In Better Times, Martin Marietta Titan 340 Ex- Pendable Launch Vehi- Cle (ELV) Lifts Off with Spacebound Military Payload

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In better times, Martin Marietta Titan 340 Ex- pendable Launch Vehi- cle (ELV) lifts off with spacebound military payload. Successive Titan 340 failures bracketed the destruc- tion of Space Shuttle Challenger. putting USAF's space-launch program on hold last year. Things are looking up, now that Air Force Systems Command's Space Division has conducted its Titan 340 inspection and recovery program and has put into effect its compre- hensive space-launch recovery plan. leading to a better mix of booster rockets to augment the Shuttles in assuring future US access to space. Mr HE US space program is begin- Vital military pay- ning to lose the snakebitten look loads are still on the it took on last year amid a shocking succession of accidents befalling ground, but USAF is Space Shuttle Challenger and three unmanned launch vehicles. rebuilding its launch The program still has a long, long capability to be way to go in fully recovering from the impact of those accidents. They stronger and more left the Air Force incapable of versatile than that of launching growing numbers of satellites vital to national security. the pre-Challenger This sobering—even scary— state of affairs will persist into next era. year and will not be much alleviated for another year or so after that. Shuttle Orbiters will not fly again until February 1988, at the earliest. The first of the big Titan IV Comple- mentary Expendable Launch Vehi- cles (CELVs) now being developed to carry outsized payloads high into Coming space will not be ready for launch until early 1989. Less powerful boosters are available, but they are relatively few in number and cannot take most high- priority military payloads to where Back they need to go in space. Even so, Air Force space officials are feeling a bit better about the space program's prognosis these days. They believe that the space- In launch recovery plan now in place to correct launch-system weak- nesses glaringly exposed by the Challenger accident in particular will result in launch capabilities far Space better—more vigorous, more versatile, and less vulnerable—than those of the pre-Challenger era. Such robust, resilient launch capabilities are sorely needed. National security has become heavily dependent on the increas- ingly sophisticated satellites that provide communications, weather information, surveillance, early warning of attack, and navigational support to US strategic and conven- tional forces. Better satellites of all BY JAMES W. CANAN such varieties are in hand or in the SENIOR EDITOR making. They are worth nothing, however, while on the ground.

Blueprint for Launch The space-launch recovery program devised by Air Force Systems Command's Space Division in Los Angeles, Calif., is a blueprint for getting those satellites launched as efficiently and as expeditiously as possible well into the 1990s. Col. Donald C. DePree, SD's

AIR FORCE Magazine / February 1987 45 Deputy for Space Transportation The Air Force intends to launch For instance, this month was to Systems, characterizes that pro- military payloads on the Shuttles have marked the start of something gram as "step one" in the space pro- only when this is imperative or most big for the US armed forces. The gram's comeback and as "doable on convenient. In all other instances, it first Navstar satellite of an eighteen- the national level." will launch such payloads on ex- satellite GPS operational constella- "Technical problems are the rela- pendable boosters. tion was scheduled to be launched tively easy ones," Colonel DePree In keeping with this, USAF plans aboard a Shuttle Orbiter. declares. "They can always be to design or to redesign several US forces, spread thinly in the fixed. The problems of decisions, types of satellites to be capable of execution of their global responsi- strategies, and plans are the tough going either way. Among them are bilities, are counting on that ones. In past months, those kinds of the Milstar Extremely High Fre- Navstar constellation to give air, things have been thrashed out, and quency (EHF), tough-to-jam satel- sea, and land units ultraprecise now it's over to us in the field to do lites that are expected to be the position-fixing data, thus enabling the implementing." crowning glories of defense commu- them to make the most of their mo- The Challenger accident "made nications in the 1990s and beyond, bility and firepower. us come to grips with the need for a the Defense Satellite Communica- They will have to wait a long time national-level strategy for space and tions System (DSCS III) satellites, for it to happen. Given the launch made the nation realize that we do the Defense Support Program situation, the Air Force will be need assured access to space," (DSP) early warning satellites, and lucky to get the first Navstar opera- Colonel DePree asserts. the Navstar navigation satellites. tional satellite into orbit by early Air Force officials take satisfac- Prior to Challenger, the Defense 1989. tion in the American public's post- Department's Strategic