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68-556: The design incorporated new rocket technology and the principle of the lifting body , foreshadowing future development of winged spacecraft such as the X-20 Dyna-Soar of the 1960s and the Space Shuttle of the 1970s. In the end, it was considered too complex and expensive to produce. The design never went beyond the mock-up stage. The Silbervogel was intended to fly long distances in a series of short hops. The aircraft

136-725: A Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) weather satellite on 18 October 2003. The Titan III was a modified Titan II with optional solid rocket boosters . It was developed on behalf of the United States Air Force (USAF) as a heavy-lift satellite launcher to be used mainly to launch American military payloads and civilian intelligence agency satellites such as the Vela Hotel nuclear-test-ban monitoring satellites, observation and reconnaissance satellites (for intelligence-gathering), and various series of defense communications satellites. As USAF project, Titan III

204-616: A Delco Carousel VB IMU and MAGIC 352 Missile Guidance Computer (MGC). The Titan IIIA was a prototype rocket booster and consisted of a standard Titan II rocket with a Transtage upper stage. The Titan IIIB with its different versions (23B, 24B, 33B, and 34B) had the Titan III core booster with an Agena D upper stage. This combination was used to launch the KH-8 GAMBIT series of intelligence-gathering satellites. They were all launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, due south over

272-660: A VTOL lifting body lander / ascender to visit an Earth-like planet, only to crash in both attempts. His series UFO featured a lifting body craft visually similar to the M2-F2 for orbital operations ("The Man Who Came Back"). In the Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space computer game, a modified X-24A becomes an alternative lunar capable spacecraft that the player can choose over the Gemini or Apollo capsule. The 1970s television program The Six Million Dollar Man used footage of

340-638: A Vulcan Centaur and land horizontally on conventional runways. Some aircraft with wings also employ bodies that generate lift. Some of the early 1930s high-wing monoplane designs of the Bellanca Aircraft Company , such as the Bellanca Aircruiser , had vaguely airfoil-shaped fuselages capable of generating some lift, with even the wing struts on some versions given widened fairings to give them some lift-generating capability. The Gee Bee R-1 Super Sportster racing plane of

408-520: A missile silo , and cannot be stored for long periods in the booster oxidizer tank. Several Atlas and Titan I rockets exploded and destroyed their silos, although without loss of life. The Martin Company was able to improve the design with the Titan II. The RP-1/LOX combination was replaced by a room-temperature fuel whose oxidizer did not require cryogenic storage. The same first-stage rocket engine

476-546: A delta wing design for the Space Shuttle. Data acquired in flight test using high-speed landing approaches at very steep descent angles and high sink rates was used for modeling Shuttle flight and landing profiles. In planning for atmospheric re-entry, the landing site is selected in advance. For reusable reentry vehicles, typically a primary site is preferred that is closest to the launch site in order to reduce costs and improve launch turnaround time. However, weather near

544-412: A flying wing seeks to maximize cruise efficiency at subsonic speeds by eliminating non-lifting surfaces, lifting bodies generally minimize the drag and structure of a wing for subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic flight, or spacecraft re-entry . All of these flight regimes pose challenges for proper flight safety. Lifting bodies were a major area of research in the 1960s and 70s as a means to build

612-588: A further consideration. Lockheed Martin decided to extend its Atlas family of rockets instead of its more expensive Titans, along with participating in joint-ventures to sell launches on the Russian Proton rocket and the new Boeing -built Delta IV class of medium and heavy-lift launch vehicles. The Titan IVB was the last Titan rocket to remain in service, making its penultimate launch from Cape Canaveral on 30 April 2005, followed by its final launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 19 October 2005, carrying

680-555: A lifting body aircraft, culled from actual NASA exercises, in the show's title sequence . The scenes included an HL-10's separation from its carrier plane—a modified B-52—and an M2-F2 piloted by Bruce Peterson , crashing and tumbling violently along the Edwards dry lakebed runway. The cause of the crash was attributed to the onset of Dutch roll stemming from control instability as induced by flow separation. The episode "The Deadly Replay" (season 2 episode 8 aired 9/22/1974) features

748-524: A location often used for launch into non-polar orbits. The Titan V was a proposed development of the Titan IV, that saw several designs being suggested. One Titan V proposal was for an enlarged Titan IV, capable of lifting up to 90,000 pounds (41,000 kg) of payload. Another used a cryogenic first stage with LOX/LH2 propellants; however the Atlas V EELV was selected for production instead. Most of

