From the Office of Public Relations Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge 39, Massachusetts Engineers at Instrumentati

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MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. News Office (AC0069)

From the Office of Public Relations Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge 39, Massachusetts

Engineers at Instrumentation Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute

of Technology, worked out basic designs for--and carried out prototype

development and testing of--the stable inertial platform that serves

as the heart of the automatic inertial guidance system in the Air Force TITAN II intercontinental ballistic missile.

The TITAN II inertial system was successfully tested

in a missile fired from Cape Canaveral, Fla., down the Atlantic Missile

Test Range, The test brought the giant Air Force ICBM a step closer to operational deployment,

AC Spark Plug Division, General Motors Corp., manufactures TITAN II platforms at the ACSP plant at Milwaukee, Wis., then couples the plat-

forms with computers built and supplied by International Business

Machine Corp., to produce complete TITAN II guidance systems.

M.I.T. designs and prototypes served as the bases for ACSP pro- duction models of the platform and its components and M.I.T. engineers worked closely with ACSP engineers in putting the systems into produc- tion. The particular system used in the first inertial test came from the ACSP Milwaukee facility,

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Use copy created from Institute Archives record copy. © Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. News Office (AC0069)

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Instrumentation Laboratory, headed by Dr. Charles Stark Draper, professor and chairman of the M.I.T. Department of Aeronautics and

A1stronautics, has pioneered inertial guidance and navigation in this

country since 1945. Earlier Laboratory achievements have included design concepts

and guidance theories used in inertial guidance of the now-operational

Air Force THOR as well as development of the entire guidance system

for the Navy's 1,200-mile POLARIS. In addition to these accomplishments, the Laboratory also designed

and built the first SINS (Submarine Inertial Navigation System). SINS now are used to navigate POLARIS-launching submarines.

Laboratory engineers are at work now on an advanced ICBM guidance system and on an automatic control system for manned boost-glide

vehicles, both for the Air Force; on an advanced guidance system for

the 2,500-mile POLARIS, for the Navy; and on guidance and control for

a manned lunar probe vehicle for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

A ballistic missile is guided only during its powered flight phase and, when the last rocket engine shuts down, the nose cone separates

and falls back to earth along a ballistic trajectory determined by

missile velocity (speed plus direction) at the time of separation. Function of a guidance system is to control the missile so the nose

cone is placed on a trajectory which will carry it to a desired target.

In the approach to missile guidance employed in TITAN II, this

is accomplished in the following manner;

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location of the launch site. By electrical connections to the rocket

engines, the computer, during powered flight, can alter missile direction and, hence, the missile velocity, As powered flight progresses, accelerometers on the gyro-stabilized

inertial platform sense moment-to-moment changes in missile velocity

(speed and direction). The computer uses this change-in-velocity data, plus target location data, to predict the ideal velocity for separation.

When the inertial platform senses that this ideal velocity has been

reached, the computer shuts down the rocket engine and triggers separa-

tion, leaving the nose cone to fall along the correct trajectory to

its target0 Development of the TITAN II inertial platform at the Laboratory

was directed by Dr. Draper, by Mr. Roger Woodbury, Waltham, associate

director; and by Dr. Elmer Frey, Lexington, and Mr. John Kirk, Wellesley,

deputy associate directors.

Mr. William Denhard, Reading, an assistant director, headed the

group that developed the gyroscope in the TITAN II system.

Mr. Lester Grohe, Hingham, then an assistant director and now

chief engineer at Nortronics Division of the Northrup Corp. at Norwood, Mass., together with Mr. Michele Sapuppo, Lawrence, an assistant direc-

tor, and Edward J. Hall, West Newton, supervised development of the gyro

that forms the sensitive heart of the gyro accelerometer used in TITAN II.

Mr. Philip Bowditch, Cohasset, an assistant director, headed the

group that used this gyro in designing the overall accelerometer. Mr.

Bowditch also directed mechanical design of the TITAN II gimbal system. Mr. Philip Gilinson, Jr., Chelmsford, the Laboratory's (MORE)

consultant; Mr. David Whipple, Cohasset, and Mr. George Oberbeck, Waltham, both assistant directors; and Mr. Richard E. Marshall, Concord, all

headed various groups that contributed to electronic power supplies, feedback systems and servomechanisms found in the TITAN II platform and components.

Platform development testing was carried out under Mr. John Buchanan, Cambridge, and Mr. Milton Trageser, Waltham, both assistant directors,

and under Mr. Kenneth Fertig, Mattapan0 Airborne platform testing was

performed by the Laboratory pilot, Mr. Charles L. Collins, Westford, using an F-94 jet fighter aircraft, -END-