Defense Ini- By now, too, the new-generation Challenger awareness of some tiative Organization (SDIO) antici- DSCS III communications satellites other verities that USAF had al- pated using the Shuttles for a great should have been proliferating in ways honored but was often many tryouts of SDI technologies space as scheduled. Only two are in stymied in getting across. These are for space-oriented defense against orbit. The Air Force is taking deliv- that the US must: ballistic missiles. eries on some of the twelve addi- • Exploit space for all it is worth Now SDIO is considering moving tional DSCS III satellites that it will as a military arena, which is plenty. a substantial number of such pay- need to position in space as an op- • Never get into the perilous loads off the Shuttles and onto un- erational constellation and as position of depending too much on manned launchers. spares, but it must store them be- only one launch system, as it did cause it has no way of launching with NASA's Shuttle-centered Comeback Momentum them. Space Transportation System A few months ago, Vice Chair- Those satellites are virtually in- (STS). man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. dispensable. In relaying the critical • Use man more judiciously in Robert T. Herres, then Commander military messages that make it pos- space and leave it to unmanned, ex- in Chief of US Space Command and sible for the US to deter war and to pendable launch vehicles to truck of North American Aerospace De- wage it, they will be much more ca- satellites into orbit on all occasions fense Command, reflected on the pable and survivable than the older not requiring human interaction post-Challenger comeback now satellites of the DSCS II constella- with the hardware. gathering momentum. tion now doing that job in space. • Bear down in developing such General Herres said that a crucial Across the spectrum, satellites spacecraft as modular unmanned element in that comeback will need needed by the armed forces for a launchers and manned aerospace to be better teamwork among mili- variety of force-enhancing purposes planes. tary and civilian space officials in are languishing in storage. The Air • Acknowledge once and for all cutting the soaring costs of doing Force must pay extra to store them that space missions are inherently business in space. or to put off their production in risky and should be populated, "Despite the discouraging set- order to avoid having to store them. when necessary, by professional backs of past months, I am more Either way, space program costs go crews—period. convinced than ever that our goals, up. Space Division's space-launch re- objectives, and ambitions are on USAF's Space Launch Complex covery program addresses all this. track," the General said. "We have Six (SLC-6) at Vandenberg AFB has It emphasizes USAF's future ac- become dependent on space, and also been idled. The first Shuttle quisition of Titan IVs to share this means that what we seek to do launch from SLC-6 was to have heavy-lift duties with the Shuttles, there must be undertaken out of ab- taken place last July. It will not take of Medium Launch Vehicles solute necessity—and what must be place until 1992, and SLC-6 will re- (MLVs) to launch Navstar Global done out of necessity must be done main on "operational caretaker sta- Positioning System (GPS) satellites, right. tus" until then. and of Space Launch Vehicles "We can't expect our forces to Meanwhile, a launchpad at Van- (SLVs)—modifications of Titan us prevail in war without space sys- denberg is being modified for that were deactivated as ICBM tems." launching the Titan IVs that USAF launchers—to boost medium-size The latest and best of satellites for had the foresight to begin develop- military payloads into polar orbit such systems are going nowhere for ing prior to the Challenger disaster from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. lack of launchers. to shoulder Shuttle-sized payloads. 46 AIR FORCE Magazine / February 1987 The Air Force will buy twenty-three cated than it had seemed at first, for could turn out to be "extremely Titan IVs instead of the ten original- the space-launch situation soon be- tight." ly planned. came even worse. Less than three months after Congress Responds Assessing the Setback Challenger, an Air Force Titan 34D Working through the plight of the The only officials who know how ELV with a classified military pay- Titan 34D and the change in the badly the launching limbo affects load exploded nine seconds after Shuttle schedule, Space Division classified satellites are those with liftoff at Vandenberg AFB, Calif. had barely completed its space- the need to know. Clearly, however, This mishap marked the second launch recovery plan when Con- some of those high-priority space- straight failure of a Titan 34D, the gress, acting with extraordinary craft are on hold and will be joined first having occurred nine months alacrity, approved the acquisition of in that status by others until the earlier at Kennedy Space Center, a new Shuttle Orbiter to replace Shuttles and other lifters capable of Fla. Challenger, with its first flight now handling them are in business. Now there would be no