The Nike stage or Nike
booster
Booster may refer to:
Amusement rides
* Booster (Fabbri ride), a pendulum ride
* Booster (HUSS ride), an evolution of the Breakdance ride
* Booster (KMG ride), a pendulum ride
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters
* Booster, a cha ...
, a
solid fuel rocket motor, was created by
Hercules Aerospace for the Nike Ajax (M5) Nike Hercules (M5E1) (and M88 late in Hercules career).
It was developed for use as the first stage of the
Nike Ajax
The United States Army's Nike Ajax was the world's first operational guided surface-to-air missile (SAM), entering service in 1954. Nike Ajax was designed to attack conventional bomber aircraft flying at high subsonic speeds and altitudes abov ...
and
Nike Hercules
The Nike Hercules, initially designated SAM-A-25 and later MIM-14, was a surface-to-air missile (SAM) used by U.S. and NATO armed forces for medium- and high-altitude long-range air defense. It was normally armed with the W31 nuclear warhead, bu ...
missiles as part of
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 mi ...
.
[Ed Thelen's Nike Missile Web Site.](_blank)
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It was subsequently employed in a variety of missiles and multi-stage sounding rockets, becoming one of the most popular and reliable rocket stages, not only in the United States, but also in several other countries around the world.[Corliss 1972 p. 24]
Sounding rockets based on Nike Booster
*The Nike Deacon
The Nike stage or Nike booster, a solid fuel rocket motor, was created by Hercules Aerospace for the Nike Ajax (M5) Nike Hercules (M5E1) (and M88 late in Hercules career). It was developed for use as the first stage of the Nike Ajax and Nike He ...
has a ceiling of 189 km, a takeoff thrust of 217 kN, a takeoff weight of 710 kg, a diameter of 0.42 m and a length of 7.74 m.
* The Nike Javelin was launched 34 times between 1964 and 1978. The maximum flight
Flight or flying is the process by which an object moves through a space without contacting any planetary surface, either within an atmosphere (i.e. air flight or aviation) or through the vacuum of outer space (i.e. spaceflight). This can be a ...
altitude of the Nike Javelin was 130 km, the takeoff thrust 217 kN, takeoff weight 900 kg, 0.42 m and length 8.20 m.
* The Nike Malemute
The Nike stage or Nike booster, a solid fuel rocket motor, was created by Hercules Aerospace for the Nike Ajax (M5) Nike Hercules (M5E1) (and M88 late in Hercules career). It was developed for use as the first stage of the Nike Ajax and Nike H ...
consists of a Nike starting stage and a Malemute
Malemute is the designation of an American sounding rocket. The Malemute has a maximum flight altitude of 165 km, a liftoff thrust of 57.00 kN, a total mass of 100 kg, a diameter
In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any s ...
upper stage. It has a ceiling of , a takeoff thrust of , a takeoff weight of , a diameter of and a length of .
*The Nike Orion
The Nike stage or Nike booster, a solid fuel rocket motor, was created by Hercules Aerospace for the Nike Ajax (M5) Nike Hercules (M5E1) (and M88 late in Hercules career). It was developed for use as the first stage of the Nike Ajax and Nike H ...
has a Nike base stage, taken from U.S. Army
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, cl ...
surplus stocks, and an Orion upper stage. The Nike Orion is long. There are two stages of boosters; the first is 41.9 cm (16.5), and the second is . It has a launch weight of , a launch thrust of 217 kN (48,800 lbf) and a ceiling of 140 km (460,000 ft). The first Nike-Orion rocket was launched on February 26, 1977, and had more than 175 launches through the 2000s.
*The Nike Recruit
The Nike stage or Nike booster, a solid fuel rocket motor, was created by Hercules Aerospace for the Nike Ajax (M5) Nike Hercules (M5E1) (and M88 late in Hercules career). It was developed for use as the first stage of the Nike Ajax and Nike Her ...
has an apogee of 5 km, a liftoff thrust of 217 kN, a total mass of 1100 kg and a total length of 8.00 m.
* The Nike Tomahawk
The Nike stage or Nike booster, a solid fuel rocket motor, was created by Hercules Aerospace for the Nike Ajax (M5) Nike Hercules (M5E1) (and M88 late in Hercules career). It was developed for use as the first stage of the Nike Ajax and Nike H ...
has a Nike rocket as the first stage, and a Tomahawk
A tomahawk is a type of single-handed axe used by the many Indigenous peoples and nations of North America. It traditionally resembles a hatchet with a straight shaft. In pre-colonial times the head was made of stone, bone, or antler, and Eur ...
rocket as the second. The Nike Tomahawk has a ceiling of 230 statute mile
The mile, sometimes the international mile or statute mile to distinguish it from other miles, is a British imperial unit and United States customary unit of distance; both are based on the older English unit of length equal to 5,280 Engli ...
s (370 km), a payload capacity of , a launch thrust of 49,000 pounds of force (217 kN), a launch weight of , a diameter of and a length of . The Nike Tomahawk was launched 395 times between June 25, 1963, and November 27, 1995. One of its launches was in 1966 on the beach in Cassino, Rio Grande, Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
.
* The Nike Viper
The Nike stage or Nike booster, a solid fuel rocket motor, was created by Hercules Aerospace for the Nike Ajax (M5) Nike Hercules (M5E1) (and M88 late in Hercules career). It was developed for use as the first stage of the Nike Ajax and Nike Her ...
consists of a Nike starting stage and a Viper upper stage. The Nike Viper has a ceiling of 80 km, a takeoff thrust of 217 kN (48,800 lbf), a takeoff weight of 600 kg and a length of 8.00 m.
See also
* Nike Smoke rocket
The Nike Smoke was a sounding rocket, part of a research project on the behavior of the horizontal winds in the upper atmosphere, developed by NASA in the 1960s based on the Nike booster. The goal was to obtain more accurate data on the behavior ...
References
Books
*
External links
U.S. Naval Research Lab. - Nike Booster
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum - Fins, Set of Four, Rocket, Nike Booster, Nike-Cajun
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Rocket stages