mercury. Redstone was also deployed by the U.S. Army as the PGM-11, the first missile to carry a nuclear warhead. Studies began in 1956 for a replacement for the Redstone missile. Initially called the Redstone-S (S for solid), the name was changed to
MGM-31 Pershing The MGM-31A Pershing was the missile used in the Pershing 1 and Pershing 1a field artillery missile systems. It was a solid-fueled two-stage theater ballistic missile designed and built by Martin Marietta to replace the PGM-11 Redstone missile as ...
and a contract was awarded to The Martin Company, beginning a program that lasted 34 years. In early 1958, NACA's " Stever Committee" included consultation from the ABMA's large booster program, headed by Wernher von Braun. Von Braun's Group was referred to as the "Working Group on Vehicular Program". In March 1958, ABMA was placed under the new U.S Army Ordnance Missile Command (AOMC) along with Redstone Arsenal, the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, La Cañada Flintridge, California ...
, White Sands Proving Ground, and the Army Rocket and Guided Missile Agency (ARGMA). General Medaris was placed in command of AOMC and BG John A. Barclay took command of ABMA. On 1 July 1960, the AOMC space-related missions and most of its employees, facilities, and equipment were transferred to
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
, forming the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). Wernher von Braun was named MSFC director. BG Richard M. Hurst took command of ABMA from May 1960 until December 1961 when both ABMA and ARGMA were abolished and the remnants were folded directly into AOMC. In 1962, AOMC (the part that hadn't been transferred to NASA) was restructured into the new
U.S. Army Missile Command The United States Army Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM) develops, acquires, fields and sustains aviation, missile and unmanned aerial vehicles. AMCOM is primarily responsible for lifecycle management of army missile, helicopter, unmanned gro ...
(MICOM).


Redstone

In the aftermath of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, a number of German rocket scientists and engineers were moved to the United States as part of
Operation Paperclip Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War ...
. Rocketry was at that time considered to be a sort of long-range artillery, and naturally fell to the Army to explore. The group was settled at
Fort Bliss Fort Bliss is a United States Army post in New Mexico and Texas, with its headquarters in El Paso, Texas. Named in honor of William Wallace Smith Bliss, LTC William Bliss (1815–1853), a mathematics professor who was the son-in-law of President ...
,
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
– where they aided
General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable ene ...
's Project Hermes efforts to build and test a variety of
V-2 The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develope ...
-derived designs at the nearby White Sands Proving Ground. Around the same time,
North American Aviation North American Aviation (NAA) was a major American aerospace manufacturer that designed and built several notable aircraft and spacecraft. Its products included: the T-6 Texan trainer, the P-51 Mustang fighter, the B-25 Mitchell bomber, the ...
(NAA) won the contract to build a long-range
cruise missile A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warh ...
that became the SM-64 Navaho. This used
ramjet A ramjet, or athodyd (aero thermodynamic duct), is a form of airbreathing jet engine that uses the forward motion of the engine to produce thrust. Since it produces no thrust when stationary (no ram air) ramjet-powered vehicles require an ass ...
power and needed to be boosted up to operational speed by a rocket. Their Propulsion Division was given two V-2 engines to work with to meet this requirement, along with a wealth of research papers from the original V-2 engine team. The NAA team discovered that a major upgrade to the V-2's original Model 39 engine was planned through the use of a new fuel injector design, but the Germans were not able to cure lingering combustion problems. Attacking this task, NAA successfully solved the problems and began using this new injector. This became the XLR-41 Phase III engine, which provided of thrust, one third greater than the Model 39, and was lighter and smaller than the German design. The outbreak of the
Korean War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Korean War , partof = the Cold War and the Korean conflict , image = Korean War Montage 2.png , image_size = 300px , caption = Clockwise from top:{ ...
in June 1950 led to calls for the rapid deployment of new missiles, and the U.S. Army responded by developing a requirement for a ballistic missile with range while carrying a warhead that could be operational as rapidly as possible. The fastest solution was to provide the German team with anything they needed to achieve this goal by adapting the V-2 design. The team, under the leadership of Wernher von Braun, began work on the problem at Fort Bliss. In 1951, they moved to the
Redstone Arsenal Redstone Arsenal (RSA) is a United States Army post and a census-designated place (CDP) adjacent to Huntsville in Madison County, Alabama, United States and is part of the Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area. The Arsenal is a garrison ...
in
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 ...
, home to the Army's Ordnance commands. Initially known as the Ordnance Guided Missile Center, then the Guided Missile Development Division (GMDD), in 1956 they finally became the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, or ABMA. Taking the XLR-41, renamed as the NA-75-110 in U.S. Army use, they wrapped it in the largest airframe it could lift, increasing fuel load and extending the range. The result was essentially a larger version of the V-2. As tensions of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
mounted, the Army changed the requirement to be able to carry smallest nuclear warheads in the inventory – with a warhead weight of , range was reduced to only . Design work was complete in 1952 and on 8 April 1952 it became known as the SSM-G-14 Redstone (Surface-to-Surface Missile, G for ground). The first ABMA-built prototype flew in August 1953, the first production-line model from
Chrysler Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automotiv ...
in July 1956, and the Redstone entered service in 1958.