more Ti- scheduled for 1991, and also pro- Shortly after Challenger blew up tan 34D launches until the design vided funds for a start on everything that SD had programmed to be done. Lt. Col. Barry Zilin, who headed the team that devised the space- launch recovery program and who now directs SD's MLV program, says that "as part of the congres- sional action, we were directed to go out and buy additional Titan IVs, to make high-priority satellites dual- compatible with the Shuttles and the Titan IVs, and to develop and buy the MLVs for launching GPS satellites." There is a down side to altering the Shuttles for safety purposes and to designing and building satellites for dual compatibility. Structural changes to the Orbiters and to their SRBs will add weight and, thusly, will reduce payload capacity by thousands of pounds. Moreover, says Colonel DePree, "designing Rockwell workers assemble subsystems of Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites in the "clean room." Space Division will develop Medium Launch Vehicles payloads for versatility of launch is (MLVs) for the express purpose of launching these vital navigation satellites. bound to drive up their costs." "I believe," he continues, "that last January 28, Space Division was and construction of the six such payloads will be designed to be op- charged with assessing how se- ELVs remaining in USAF's in- timized for launching either on the verely the space program had been ventory were rigorously and pains- Shuttle or on ELVs, with some set back by the disaster and the sub- takingly reexamined—and there built-in capability to go the other sequent grounding of the remaining went USAF's medium- to heavy-lift way. R&D birds requiring man's in- three Shuttle Orbiters, only two of capability until further notice. teraction will have to be designed which—Discovery and Atlantis— Then came yet another hitch for exclusively for the Shuttle." are capable of boosting most mili- Space Division in formulating the What it comes down to, says tary payloads into space. space recovery program. Colonel DePree, is that "if we want SD was also assigned to devise a NASA had said that it expected guaranteed access to space for cer- plan for a proper mix of new and Shuttle Orbiters to resume flying in tain payloads for which we may improved unmanned launchers of early to mid-1987. But when it re- have emergency needs, within cer- various capacities and purposes and flected on all that needed to be done tain time windows, then making to enfold in it NASA's plans for re- to make the Shuttles safer, with em- them dual-compatible is the only sumption of Shuttle flights and for a phasis on their solid rocket boosters strategy we can follow. Where some replacement Orbiter. (SRBs) and on crew-escape mea- satellites are concerned, it doesn't The resultant SD space recovery sures, it put off the first flight until make much difference whether we program would have to meet with February 1988. get them up one year or the next. the approval of the Air Staff, the Even that timetable may have to But there are others that, if the sky Secretary of Defense, the National be slipped. Secretary of the Air is falling, we've got to get up some- Security Council, and the Presi- Force Edward C. Aldridge, Jr., told how—and it's on those that we'll put dent. an Air Force Association audience our [dual-compatibility] resources. SD's job was even more compli- in Los Angeles last October that it "It's all workable. We'll sort it AIR FORCE Magazine / February 1987 47 McDonnell Douglas Del- ta rocket rises from its launch pad at Cape Ca- naveral, Fla. The suc- cessful launch of such a Delta last December helped the US space program along the comeback trail from the Challenger disaster and other launch failures. More-powerful rockets, such as the Titan IV Complementary Expend- able Launch Vehicles (CELVs), will be needed, however, to enable USAF to boost heavier, bulkier payloads into optimum orbits. USAF will buy twenty-three Titan IVs for launching military satellites from Canaveral and from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., beginning in early 1989. out. But the decisions will have to once been deemed to be necessary. loop? Why use man just to accom- be made at the national level in It may have to lower the Shuttle pany satellites into orbit, throw terms of strategy. They can't be payload landing-weight limit of them out of the bay, and come back made on the basis of individual bits 24,000 pounds as well. home?" and pieces of space systems. We'd Such compromises will likely Military payloads will be carried get lost in that. mean the end of experiments of the on fewer than half of the Shuttle "The important thing in all this is sort that Shuttle crews had been flights now scheduled over the next that we've been allowed to reassess conducting in the middeck locker few years—on two of five flights in and to change the decision of ten areas of the Orbiters. There are sev- 1988, on four of ten in 1989, and on years ago that we would eventually eral such areas, each capable of four of eleven in 1990. launch all our satellites on the Shut- holding 100 pounds of research gear. There is some skepticism in the tle. In the