T ECHNOLOGY The Pioneer Rocket by Gideon Marcus ing, vacuum-tube circuited IBM 701 to pre- Thor is fired with a control system but no dict the performance of the Atlas, Titan, and guidance, and when the nose cone is On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union Minuteman missiles. Eventually, his group replaced by the second and third stage orbited the first artificial satellite. Within became known as the Systems Vanguard . the total velocity at just one year, the United States designed, Development Department. It was a sort of burnout for the three stage missile would built, and launched the first lunar probes. brain trust whose job was to develop a pro- be 36,200 ft/sec. When fired eastward This early series of missions is scarcely doc- liferation of innovative ideas. Degarabedian from Cape Canaveral this missile would umented today, but those first months of the was associate manager of the department achieve a velocity of 37,500 ft/sec. and space race showed the world what could be and de facto head when, in October 1957, this is about 1000 ft/sec. more than is done in an incredibly short time when the Sputnik made its beeping path across the required to get to Mars or Venus. stakes were high enough. This article is Part sky. Without external prompting, he ran a I of a series on the United States’s first lunar few calculations and came up with an excit- This new launch system was too probe—the story of the inception, creation, ing proposition. attractive to be ignored. While the original and flight of the rocket that would ultimate- At the time, two-stage, orbital, liq- proposal suggested that the vehicle be used ly propel not just lunar spacecraft, but uid-fuel rockets were still a thing of the to loft probes to the planets, the Thor- dozens of other space probes. future. Coordinating a midair ignition was Vanguard was to prove more immediately considered too finicky an operation to useful in resolving a pressing military Space Technology Laboratories depend on. This is why Atlas, the first U.S. conundrum. It is a fitting start to begin with the ICBM, was designed as an ingenious stage- corporation that would ultimately oversee and-a-half missile with all three engines fir- A New Type of Nose Cone the construction and launch of the new rock- ing at liftoff, two being jettisoned after their In the beginning of 1956, the USAF et. The Ramo-Wooldridge (R-W) corpora- fuel was exhausted. The first booster to began high speed reentry tests using the tion was founded in 1953 by Simon Ramo employ two liquid stages was the Vanguard, Lockheed X-17, a rocket that consisted of and Dean Wooldridge for the express pur- then being developed as a civilian space three solid-fuel stages. Ramo-Wooldridge pose of designing specialized electronic booster with considerable assistance from was responsible for the technical manage- components for the U.S. military.1 They the Navy. As of October, the Vanguard had ment of the X-17 reentry program, and pre- scoured the universities for talent on the not even flown yet, but it was the only liq- vailing wisdom at the time suggested that assumption that anyone with a PhD must be uid-fuel second stage then in existence. the most promising way to avoid the prohib- reasonably intelligent and therefore a poten- Just for the sake of spinning ideas, itive problem of nose cone overheat on tial asset. Additionally, R-W recruited a Degarabedian ran some numbers on the reentry was to achieve as close to laminar number of Hughes Aircraft expatriates. In hypothetical combination of the Thor inter- (nonturbulent) flow of air over the nose of this manner, R-W accumulated one of the mediate range ballistic missile (IRBM), the missile. To this end, the X-17 nose cone most impressive pools of talent in the then currently in testing, and the Vanguard was designed as a nickel-plated, copper, nation. Within one year of incorporation, R- second stage, coupled with a solid-fuel third spherical shape with a 2 micro-inch finish to W became the U.S. Air Force’s (USAF) stage. He distributed his findings in a memo prevent transition to turbulence4. However, contractor for systems engineering and to Simon Ramo but not before he solicited the X-solid nose cone was heavy, and even technical direction for the Atlas interconti- the signature of his coworker, Jack Irving, the super-smooth nickel plating could not nental ballistic missile (ICBM)2. In who enjoyed close relations with the com- achieve nonturbulent flow. Ultimately, the November 1957, seizing the opportunity pany president. The relevant portions of the idea of using ablative materials instead of afforded by the Soviet launch of Sputnik, Si memo, written in a typically understated solid construction was conceived, apparent- Ramo changed the name of R-W’s Guided manner, are as follows3: ly in many agencies simultaneously. Missile Research Division to Space Ablation works much like the burning of a Technology Laboratories (STL), heralding a Escape Vehicles Using Thor and book. Essentially, each page burns individu- new direction for the company. Vanguard Components. 