Captain Robert C. Truax (

USN The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...

) (September 3, 1917 – September 17, 2010) was an American rocket engineer in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

, and companies such as Aerojet and Truax Engineering, which he founded. Truax was a proponent of low-cost rocket engine and vehicle designs.

Life

As a teenager, Truax was inspired by

Robert Goddard Robert Hutchings Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945) was an American engineer, professor, physicist, and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. Goddard successfully laun ...

articles in ''

Popular Mechanics ''Popular Mechanics'' (sometimes PM or PopMech) is a magazine of popular science and technology, featuring automotive, home, outdoor, electronics, science, do-it-yourself, and technology topics. Military topics, aviation and transportation o ...

'' magazine to build his own rockets while residing in

Alameda, California Alameda ( ; ; Spanish for " tree-lined path") is a city in Alameda County, California, located in the East Bay region of the Bay Area. The city is primarily located on Alameda Island, but also spans Bay Farm Island and Coast Guard Island, as we ...

. From 1936 to 1939, midshipman Truax tested liquid-fuel rocket motors and published a February 1939 report in

Astronautics Astronautics (or cosmonautics) is the theory and practice of travel beyond Earth's atmosphere into outer space. Spaceflight is one of its main applications and space science its overarching field. The term ''astronautics'' (originally ''astron ...

. In 1938, he showed a thrust chamber that he had constructed to the

British Interplanetary Society The British Interplanetary Society (BIS), founded in Liverpool in 1933 by Philip E. Cleator, is the oldest existing space advocacy organisation in the world. Its aim is exclusively to support and promote astronautics and space exploration. Str ...

and wrote technical reports published by the

American Rocket Society The American Rocket Society (ARS) began its existence on , under the name of the American Interplanetary Society. It was founded by science fiction writers G. Edward Pendray, David Lasser, Laurence Manning, Nathan Schachner, and others. Pendra ...

. Following two years' sea duty, first on and then a destroyer, then-Lieutenant Commander Truax worked at the Engineering Experiment Station at Annapolis in the

Bureau of Aeronautics The Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) was the U.S. Navy's material-support organization for naval aviation from 1921 to 1959. The bureau had "cognizance" (''i.e.'', responsibility) for the design, procurement, and support of naval aircraft and relate ...

Ship Installations Division under Commander C. A. Bolster. Truax headed the Navy Development Project (ensigns R. C. Stiff, J. F. Patton, W. Schubert and

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

civilian Robertson Youngquist), where hypergolic propellant was discovered—fuel that burst into flame spontaneously when brought into contact with nitric acid, leading to the use of

aniline Aniline is an organic compound with the formula C6 H5 NH2. Consisting of a phenyl group attached to an amino group, aniline is the simplest aromatic amine. It is an industrially significant commodity chemical, as well as a versatile starti ...

plus 20%

furfuryl alcohol Furfuryl alcohol is an organic compound containing a furan substituted with a hydroxymethyl group. It is a colorless liquid, but aged samples appear amber. It possesses a faint odor of burning and a bitter taste. It is miscible with but unstable ...

for the 1945

WAC Corporal The WAC Corporal was the first sounding rocket developed in the United States and the first vehicle to achieve hypersonic speeds. It was an offshoot of the Corporal program, that was started by a partnership between the United States Army Ordn ...

(the first free-flight rocket to use the fuel). By early 1943, the Truax group had developed a thrust

JATO JATO (acronym for jet-assisted take-off) is a type of assisted take-off for helping overloaded aircraft into the air by providing additional thrust in the form of small rockets. The term ''JATO'' is used interchangeably with the (more specifi ...

using hypergolic fuel before the introduction of solid fuel JATO units. From 1955 to 1958, Truax was assigned to the United States Air Force under General Bernard A. Schriever, where Truax and Dr.