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816-429: A missile silo northwest of Searcy, Arkansas . The fire started when hydraulic fluid used in the Titan II was ignited by a welding torch. The liquid fuel missiles were prone to developing leaks of their toxic propellants. At a silo outside Rock, Kansas , an oxidizer transfer line carrying NTO ruptured on August 24, 1978. An ensuing orange vapor cloud forced 200 rural residents to evacuate the area. A staff sergeant of

884-553: A number of other aerospace programs, the previously mentioned NASA X-38 , Lockheed Martin X-33 , BAC 's Multi Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device , Europe's EADS Phoenix , and the joint Russian-European Kliper spacecraft. Of the three basic design shapes usually analyzed for such programs (capsule, lifting body, aircraft) the lifting body may offer the best trade-off in terms of maneuverability and thermodynamics while meeting its customers' mission requirements. The Dream Chaser

952-591: A small and lightweight crewed spacecraft. The US built a number of lifting body rocket planes to test the concept, as well as several rocket-launched re-entry vehicles that were tested over the Pacific. Interest waned as the US Air Force lost interest in the crewed mission, and major development ended during the Space Shuttle design process when it became clear that the highly shaped fuselages made it difficult to fit fuel tankage. Advanced spaceplane concepts in

1020-593: A suborbital glider to the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM) as Geheime Kommandosache Nr. 4268/LXXX5 . The 900-page proposal was regarded with disfavor at the RLM due to its size and complexity and was filed away. Then Sänger went to work on more modest projects such as the Skoda-Kauba Sk P.14 ramjet fighter. Professor Walter Gregorii had Sänger rework his report, and a greatly reduced version

1088-534: A substantial amount of lift from its fuselage shape, almost as much as the 35% each of the wings produces. Fighters like the F-15 Eagle also produce substantial lift from the wide fuselage between the wings. Because the F-15 Eagle's wide fuselage is so efficient at lift, an F-15 is able to land successfully with only one wing, albeit under nearly full power, with thrust contributing significantly to lift. In

1156-622: Is a suborbital and orbital vertical-takeoff, horizontal-landing (VTHL) lifting-body spaceplane being developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). The Dream Chaser design is planned to eventually carry up to seven people to and from low Earth orbit , and the spaceplane is currently planned to be used for delivering cargo to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services program. The vehicle will launch vertically on

1224-708: The Bor program. The IXV is a European Space Agency lifting body experimental re-entry vehicle intended to validate European reusable launchers which could be evaluated in the frame of the FLPP program. The IXV made its first flight in February 2015, launched by a Vega rocket. Orbital Sciences proposed a commercial lifting-body spaceplane in 2010. The Prometheus is more fully described below. Lifting bodies pose complex control, structural, and internal configuration issues. Lifting bodies were eventually rejected in favor of

1292-601: The Delco Electronics Universal Space Guidance System (USGS). The USGS used a Carousel IV IMU and a Magic 352 computer. The USGS was already in use on the Titan III space launcher when work began in March 1978 to replace the Titan II guidance system. The main reason was to reduce the cost of maintenance by $ 72 million per year; the conversions were completed in 1981. Liquid oxygen is dangerous to use in an enclosed space, such as

1360-536: The ESA Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle performed the first ever successful reentry of a lifting body spacecraft. The lifting body had been imagined by 1917, in which year an aircraft with something like a delta wing plan form with a thick included fuselage was described in a patent by Roy Scroggs . However at low airspeeds the lifting body is inefficient and did not enter mainstream airplane design. Aerospace -related lifting body research arose from

1428-472: The Sänger spaceplane , now a " piggyback " two-stage-to-orbit horizontal takeoff concept. Lifting body A lifting body is a fixed-wing aircraft or spacecraft configuration in which the body itself produces lift . In contrast to a flying wing , which is a wing with minimal or no conventional fuselage , a lifting body can be thought of as a fuselage with little or no conventional wing . Whereas

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1496-510: The port and starboard vertical stabilizers outward and enlarging the center one. Starting 1965 the Russian lifting-body Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105 or EPOS (Russian acronym for Experimental Passenger Orbital Aircraft) was developed and several test flights made. Work ended in 1978 when the efforts shifted to the Buran program , while work on another small-scale spacecraft partly continued in