Navaho to Jupiter

While the PGM-11 Redstone program continued, NAA was receiving a continual stream of orders from the U.S. Air Force to extend the range and payload of their Navaho design. This required a much larger missile, and a much larger booster to launch it. As a result, NAA was continually introducing new versions of their engines. By the mid-1950s, NAA had a version known as the XLR-43 running at thrust, while further reducing weight at the same time. Much of this was due to the introduction of the tubular wall combustion chamber, which was much lighter than the cast-steel designs of the V-2, while also offering much better cooling which allowed the combustion rate, and thus thrust, to be increased. While the Navajo program dragged on, NAA split the team into three groups, Rocketdyne handled engines,
Autonetics Autonetics was a division of North American Aviation that produced various avionics but is best known for their inertial navigation systems used in submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Its 188-acre facility in Anaheim, California, ...
developed
inertial navigation system An inertial navigation system (INS) is a navigation device that uses motion sensors ( accelerometers), rotation sensors ( gyroscopes) and a computer to continuously calculate by dead reckoning the position, the orientation, and the velocity ...
s (INS) and the Missile Division retained the Navaho itself. With this breakup of duties, both Rocketdyne and Autonetics were soon asked to provide solutions for other projects. In particular, the Air Force asked Rocketdyne to provide an engine for their SM-65 Atlas which they did by adapting the XLR-43 to run on
JP-4 JP-4, or JP4 (for "Jet Propellant") was a jet fuel, specified in 1951 by the U.S. government (MIL-DTL-5624). Its NATO code is F-40. It is also known as avtag. Usage JP-4 was a 50-50 kerosene-gasoline blend. It had a lower flash point than JP-1, ...
instead of
alcohol Alcohol most commonly refers to: * Alcohol (chemistry), an organic compound in which a hydroxyl group is bound to a carbon atom * Alcohol (drug), an intoxicant found in alcoholic drinks Alcohol may also refer to: Chemicals * Ethanol, one of sev ...
, becoming the LR89. In addition to the switch to JP-4, the engine did away with the
hydrogen peroxide Hydrogen peroxide is a chemical compound with the formula . In its pure form, it is a very pale blue liquid that is slightly more viscous than water. It is used as an oxidizer, bleaching agent, and antiseptic, usually as a dilute solution (3 ...
system of the XLR-41 that powered the
turbopump A turbopump is a propellant pump with two main components: a rotodynamic pump and a driving gas turbine, usually both mounted on the same shaft, or sometimes geared together. They were initially developed in Germany in the early 1940s. The purpo ...
s and replaced it with a turbine that ran on the rocket fuel itself, simplifying the overall design. Von Braun's team initially considered making a version of the Redstone using the LR89 and adding a second stage, stretching the range to . But ongoing work on the LR89 suggested that the engine could be further improved, and in 1954, the Army approached Rocketdyne to provide a similar design with a thrust of . Over this period the weight of nuclear warheads was rapidly falling, and by combining this engine with a warhead of they could build a single-stage missile able to reach while being significantly less complicated and easier to handle in the field than a two-stage model. This engine was continually upgraded, ultimately reaching . This last model, known to the Army as the NAA-150-200, became much better known by its Rocketdyne model number, S-3.


