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Date: Sun, 19 Nov 89 01:31:16 -0500 (EST)
Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #263

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 263

Today's Topics:
	       Re: Looking for US launcher family tree
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Date: 17 Nov 89 17:51:28 GMT
From: eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma!nickw@bloom-beacon.mit.edu  (Nick Watkins)
Subject: Re: Looking for US launcher family tree

In article <1989Nov15.213427.7522@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
writes:

>Redstone, a tactical ballistic missile, with three small solid upper stages
>became Jupiter-C and launched Explorer 1 and some others. 
Jupiter C with a live 4th stage was also known as Juno 1. On one
celebrated occasion Von Braun was directed to fill the 4th stage with
sand to avoid an orbital mission. Redstone was also used for suborbital
Mercury flights, including Shepard's and Grissom's. It was also the
basis of the Australian WRESAT one-off launch.

>Jupiter, an Army IRBM, acquired an upper stage or two and became the Juno
>family of space launchers, which saw a little bit of use.  Don't know much
>about it.  Long extinct.
Jupiter with the same upper stages as Jupiter C/Juno 1 was Juno 2. Juno 1 was
a deliberately confusing Von Braun name for a Redstone derivative, see
above. See Wilson's "The Eagle Has Wings" for more details.

>Atlas, the first US ICBM, was used as a launcher all by itself for modest
>low-orbit payloads, including Mercury.  With the addition of the first US
>liquid-hydrogen stage, the Centaur, it saw heavy use for low orbit, high
>orbit, and planetary missions.  Numerous variants have appeared over the
>years, with a steady trend to longer tanks and hotter engines.  An earlier
>upper stage, the Agena, also saw use for modest planetary missions and
>satellites, notably military ones, and was used for a docking target on
>Gemini.
Atlas has been used with other upper stages, notably Burner 2 and the
shortlived Atlas Able. Atlas Centaur & Atlas Agena were the main ones though.
Atlas Agena lasted as late as 1977/78 for the final Rhyolite launches,
after which Pad 13 at KSC was dismantled. Atlas is still used alone for some
launches from Vandenberg, these are reconditioned Atlas E/F ICBMs so the
supply will dry up. Titan II SLV has taken over the job for the Navy
ocean surveillance satellites, while GPS satellites, which used to use
Atlas are now sent up on Delta 2 from the Cape. I think the NOAA polar
orbit weather satellites use these Atlas boosters also, as did NASA's
Seasat in 1978.

>Titan II, the second Titan ICBM (Titan I, despite the similar name, was
>an entirely different missile), also has seen use in various forms.
>One variant of it (slightly longer tanks than the ICBM, I think) launched
>Gemini.  Both alone and with upper stages (notably Agena), it launched
>quite a few missions.  The last Titan-Agena flew only a few months ago.
Strictly speaking the Titan Agena variants were part of the Titan III
family, i.e. the Titan 3B Agena D, and the 34B Agena. Has anybody ever seen
a photo of the latter? I think you'll find the last flight of a Titan
Agena was in 1987.

>Now that the Titan II ICBM force has finally been retired, the USAF is
>reworking a bunch of them into medium launchers.
Called the Titan II SLV. They have been launched twice so far. There is
a plan to produce a solid booster assisted version for an SDI related launch.

>Titan III is a Titan II with two great big solid strap-ons.  There were
>a number of different versions, notably IIIC (general heavy-load USAF
>booster), IIIM (meant to launch the cancelled MOL military space station),
>34D (slightly upgraded IIIC)...
Add IIIA, a IIIC with no boosters, used for the first four tests. Also
IIID, a IIIC with no Transtage & with radio guidance used for Big Bird & KH11.
Titan Centaur was Titan IIIE. The 34D in its East coast version replaced
the IIIC and could be fitted with the IUS as well as the Transtage
though this was apparently only done once, in 1982, for a DSCS launch.
The West coast version replaced the Titan IIID. 

>... and IV (latest variant, longer SRBs and other small improvements). 
> Current US heavy expendable.  Various upper
>stages, notably Transtage (small liquid stage) and Centaur, were used.
>Titan-Centaur was used for Voyager, among other things.  The latest
>versions now fly with the shuttle IUS or the intended-for-shuttle fat-
>tank Centaur as an upper stage.
Titan 34D commercial variant ("Titan 3") and Titan IV are the only ones 
remaining in use. See "Space" September/October 1989 for more details of
Titan IV.
 Both are identifiable by their huge shrouds, commercial Titan's is made in
Europe, while Titan IV's allows it to carry an IUS or Centaur. They now
look very like the old Titan Centaur at first glance.

>The USAF's Thor IRBM (which used some Atlas technology, notably engines)
>was turned into a small launcher with the addition of a modest upper
>stage... Somewhere along the way it was renamed Delta.  
Original launcher was called Thor Delta, as I'm sure you know, but
didn't say. Thor was also used with Agena, Burner 2 and in a few other
minor variants including the version used to launch the Block 5D USAF metsats
where the satellite also provided the upper stage and guidance for the
whole stack.

>The Japanese
>H-1 is a Delta spinoff, incidentally, with a new liquid-hydrogen upper
>stage (which McDonnell Douglas would like to buy back except it's not
>for sale).
I gather they have to buy Delta fuel (kerosene) from Japan also, as it
is no longer made in the US.

>The Scout is practically the only one of the bunch that isn't a missile
>derivative.  
Granted the origins of Saturn, you can say THE only one. 

Hope these additions are useful, and not a source of confusion,

Nick


-- 
Nick Watkins, Space & Plasma Physics Group, School of Mathematical
& Physical Sciences, Univ. of Sussex, Brighton, E.Sussex, BN1 9QH, ENGLAND
JANET: nickw@syma.sussex.ac.uk   BITNET: nickw%syma.sussex.ac.uk@uk.ac

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End of SPACE Digest V10 #263
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