end, we'll be much In the past, they were used, for military space community about stronger in our ability to react if example, to check out crew interac- NASA's ability to build up its Shut- tle flight rates so sharply. When it comes to hurling especially heavy payloads high into space, the Shuttles will give way to the Titan IVs. NASA has abandoned its plan to use the General Dynamics Centaur rocket as a Shuttle upper stage in order to boost 10,000-pound payloads into geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the planet—orbits in which early-warning satellites, many communications satellites, and others operate. This will leave the Shuttle capable of boosting a maximum 5,100 pounds of payload into geosynchronous orbit from low-earth orbit by means of its Inertial Upper Stage (IUS). The Air Force's Titan IVs, on the other hand, will accommodate Cen- taur G-prime upper stages, and this The Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) qualification test vehicle is lowered into the Boeing will make them the mightiest of all Aerospace Co.'s Large Vacuum Chamber for testing. The IUS takes payloads into high US launch vehicles in their weight- space from Shuttles and will also ride atop Titan !Vs. to-altitude prowess. They will also be compatible with the IUS. something like the Challenger acci- tions with hardware to be applied to Martin Marietta is building the Ti- dent happens again. primary payloads in subsequent tan IVs as variants—mainly by vir- "Maybe that's our Challenger flights and to do biomedical, ocean- tue of their extended solid rocket legacy." ographic, meteorological, and op- boosters—of the company's Titan The weight to be added to the tical research. 34Ds. Shuttles in their structural changes On one Shuttle flight, a middeck Each Titan IV will be nearly 113 will force USAF to lower its re- locker contained equipment for an feet long and ten feet in diameter. Its quirement that they be capable of SDI-related test in which a laser was two SRBs will generate a total boosting 32,000 pounds of payload beamed at the Orbiter from the Ha- 2,725,000 pounds of thrust; its first into polar orbits out of Vandenberg waiian island of Maui to check out stage, 546,000 pounds of thrust; and and of landing—in case it's neces- its aiming, tracking, and atmo- its second stage, 104,000 pounds. sary—with 24,000 pounds of pay- sphere-penetration propensities. Delivery of two Titan IVs to the load still aboard. Forgoing such experimentation Air Force is scheduled for late this Even prior to Challenger, the "is where we're going to hurt," year, and the first of them is ear- 32,000-pound polar-orbit payload Colonel DePree declares. marked to launch a satellite into goal was shaping up as difficult to equatorial orbit from Cape Ca- attain without throttling up the en- Mixing Shuttles and ELVs naveral, Fla., in April 1988. gines well beyond their recom- Withal, the Shuttle will continue Titan IV launches of satellites mended thrust limitations. to be highly important to USAF's into transpolar orbits from Vanden- Now it seems that the additional space-launch aspirations. berg AFB are scheduled to com- weight in store for the Shuttles will "It's an excellent vehicle," says mence in early to mid-1989. force USAF to compromise on a Van- Colonel DePree, "but why not use it The first Titan IV-Centaur launch denberg payload launch weight that is only for those missions where of an ultraheavy military payload well below the 32,000 pounds that had there's a payoff to having man in the into geosynchronous orbit from Ca-

AIR FORCE Magazine / February 1987 49 naveral is now scheduled for early second happened when rubber in- gether a program to do all sorts of 1990. sulation debonded from the casing things that had never been done be- "We've progressed from a pro- of a solid-rocket engine and let pro- fore. gram for ten Titan IV launches at pellant burn through the casing. "We used X-rays, thermography, the Cape to one of twenty-three With respect to the Titan 34D's ultrasonics, and lasers to inspect launches at the Cape and at Vanden- basic design, this was actually good the innards, and we learned how to berg," explains Col. Victor W. news. The disparity of causes indi- process all the data and put it to- Whitehead, Space Division's Depu- cated that the problems were iso- gether. Now we're giving the Cape ty for Expendable Launch Vehicles. lated ones—not the result of any in- and Vandenberg the capability to "Before Challenger, we had three herent or universal flaw in the automate all this so that it will be payloads signed up. Since Chal- boosters. repeatable from test to test." lenger, a large number of payloads Space Division and the Titan 34D This means that the innovations have come over to us to fly on Titan contractors have conducted an ex- in nondestructive testing resulting IV. We're up to fifteen and count- haustive review of the rocket's de- from the Titan 34D recovery pro- ing." sign and construction and have built gram will be applicable to such test- The Titan IV design has breezed through its preliminary and critical design reviews and is "in good shape for us to make our initial launch date at the Cape," Colonel Whitehead says.