Initial IRBM battles

In January 1955, the Air Force's
Scientific Advisory Group The Scientific Advisory Group of the United States Air Force, later renamed the Scientific Advisory Board, was established in 1944, when General Henry H. Arnold asked Dr. Theodore von Kármán to establish a group of scientists to review the tech ...
(SAG) urged the Air Force to develop a
medium-range ballistic missile A medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) is a type of ballistic missile with medium range, this last classification depending on the standards of certain organizations. Within the U.S. Department of Defense, a medium-range missile is defined b ...
(MRBM). They felt that it was far less technically risky than the SM-65 Atlas ICBM the Air Force was developing, and would enter service earlier. General
Bernard Schriever Bernard Adolph Schriever (14 September 1910 – 20 June 2005), also known as Bennie Schriever, was a United States Air Force general who played a major role in the Air Force's space and ballistic missile programs. Born in Bremen, Germany, Schr ...
, leader of the U.S. Air Force's
Western Development Division Space Systems Command (SSC) is the United States Space Force's space development, acquisition, launch, and logistics field command. It is headquartered at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California and manages the United States' space launch r ...
in charge of Atlas development, was opposed to the concept, feeling that it would divert resources from the Atlas efforts. In February 1955, the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
expressed an interest in obtaining an
intermediate-range ballistic missile An intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) is a ballistic missile with a range of 3,000–5,500 km (1,864–3,418 miles), between a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Classifying ...
(IRBM) that could strike the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
from bases within the United Kingdom. This added impetus to desires for a MRBM, but this ran afoul of ongoing concerns about the sharing of nuclear information. Later that same month, the initial report of the Killian Committee was published. Among its many recommendations was the statement that the U.S. should build an IRBM as soon as possible. They based their argument on the fact that an IRBM could strike any point in Europe from any point in Europe. It was believed that this type of weapon would be highly desirable to the Soviets and thus since they were very likely to develop such a system, the U.S. should build one first. In March 1955, the Army approached the Air Force about their MRBM design. When the Air Force had split from the Army in 1947, the two forces had a tacit agreement that the Army would be responsible for designs flying less than , while the Air Force took over those with greater range. The new design's range placed it within the umbrella of the Air Force, so the Army offered to design and build the missile for operation by the Air Force. In spite of addressing the calls for an Air Force M/IRBM, and that taking it over would keep the Army out of the long-range missile game, General Schriever dismissed the idea outright: As the calls for an IRBM continued, Schriever finally acquiesced and suggested that an IRBM could be created out of a down-scaled Atlas, thereby avoiding any duplication of effort. Contract tenders for such designs were sent out in May 1955. However, by July 1955, the Joint Coordinating Committee on Ballistic Missiles concluded that there were enough differences between the two concepts that an entirely new design should be built for the role. The Army, meanwhile, did not give up on their design. In September 1955, von Braun briefed the U.S. Secretary of Defense and the Armed Services Policy Council on long range missiles, pointing out that a missile was a logical extension of the Redstone. He proposed a six-year development program costing US$240 million (equivalent to $ in ) with a total production of 50 prototype missiles.


Jupiter-A

To test various parts of the Jupiter equipment, ABMA began launching Jupiter hardware on previously planned Redstone development missions. These were known under the name Jupiter-A. Among the systems tested by Jupiter-A were the ST-80 INS, angle-of-attack sensors, fusing systems and the
explosive bolt A pyrotechnic fastener (also called an explosive bolt, or pyro, within context) is a fastener, usually a nut or bolt, that incorporates a pyrotechnic charge that can be initiated remotely. One or more explosive charges embedded within the bolt a ...
s that separated the booster from the upper stage. ABMA and the Air Force disagree on how many flights were part of the Jupiter-A series. ABMA lists Redstone RS-11 as the first Jupiter-A launch on 22 September 1955, with RS-12 following on 5 December 1955. This means these flights took place before the Jupiter program was even official. The Air Force states the first was on 14 March 1956. Likewise the Air Force does not claim the last three Redstone flights, RS-46, CC-43 and CC-48, to be part of the Jupiter-A program, while ABMA lists them. In total, ABMA lists 25 launches as part of the Jupiter-A series, every Redstone launched between September 1955 and 11 June 1958. The Air Force lists only the 20 in the middle of this period.