1564-551: The stratosphere , where the increasing air density would generate lift against the flat underside of the aircraft, eventually causing it to "bounce" and gain altitude again, where this pattern would be repeated. Because of aerodynamic drag , each bounce would be shallower than the preceding one, but it was still calculated that the Silbervogel would be able to cross the Atlantic, deliver a 4,000 kg (8,800 lb) bomb to

1632-518: The 1930s, likewise, from more modern aerodynamic studies, has been shown to have had considerable ability to generate lift with its fuselage design, important for the R-1's intended racing role, while in highly banked pylon turns while racing. Vincent Burnelli developed several aircraft between the 1920s and 1950 that used fuselage lift. Like the earlier Bellanca monoplanes, the Short SC.7 Skyvan produces

1700-551: The 1990s and 2000s did use lifting-body designs. Examples include the HL-20 Personnel Launch System (1990) and the Prometheus spaceplane (2010). The Dream Chaser lifting-body spaceplane, an extension of HL-20 technology, was proposed as one of three vehicles to potentially carry US crew to and from the International Space Station , but eventually was selected as a resupply vehicle instead. In 2015

1768-539: The HL-10 as a prop of the story. Titan (rocket family) Titan was a family of United States expendable rockets used between 1959 and 2005. The Titan I and Titan II were part of the US Air Force 's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fleet until 1987. The space launch vehicle versions contributed the majority of the 368 Titan launches, including all the Project Gemini crewed flights of

1836-486: The M2-F1 along a dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base California, behind a modified Pontiac Catalina . Later the craft was towed behind a C-47 and released. Since the M2-F1 was a glider , a small rocket motor was added in order to extend the landing envelope. The M2-F1 was soon nicknamed the "Flying Bathtub". In 1963, NASA began programs with heavier rocket-powered lifting-body vehicles to be air launched from under

1904-564: The Pacific into polar orbits . Their maximum payload mass was about 7,500 lb (3,000 kg). The powerful Titan IIIC used a Titan III core rocket with two large strap-on solid-fuel boosters to increase its launch thrust and maximum payload mass. The solid-fuel boosters that were developed for the Titan IIIC represented a significant engineering advance over previous solid-fueled rockets, due to their large size and thrust, and their advanced thrust-vector control systems. The Titan IIID

1972-513: The Silbervogel design and sent his son Vasily and scientist Grigori Tokaty to kidnap Sänger and Bredt and bring them to the USSR . When this plan failed, a new design bureau was set up by Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh in 1946 to research the idea. A new version powered by ramjets instead of a rocket engine was developed, usually known as the Keldysh bomber , but not produced. The design formed

2040-718: The United States Department of Defense (DOD). Derived from the Titan 34D and originally proposed as a medium-lift expendable launch system for the US Air Force, who selected the Delta II instead. Development was continued as a commercial launch system, and the first rocket flew in 1990. The Commercial Titan III differed from the Titan 34D in that it had a stretched second stage, and a larger payload fairing to accommodate dual satellite payloads. The Titan IIIM

2108-557: The basis for a number of additional cruise missile designs into the early 1960s, none of which were produced. In the US, a similar project, the X-20 Dyna-Soar , was to be launched on a Titan II booster. As the crewed space role moved to NASA , and uncrewed reconnaissance satellites were thought to be capable of all required missions, the United States Air Force gradually withdrew from crewed space flight, and Dyna-Soar

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2176-479: The continental United States, and then continue its flight to a landing site somewhere in the Empire of Japan –held Pacific, a total journey of 19,000 to 24,000 km (12,000 to 15,000 mi). Postwar analysis of the Silbervogel design involving a mathematical control analysis unearthed a computational error. It turned out that the heat flow during the initial atmospheric re-entry would have been much greater than

2244-409: The decommissioned Titan II ICBMs were refurbished and used for Air Force space launch vehicles, with a perfect launch success record. For orbital launches, there were strong advantages to using higher-performance liquid hydrogen or RP-1 fueled vehicles with liquid oxygen ; the high cost of using hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, along with the special care that was needed due to their toxicity, were

2312-508: The dynamic and thermal stresses of both re-entry and hypersonic flight. One proposal eliminated wings altogether: design the fuselage body to produce lift by itself. NASA 's refinements of the lifting body concept began in 1962 with R. Dale Reed of NASA 's Armstrong Flight Research Center . The first full-size model to come out of Reed's program was the NASA M2-F1 , an unpowered craft made of wood. Initial tests were performed by towing