Adolf Thiel Adolf Karl Thiel (also spelled Adolph; February 12, 1915 – June 2, 2001 Los Angeles) was an Austrian-born German expert in guided missiles during World War II, and later worked for the United States Army and TRW. Thiel had been an associate pr ...

headed the initial design studies and IRBM specifications for the

PGM-17 Thor The PGM-17A Thor was the first operational ballistic missile of the United States Air Force (USAF). Named after the Norse god of thunder, it was deployed in the United Kingdom between 1959 and September 1963 as an intermediate-range ballistic ...

missile. Truax subsequently worked on the Navy's

Viking rocket Viking was series of twelve sounding rockets designed and built by the Glenn L. Martin Company under the direction of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Designed to supersede the German V-2, the Viking was the most advanced large, liqui ...

and

UGM-27 Polaris The UGM-27 Polaris missile was a two-stage solid-fueled nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). As the United States Navy's first SLBM, it served from 1961 to 1980. In the mid-1950s the Navy was involved in the Jupiter missi ...

missile. Truax studied the sea launching of rockets, such as the Sea Bee and Sea Horse projects. After serving as 1957

president, Truax retired from the United States Navy in 1959 and headed the Aerojet-General Advanced Development Division and Aerojet's Sea Dragon project. Truax died from prostate cancer at his home in

Valley Center, California Valley Center is a census-designated place (CDP) in northern San Diego County, California. The population was 9,277 at the 2010 census. History Valley Center was the site of the capture of the largest California Grizzly Bear in history. In 1866, ...

on September 17, 2010.

Truax Engineering

In 1966 Robert Truax founded Truax Engineering, which studied sea launch concepts similar to the earlier Sea Dragon—the Excalibur, the SEALAR, and the Excalibur S. Truax also designed the

Skycycle X-2 The Skycycle X-2 was a steam-powered rocket owned by Evel Knievel and flown during his Snake River Canyon jump in Idaho in 1974. An earlier prototype was designed, named the Skycycle X-1, by Doug Malewicki and retired U.S. Navy engineer Robert ...

, which he unsuccessfully tested on April 15, 1972 and June 24, 1973, and which Evel Knievel unsuccessfully used at the Snake River Canyon in 1974.

Volksrocket

The X-3 Volksrocket (other names: Arriba One, Skycycle X-3) was a reusable

space tourism Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. During the period from 2001 to 2009, seven space tourists made eight s ...

rocket planned by Robert Truax after

Evel Knievel Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel (; October 17, 1938 – November 30, 2007) was an American stunt performer and entertainer. Over the course of his career, he attempted more than 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps. Knievel was inducted into the Motor ...

provided a $1,000 research grant for a pilot study. Truax was looking for volunteers with enough money to help fund the effort and who wished to fly aboard his rocket. He got thousands of volunteers, but few of them had the financial resources. One person selected to fly in the rocket was engineer

Jeana Yeager Jeana Lee Yeager (born May 18, 1952) is an American aviator. She co-piloted, along with Dick Rutan, the first non-stop, non-refueled flight around the world in the Rutan Voyager aircraft from December 14 to 23, 1986. The flight took 9 days, 3 ...

, who worked for Truax Engineering. Peruvian-born Daniel J. Correa was at one point announced as the first pilot. Among others who offered some financing and who went through some of his training were Ronald Beller, a pilot from Kentucky, Martin Yahn, Ray Upton, and Fell Peters, all of southern California. Ultimately, no one flew in the Volksrocket.https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/28/AR2010092805243.html Obit for Robert Truax, Washington Post 9/28/2010 The rocket used surplus components and was tested through 1991.

References and notes

Peterson AFB article on Truax
->

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Truax, Robert 1917 births 2010 deaths American aerospace engineers Rocket scientists Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Iowa State University alumni Naval Postgraduate School alumni United States Naval Academy alumni United States Navy officers Deaths from prostate cancer People from Gary, Indiana People from Alameda, California Space advocates Military personnel from California Members of the American Rocket Society