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The military's interest in rockets was not limited to lobbing warheads, they took a very early interest in using rockets to put things into orbit. The first US
by jlgreco 13y ago
The military's interest in rockets was not limited to lobbing warheads, they took a very early interest in using rockets to put things into orbit.
The first US satellite, the Explorer 1, was kicked off by the Army and the first stage of the Juno rocket that launched it was a modified Redstone, an Army ballistic missile (not an ICBM).
Skipping forward to manned flight, the first two US manned Mercury missions (1961) used extended Redstones again for sub-orbital launches. The next four Mercury missions (1962-1963) used modified Atlas rockets (Atlas LV-3B's specifically, which were man-rated Atlas D's) These Atlas rockets were America's first ICBMs. Atlas rockets continued to be used for space launches for several more years, launching target vehicles for docking with during Gemini, launching a few space probes, etc. Literally dozens of Atlas D ICBMs were used as launch vehicles for damn near half a century. Some of the first GPS satellites were put up on Atlas rockets.
The Gemini missions (1965-1966) continued this tradition, all using man-rated Titan IIs (ICBMs, but with more redundancy for reliability). In the years that followed, the Titan II continued to be used for satellite launches, and like the Atlas, spawned a successful line of derivative launch vehicles.
The point that I am making here is that ICBMs worked swimmingly as launch vehicles, and weren't just pushed onto NASA for a task that they weren't fit to perform. Slap a Centaur/Agena/etc on top and they can do a hell of a lot, and with a few added redundancies, they got men into space brilliantly. Redstones/Atlas's/Titan IIs made quality launch vehicles. We are by no means talking "minimal overlap".
It wasn't until 1968, less than a year before putting a man on the moon, that NASA used a non-ICBM derived launch vehicle for a manned mission (The Saturn 1B, with Apollo 7, and a few short months later with the famous Saturn V, for Apollo 8).
- dragonwriter 13y ago> The point that I am making here is that ICBMs worked swimmingly as launch vehicles, and weren't just pushed onto NASA for a task that they weren't fit to perform. Since the task of an ICBM and the task of an orbital launch vehicle are virtually indistinguishable, that shouldn't be all that surprising. It's the same task, just with a different payload.
- jlgreco 13y agoExactly. An ICBM getting something up there and moving sideways fast is doing the same thing as a launch vehicle getting something up there and moving sideways fast. ICBM technology is rocket technology, rocket technology is ICBM technology. The place where they really start to differentiate is the return vehicles. ICBM reentry vehicles have different requirements than other sort of reentry vehicles (basically they should have properties that make them harder to track and shoot down) but even then the physics is all the same physics.
- mturmon 13y agoMy main point is that a space exploration capability is more than just rocketry. You are right, the rocket boosters were originally military-developed, and even today, many launch vehicles have heritage in the military. But, as we move past the first phase of the space program (demonstration orbiters), and NASA started to design capsules for astronauts and complex remote sensing instruments, rocketry became a smaller piece of the technology pie. I tried to amplify this point by noting examples where NASA-DoD partnerships have fizzled, mainly due to cultural/technology mismatches. The reason I replied to the comment is that it referred to SpaceX not having a DoD minder, as if that distinguishes SpaceX from today's NASA. There is no DoD minder calling the shots at NASA, so this struck me as a weird thing to say. (I have worked at JPL for many years...not on rockets. ;-)