2380-512: The early 1960s through the mid-1970s at Armstrong Flight Research Center . These included: Lifting bodies have appeared in some science fiction works, including the movie Marooned , and as John Crichton's spacecraft Farscape-1 in the TV series Farscape . The Discovery Channel TV series conjectured using lifting bodies to deliver a probe to a distant earth-like planet in the animated Alien Planet . Gerry Anderson 's 1969 Doppelgänger used

2448-515: The idea of spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and landing much like a regular airplane . Following atmospheric re-entry, the capsule spacecraft from the Mercury , Gemini , and Apollo series had very little control over where they landed. A steerable spacecraft with wings could significantly extend its landing envelope. However, the vehicle's wings would have to be designed to withstand

2516-612: The internal disintegration of the Soviet Union . As a result of these events and improvements in technology, the unit cost of a Titan IV launch was very high. Additional expenses were generated by the ground operations and facilities for the Titan IV at Vandenberg Air Force Base for launching satellites into polar orbits. Titan IVs were also launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida,

2584-461: The landing site is a major factor in flight safety. In some seasons, weather at landing sites can change quickly relative to the time necessary to initiate and execute re-entry and safe landing. Due to weather, it is possible the vehicle may have to execute a landing at an alternate site. Furthermore, most airports do not have runways of sufficient length to support the approach landing speed and roll distance required by spacecraft. Few airports exist in

2652-458: The launch vehicle. Failing to be selected for a CCDev phase 2 award by NASA, Orbital announced in April 2011 that they would likely wind down their efforts to develop a commercial crew vehicle. Design principles of lifting bodies are used also in the construction of hybrid airships . The US government developed a variety of proof-of-concept and flight-test vehicle lifting body designs from

2720-566: The liquid oxygen and RP-1 propellant of the Titan I. The first Titan II guidance system was built by AC Spark Plug . It used an inertial measurement unit made by AC Spark Plug derived from original designs from the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory at MIT. The missile guidance computer (MGC) was the IBM ASC-15 . When spares for this system became hard to obtain, it was replaced by a more modern guidance system,

2788-409: The maintenance crew was killed while attempting a rescue and a total of twenty were hospitalized. Another site at Potwin, Kansas leaked NTO oxidizer in April 1980 with no fatalities, and was later closed. In September 1980, at Titan II silo 374-7 near Damascus, Arkansas , a technician dropped an 8 lb (3.6 kg) socket that fell 70 ft (21 m), bounced off a thrust mount, and broke

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2856-665: The mid-1960s. Titan vehicles were also used to lift US military payloads as well as civilian agency reconnaissance satellites and to send interplanetary scientific probes throughout the Solar System. The HGM-25A Titan I, built by the Martin Company , was the first version of the Titan family of rockets. It began as a backup ICBM project in case the SM-65 Atlas was delayed. It was a two-stage rocket operational from early 1962 to mid-1965 whose LR-87 booster engine

2924-425: The mid-1960s. Twelve Titan II GLVs were used to launch two U.S. uncrewed Gemini test launches and ten crewed capsules with two-person crews. All of the launches were successful. Starting in the late 1980s, some of the deactivated Titan IIs were converted into space launch vehicles to be used for launching U.S. Government payloads. Titan 23G rockets consisted of two stages burning liquid propellant . The first stage

2992-577: The mid-1980s; the last Titan II silo was deactivated in May 1987. The 54 Titan IIs had been fielded along with a thousand Minuteman missiles from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s. A number of Titan I and Titan II missiles have been distributed as museum displays across the United States. The most famous use of the civilian Titan II was in the NASA Gemini program of crewed space capsules in

3060-662: The missile had been converted to the Titan II/III family by 1965. Most of the Titan rockets were the Titan II ICBM and their civilian derivatives for NASA . The Titan II used the LR-87-5 engine, a modified version of the LR-87 , that used a hypergolic propellant combination of nitrogen tetroxide (NTO) for its oxidizer and Aerozine 50 (a 50/50 mix of hydrazine and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) instead of