Jupiter-C

While development of the Jupiter missile was underway, design of the
reentry vehicle Atmospheric entry is the movement of an object from outer space into and through the gases of an atmosphere of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite. There are two main types of atmospheric entry: ''uncontrolled entry'', such as the e ...
was progressing rapidly. In order to gain test data on the design before the missile would be ready to launch it, ABMA designed the
Jupiter-C The Jupiter-C was an American research and development vehicle developed from the Jupiter-A. Jupiter-C was used for three unmanned sub-orbital spaceflights in 1956 and 1957 to test re-entry nosecones that were later to be deployed on the more ...
, short for "Jupiter Composite Test Vehicle". This was not really a Jupiter at all, but a Redstone with an stretch to hold more fuel, topped with two upper stages consisting of clusters of small solid fuel rockets, topped by a subscale version of the Jupiter reentry vehicle. The bare Jupiter-C flew for the first time on 20 September 1956, flying further and faster than any previous rocket. The complete system with a dummy reentry vehicle flew twice in 1957, the first on 15 May and the second on 8 August 1957. The second of these tests also used a new three-stage upper that had been designed for the Juno I rocket, a further expansion of the Jupiter-C intended for future space launches. It was a Juno I that launched the U.S.'s first satellite,
Explorer 1 Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States in 1958 and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The mission followed the first two satellites the previous year; the Soviet Union's S ...
, on 1 February 1958 ( GMT).


Jupiter versus Thor

ABMA's work on the Jupiter progressed throughout the U.S. Navy's brief involvement, especially work on the INS. The goal had originally been to match Redstone's accuracy at the Jupiter's much extended range, but as development continued it became clear the ABMA team could improve on that considerably. This led to a period in which "The Army would lay down a particular accuracy, and wait for our arguments whether it was possible. We had to promise a lot, but were fortunate". This process ultimately delivered a design intended to provide accuracy at the full range, a radius one fourth that of the best INS designs being used by the Air Force. The system was so accurate that a number of observers expressed their skepticism about the Army's goals, with the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG) suggesting they were hopelessly optimistic. The Army's desire for accuracy was a side-effect of their mission concept for nuclear weapons. They saw the weapons as part of a large-scale battle in Europe, in which both sides would use nuclear weapons during a limited war that did not include the use of strategic weapons on each other's cities. In that case, "if wars were to be kept limited, such weapons would have to be capable of hitting only tactical targets". This approach saw support of a number of influential theorists, notably
Henry Kissinger Henry Alfred Kissinger (; ; born Heinz Alfred Kissinger, May 27, 1923) is a German-born American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presid ...
, and was seized on as a uniquely Army mission. Although the Air Force had started their own IRBM to compete with Jupiter, development was lackadaisical. They had the much more impressive
Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geogra ...
to worry about, and even that saw relatively little interest in a force dominated by
Strategic Air Command Strategic Air Command (SAC) was both a United States Department of Defense Specified Command and a United States Air Force (USAF) Major Command responsible for command and control of the strategic bomber and intercontinental ballistic missile ...
's bomber-centric strategic vision. Curtis LeMay, leader of SAC, was generally uninterested in Atlas, considering it useful only as a way to blast holes in the Soviet defensive systems to let his bombers through. But as the Jupiter program began to progress they became increasingly concerned that it would enter service before Atlas, potentially handing the Army some sort of strategic role in the short term. The Air Force vision of war was significantly different from the Army's, consisting of a massive attack on the Soviet Union in the event of any sort of major military action, the so-called "Sunday punch". The possibility of a major war that did not escalate to the point where strategic weapons were used was a serious concern to Air Force planners. If the Soviets became convinced the U.S. would respond to tactical nuclear use in kind, and that such use would not automatically unleash SAC, they might be more willing to chance a war in
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
where they might maintain superiority. The Air Force began to agitate against Jupiter, saying that the Army's vision of a low-scale nuclear war was destabilizing, while claiming that their own Thor missile did not represent this sort of destabilizing force as it was purely strategic. They may also have been motivated by the WSEG's comments that if the Jupiter team's accuracy claims were true, "they would indicate that Jupiter is the most promising weapon for development".