1 November ally and sloughs off, removing the fire from 1957 the rest of the volume. In a similar fashion, The Memo The last two stages of Vanguard are heated outer layers of an ablative nose cone Paul Degarabedian was a young PhD responsible for adding about 21,500 combust and come off before the rest of the who went to work for R-W in late 1954. His ft/sec to the total Vanguard velocity nose can become superheated. This method job was to crunch numbers on the room-fill- [with] a 21.5 [lbs] payload . When the of heat management was later used in proj- Q U E S T 13:4 2006 26 ects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. flight path that would propel the missile Electronics Laboratory and a PhD from The U.S. Army demonstrated an 5,500 nautical miles from the coast of Ohio State, was officially made project ablative nose cone on the Jupiter IRBM in Florida to the vicinity of Ascension Island, manager early in the month. Dick Morrison August 1957, and the Navy intended to test propelling its ablative nose cone through the was then put in charge of booster develop- one on its Polaris ship-launched missile. At atmosphere at ICBM velocity. In this role, ment, and Solomon went to the Cape to han- the time, however, no one knew whether or the Thor Able was dubbed the Able Reentry dle data and support requirements at the not an ablative cone could survive the rigors Test Vehicle or ARTV. On 26-November, launch site, the Air Force Missile Test of an ICBM range reentry. As the first full STL sent a delegation, including propulsion Center (AFMTC) at Patrick Air Force Base range Atlas flight was not scheduled until experts George Gleghorn and George in Florida. All the subcontractors were late 1958, the USAF needed an alternative Solomon, to the Martin assembly plant in in the interim to test the concept5. Middle River, Maryland, to procure several Aerojet stages. Gleghorn, a Korean War vet- Project Able eran and R-W’s hundredth employee, was On 1 November 1957, Degarabedian the most knowledgeable Thor integrations submitted his two-stage Thor-Vanguard pro- and test person there was. Solomon was his posal, which he called the Thor A or Able. superior. They placed a special order with The Douglas Thor IRBM was a USAF proj- Aerojet purchasing several Vanguard sec- ect with similar characteristics to its com- ond stages. The rocket company was to ship petitor, the Jupiter, and represented the cur- a set of tanks and an engine but strip the rent state of the art in booster technology. boosters of all guidance and control mecha- Therefore, it was the natural selection for nisms. The STL team wasn’t interested in the first stage of the nose-cone test vehicle. putting a payload into a particular orbit. Although there was some suggestion that Rather, they aimed to slam the nose cone the solid propelled X-17, a proven stage that into the ocean as fast as possible. Thus, the would later see service incorporated into the Thor Able’s second stage would fly open- Scout booster, might be used, in the end, the loop, or based on a preplanned trajectory Aerojet second stage on the Vanguard won with no in-flight course correction. This out6. Though a flight test of the stage had configuration saved a good deal of weight, never been conducted, this stage’s weight and weight was always a paramount con- and performance characteristics recom- cern. mended it for the job. The X-17 simply was Gleghorn immediately began work not powerful enough7. on constructing actuators and a new forward There was no question at the time but compartment for fitting with a payload. that STL, which was already working on the Douglas provided the standard autopilot, Thor and had a symbiotic relationship with amplifiers, and gyros8. Gleghorn was also Paul Degarabedian in the late 1960s. Photo: Gideon Marcus the USAF, would be chosen to develop the responsible for ballasting the vehicle— reentry vehicle. Phase 1 in a long series of essentially weighing the rocket down such projected roles for the Thor Able involved a that even after all the fuel had been burned, signed off on 20 December. Control the missile would not hit the coast of Africa. Systems Division was responsible for the He eventually settled on a weight of 185 accelerometer.