3128-506: The most powerful uncrewed rocket available to the United States, with proportionally high manufacturing and operations expenses. By the time the Titan IV became operational, the requirements of the Department of Defense and the NRO for launching satellites had tapered off due to improvements in the longevity of reconnaissance satellites and the declining demand for reconnaissance that followed

3196-468: The original one calculated by Sänger and Bredt. Hence, if the design had been actually constructed, it would have been destroyed by the heat, which would have exceeded design limits and melted the craft. The problem could have been solved by augmenting the heat shield, but this would have reduced the craft's payload capacity significantly, reducing its use for the intended mission of bombing distant areas. On 3 December 1941 Sänger sent his initial proposal for

3264-489: The silo. It landed harmlessly several hundred feet away. There was one fatality and 21 were injured, all from the emergency response team from Little Rock AFB . The explosion blew the 740-ton launch tube cover 200 ft (60 m) into the air and left a crater 250 feet (76 m) in diameter. The 54 Titan IIs in Arizona, Arkansas, and Kansas were replaced by 50 MX "Peacekeeper" solid-fuel rocket missiles in

3332-422: The skin of the missile's first stage, over eight hours prior to an eventual explosion . The puncture occurred about 6:30 p.m. and when a leak was detected shortly after, the silo was flooded with water and civilian authorities were advised to evacuate the area. As the problem was being attended to at around 3 a.m., leaking rocket fuel ignited and blew the 8,000 lb (3,630 kg) nuclear warhead out of

3400-752: The starboard wing of a NB-52B, a derivative of the B-52 jet bomber. The first flights started in 1966. Of the Dryden lifting bodies, all but the unpowered NASA M2-F1 used an XLR11 rocket engine as was used on the Bell X-1 . A follow-on design designated the Northrop HL-10 was developed at NASA Langley Research Center . Air flow separation caused the crash of the Northrop M2-F2 lifting body. The HL-10 attempted to solve part of this problem by angling

3468-430: The story of the one-winged landing: as far as their planning models were concerned, this was an impossibility. In 2010, Orbital Sciences proposed the Prometheus "blended lifting-body" spaceplane vehicle, about one-quarter the size of the Space Shuttle , as a commercial option for carrying astronauts to low Earth orbit under the commercial crew program . The Vertical Takeoff, Horizontal Landing (VTHL) vehicle

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3536-563: The summer of 1983, an Israeli F-15 staged a mock dogfight with Skyhawks for training purposes, near Nahal Tzin in the Negev desert. During the exercise, one of the Skyhawks miscalculated and collided forcefully with the F-15's wing root . The F-15's pilot was aware that the wing had been seriously damaged, but decided to try and land in a nearby airbase, not knowing the extent of his wing damage. It

3604-667: The two Viking missions to place two orbiters around Mars and two instrumented landers on its surface. The Titan 34D featured Stage 1 and Stage 2 stretched with more powerful UA1206 solid motors. A variety of upper stages were available, including the Inertial Upper Stage , the Transfer Orbit Stage , and the Transtage . The Titan 34D made its maiden flight in the year of 1982 on the 30th of October with two DSCS defense communications satellites for

3672-466: The world that can support or be modified to support this type of requirement. Therefore, alternate landing sites are very widely spaced across the U.S. and around the world. The Shuttle's delta wing design was driven by these issues. These requirements were further exacerbated by requirements that extended the Shuttle's flight landing envelope. Nonetheless, the lifting body concept has been implemented in

3740-666: The years), however SRB-equipped variants had a heat shield over them as protection from the SRB exhaust and the engines were modified for air-starting. The first guidance system for the Titan III used the AC Spark Plug company IMU (inertial measurement unit) and an IBM ASC-15 guidance computer from the Titan II. For the Titan III, the ASC-15 drum memory of the computer was lengthened to add 20 more usable tracks, which increased its memory capacity by 35%. The more-advanced Titan IIIC used

3808-535: Was cancelled. One lasting impact of the Silverbird project is the " regenerative cooling–regenerative engine " design, in which fuel or oxidizer is run in tubes around the engine bell to cool the bell and pressurize the fluid. The concept had been known for a long time, but Sänger's team made important work towards its practical use. Almost all modern rocket engines use a similar design. On 18 October 1985 Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) began renewed studies of