A Big Head Start He joins the chorus in saluting Secretary Aldridge for having led the way in persuading the Adminis- tration and Congress to authorize the Titan IV (formerly the Titan 34D-7) CELV program in 1985. NASA had objected to that program on grounds that the CELVs would compete with the Shuttles for payloads and hurt their chances of turning a profit with the commercial payloads that NASA saw in store for them. Now, post-Challenger, the pros- pects of commercial payloads on A Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS Ill) satellite takes shape at a the Shuttles are dim, and their prof- General Electric plant. The DSCS Ill constellation will form up in space several years it-making potential is practically nil. later than USAF had planned prior to the Challenger catastrophe. President Reagan ruled last year that the only commercial payloads up a considerable body of knowl- ing of all US launch vehicles. Confi- to be qualified for Shuttle flights will edge in testing all segments and dence levels will consequently rise. be those already designed to be components. Given the fatal failure of a field unique to the Shuttle or to be valu- The upshot, says Colonel White- joint on one of Challenger's solid able to US national security or for- head, is that "we do not think we rocket boosters, Space Division has eign policy. will have to do a redesign" of the taken special care in testing such Colonel Whitehead notes that Titan 34D. joints on the Titan 34D SRBs. Secretary (then Under Secretary) It has found, says Colonel White- Aldridge "pushed for the CELVs The Testing Dividend head, that those joints "are proba- when they weren't very popular in Aside from the eventual restora- bly the toughest parts of the old some circles—and thank goodness tion of the rockets to service, a ma- beasts." he did. We got a big head start on the jor benefit from Space Division's This finding has great meaning for Titan IV program as a result." $160 million inspection and recov- all Titan launchers and for the de- It now appears that USAF's Titan ery program has been "the quantum sign of the Titan IV CELVs too, 34Ds will be ready to go to work leap forward we've been able to perhaps. Had it turned out other- sooner than might have been ex- make in nondestructive testing," wise, there might have been much pected after two of them failed, one the Colonel says. bigger trouble all across the space- after the other, in August 1985 and "We got together everybody we launch program. in April 1986. could find who knew anything at all Space Division expected its reas- The first Titan 34D failure was about nondestructive testing—from sessment of the Titan 34Ds to be probably caused by a leak of nitro- the Department of Defense, the De- completed by early this year. The gen tetroxide and the loss of a partment of Energy, from industry, rockets could be back in action by turbopump in a liquid engine. The from everywhere—and we put to- the end of the year. 50 AIR FORCE Magazine / February 1987 The Titan 34D testing touches on have exceeded the four years of life lites now in space to help them in Space Division's MLV development that the Air Force and Rockwell, its their bombing practice, "the results program as well. GPS prime contractor, believed were spectacular," declares Col. One of the rockets in the running they would average. Two are now Wayne Jones, SD's GPS deputy pro- for the MLV production contract is weak as a result of their atomic gram manager. a modification of the Martin Mariet- clocks running down, but each has In executing the GPS engineering ta Titan 34D. The others are vari- been in orbit for more than eight development program, Space Divi- ants of the General Dynamics Atlas years. sion and Space Command have and of the McDonnell Douglas Del- Rubidium is the main element in turned out to be quite a team. ta. those clocks. The newer Navstar When the two oldest Navstar de- SD plans to pick a winner from engineering satellites have longer- velopment satellites went sour in among the three by February 6. It lasting cesium clocks, as will the space, SD decided to move one of desperately needs the MLVs to operational GPS satellites. them into a position nearer the launch Navstar satellites and has The satellites now in orbit can other, thereby enabling the five sat- scheduled them to begin doing so in provide some useful navigation ellites still functioning well to close January 1989. data. However, they are too few in ranks, as it were, and work better Even if the MLV production and number