Army to Air Force

As the Air Force's arguments against Jupiter grew more vocal, the argument came to encompass several other ongoing projects that the two forces had in common, including
surface-to-air missile A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft syst ...
s and
anti-ballistic missile An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is a surface-to-air missile designed to counter ballistic missiles (missile defense). Ballistic missiles are used to deliver nuclear, chemical, biological, or conventional warheads in a ballistic flight trajec ...
s. By the middle of 1956, both forces were engaged in tit-for-tat attacks in the press, with the Air Force calling the Army "unfit to guard the nation" on the front page of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' and sending out press releases about how bad their SAM-A-25 Nike Hercules missile was compared to the Air Force's IM-99 Bomarc. Tired of the internecine fighting, Secretary of Defense Wilson decided to end it once and for all. Examining a wide variety of complaints between the two forces, on 18 November 1956, he published a memo that limited the Army to weapons with a range of or less, and those dedicated to air defense to half that. Jupiter's range was well over this limit, but instead of forcing them to cancel the project, Wilson had the ABMA team continue development and the Air Force to ultimately deploy it. This was precisely the plan that Schriever had rejected the year before. The Army were apoplectic, and let the press know it. This ultimately led to the
court-martial A court-martial or court martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of memb ...
of Colonel John C. Nickerson Jr., after he leaked information about various Army projects, including the then-secret Pershing missile. The Air Force were no happier, as they had little real interest in anything other than Atlas, and didn't see a strong need for one IRBM, let alone two. Through 1957 the situation between the Air Force and ABMA was almost nonfunctional, with ABMA requests for updates on the project going unanswered for months. The Air Force did, however, reduce the production rate from two missiles per month to one. They then began a review process with the thinly disguised goal of canceling Jupiter.


Army to NASA

When the Army was stripped of their long-range surface-to-surface role, the question arose as to what to do with the ABMA team. The large team built up for the Redstone and Jupiter efforts would not be needed for the short range missiles fitting the Wilson range limits, but breaking up the team was something no one wanted. The team soon began working on non-military rockets, which did not fall under the Wilson range requirements. This led to a series of designs extending the existing Juno series, using various combinations of parts from Army and Air Force missiles to meet a wide variety of performance goals. During a visit by Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the various plans were presented, notably the
Juno V The Juno V series of rockets were a design that was proposed in the late 1950s but cancelled. The rockets were multi-stage and, although they failed to reach production, their sections were used in other designs. Juno V-A Juno V-A was studied in ...
concept which ABMA saw as a solution for launching the spy satellites the Air Force was designing. The Air Force was, unsurprisingly, planning to use its own launcher for this, an expanded version of the upcoming Titan II. ARPA then provided ABMA with initial funding to keep the Juno V project moving, and assigned it von Braun's preferred name of "
Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...
", meaning "the one after Jupiter". Meanwhile, President Eisenhower was interested in handing the job of space exploration to a civilian body, which would avoid any potential issues over the militarization of space. This was formed as
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
in late 1958. Some months later ABMA was handed over to NASA to become the
Marshall Space Flight Center The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama (Huntsville postal address), is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC's firs ...
. When the next president, John F. Kennedy, announced the goal of landing on the Moon on 25 May 1961, two competing designs were considered for the booster, Marshall's
Saturn V Saturn V is a retired American super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by NASA under the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon. The rocket was human-rated, with multistage rocket, three stages, and powered with liquid-propellant r ...
and the NASA
Nova A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramat ...
. The subsequent selection of the smaller Saturn was a factor in the success of the Apollo project.


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * {{authority control Marshall Space Flight Center Government agencies established in 1956 Space units and formations of the United States Army United States Army organization Space program of the United States 1956 establishments in Alabama 1961 disestablishments in Alabama Wernher von Braun