3876-637: Was intended to launch the Manned Orbiting Laboratory and other payloads. Development was cancelled in 1969. The projected UA1207 solid booster rockets were eventually used on the Titan IV . The Titan IV was an extended length Titan III with solid rocket boosters on its sides. The Titan IV could be launched with a Centaur upper stage, the USAF Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), or no upper stage at all. This rocket

3944-422: Was more formally known as Program 624A ( SSLS ), Standard Space Launch System , Standardized Space Launch System , Standardized Space Launching System or Standard Space Launching System (all abbreviated SSLS ). The Titan III core was similar to the Titan II, but had a few differences. These included: The Titan III family used the same basic LR-87 engines as Titan II (with performance enhancements over

4012-409: Was only after he had landed, when he climbed out of the cockpit and looked backward, that the pilot realized what had happened: the wing had been completely torn off the plane, and he had landed the plane with only one wing attached. A few months later, the damaged F-15 had been given a new wing, and returned to operational duty in the squadron. The engineers at McDonnell Douglas had a hard time believing

4080-508: Was powered by RP-1 (kerosene) and liquid oxygen (LOX). The ground guidance for the Titan was the UNIVAC ATHENA computer , designed by Seymour Cray , based in a hardened underground bunker. Using radar data, it made course corrections during the burn phase. Unlike decommissioned Thor, Atlas, and Titan II missiles, the Titan I inventory was scrapped and never reused for space launches or RV tests, as all support infrastructure for

4148-523: Was powered by one Aerojet LR87 engine with two combustion chambers and nozzles, and the second stage was propelled by an LR91 . On some flights, the spacecraft included a kick motor, usually the Star-37XFP-ISS ; however, the Star-37S was also used. Thirteen were launched from Space Launch Complex 4W (SLC-4W) at Vandenberg Air Force Base starting in 1988. The final such vehicle launched

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4216-498: Was submitted to the RLM in September 1944, as UM 3538. It was the first serious proposal for a vehicle which could carry a pilot and payload to the lower edge of space. Two crewed and one uncrewed version were proposed: the Antipodenferngleiter (antipodal long-range glider) and the Interglobalferngleiter (intercontinental long-range glider). Both were to be launched from a rocket-powered sled. The two crewed versions were identical, except in payload. The Antipodenferngleiter

4284-417: Was the Vandenberg Air Force Base version of the Titan IIIC, without a Transtage, that was used to place members of the Key Hole series of reconnaissance satellites into polar low Earth orbits . The Titan IIIE, with a high- specific-impulse Centaur upper stage, was used to launch several scientific spacecraft, including both of NASA's two Voyager space probes to Jupiter, Saturn and beyond, and both of

4352-445: Was to be launched at a very steep angle (which would shorten the range) and after dropping its bomb load on New York City was to land at a Japanese base in the Pacific. After the war ended, Sänger and Bredt worked for the French government and in 1949 founded the Fédération Astronautique . Whilst in France, Sänger was the subject of a botched attempt by Soviet agents to win him over. Joseph Stalin had become intrigued by reports of

4420-400: Was to have been launched on a human-rated Atlas V rocket but would land on a runway. The initial design was to have carried a crew of 4, but it could carry up to 6, or a combination of crew and cargo. In addition to Orbital Sciences, the consortium behind the proposal included Northrop Grumman , which would have built the spaceplane, and the United Launch Alliance , which would have provided

4488-399: Was to have begun its mission propelled along a 3 km (2 mi) long rail track by a large rocket-powered sled to about 1,930 km/h (1,200 mph). Once airborne, it was to fire its own rocket engine and continue to climb to an altitude of 145 km (90 mi), at which point it would be travelling at about 21,800 km/h (13,500 mph). It would then gradually descend into

4556-400: Was used almost exclusively to launch US military or Central Intelligence Agency payloads. However, it was also used for a purely scientific purpose to launch the NASA–ESA Cassini / Huygens space probe to Saturn in 1997. The primary intelligence agency that needed the Titan IV's launch capabilities was the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). When it was being produced, the Titan IV was

4624-474: Was used with some modifications. The diameter of the second stage was increased to match the first stage. The Titan II's hypergolic fuel and oxidizer ignited on contact, but they were highly toxic and corrosive liquids. The fuel was Aerozine 50 , a 50/50 mix of hydrazine and UDMH, and the oxidizer was NTO. There were several accidents in Titan II silos resulting in loss of life and/or serious injuries. In August 1965, 53 construction workers were killed in fire in

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