to provide the around-the- together. operational schedules are strictly clock, three-dimensional time, dis- The repositioning job fell to kept, however, the deployment of tance, and position data that the Space Command, which controls all Navstar satellites will have slipped fully operational Navstar constella- US satellites in space. "They did the badly from the timetable for their tion of eighteen satellites and at maneuver flawlessly," says Colonel launches exclusively on Shuttles least three spares will be capable of Green. "They have supported us that were to have begun this month. providing. very well in operating our system." After Challenger went down, "We won't have any real opera- Space Division faced the harsh tional capability until we have DSCS II Holding Up prospect of an indefinite delay in worldwide coverage," explains Fortunately, Space Division's depositing a fully operational GPS Colonel Green. "What's up there DSCS II communications satellites, constellation plus spares and re- now provides the Navy—only- built by TRW, are also holding up in plenishment satellites in space. with roughly eleven hours a day of space much better than anticipated. "We had an emergency need to two-dimensional accuracy. "We have a good constellation up get twenty-eight satellites costing "But we've had remarkable re- there," says Col. Glenn D. Rogers, over a billion dollars into orbit—and sults from those satellites. They've SD's Deputy for Defense Satellite the Shuttle obviously wasn't going met or exceeded everything we ever Communications Systems. "The to do it," recalls SD's Colonel Zilin. expected of them. This makes us satellites are lasting longer than "It was painful." very optimistic about the produc- they were designed to last." It still is, although a little less so. tion satellites—and once we're able The newer and much heavier The current schedule calls for the to deploy them in the operational DSCS III satellites, being produced launching of twenty-two GPS satel- mode, they'll dazzle folks, I'm by General Electric, represent sig- lites by October 1991. Twelve will sure." nificant improvements in surviv- go up on MLVs and ten on Shuttles. The only plus in the long wait to ability, capacity, and ability to ser- This schedule, too, could slip, begin such deployment is the extra vice many more users. Of the three however. There is going to be a lot of time available to Space Division and in orbit, two are operational. Three jockeying among the various mili- to the services to integrate GPS ter- more are in storage waiting to be tary satellite programs for space on minals into aircraft, tanks, ships, launched. the Shuttles in the years ahead. submarines, and other combat and In the future, DSCS III satellites Many questions of which satellites combat-support platforms. will be built for Titan IV launch as ride on which launchers may have to GPS capability is a major ele- well for Shuttle launch. be settled at the national level. ment, for example, in the Air The complexity of the space- "It's been a tough year," says Col. Force's upgrading of the avionics of launch situation is exemplified by Gaylord B. Green, SD's Deputy for its F-16Cs, F-15Cs, and F-111s. what has happened to DSCS III Space Navigation Systems and di- GPS is also a big player in the avi- launch schedules in just the past rector of the GPS program. onics integration of the F-15E dual- seven months. They have been role fighter, of the Advanced Tac- changed at least six times, and the GPS Sidelined tical Fighter (ATF), and presumably dates of individual launches have Frustration is especially keen in of the Advanced Technology Bomb- been moved around by as much as Colonel Green's shop because the er (ATB). two to three years. seven engineering development There are no present plans to pro- "It's tough," Colonel Rogers GPS satellites now in space have vide the B-1B bomber with GPS ca- says. "One thing that's comforting, performed so beautifully. This in- pability. The B-52 bomber, on the though, is that the DSCS constella- tensifies the itch to get on with other hand, was on top of USAF's tion should remain healthy until we launching the operational GPS sat- list of aircraft to incorporate GPS again have a launch capability. Once ellites, many of which have already terminals. we have it, we will have satellites been produced. Once the B-52s began using navi- available to upgrade and replenish All seven development satellites gation data from the Navstar satel- the constellation." • AIR FORCE Magazine / February 1987 51