Pat Flannery wrote in message ...
Jim Davis wrote:

The number probably reads 67D, which would make it the unmanned
Mercury-Atlas 2 (MA-2) launch of February 21, 1961.


Speaking of Atlas rockets- last night I was watching the Discovery Wings
channel, and their program "Secret Satellite" about the Corona program.
At one point they show footage of what appears to be a Atlas-Agena (it's
from quite a distance, so it's a bit hard to be certain) in which the
unfueled rocket is sitting on the pad when the Agena falls off the top
as the Atlas suffers a Lox tank failure and comes apart like shredding
aluminum foil- does anyone know about this particular incident? Did the
Lox tank lose it's nitrogen stabilizing pressure, or was it
over-pressurized and rupture?
It might have been a Thor-Agena, but it looked more Atlas-Agena to me.


According to Joel Powell on the Yahoo Group - Missile Talk:

"The first (and only) book about Atlas was published way back in 1960:
John Chapman's "Atlas, The Story of a Missile.

I am pleased to announce that the long wait for a
follow-on Atlas book is over - Apogee Books will publish "Atlas - The
Ultimate Weapon, By Those Who Built It" in the Spring of 2005. The
author is
Chuck Walker, a former General Dynamics (Convair-Astronautics)
engineer who
was involved in the development and planning of the Atlas missile from
1953
through the 1960's. The book covers the development and testing of
Atlas
from the MX-774 precursor in 1948 to the Atlas A prototype in 1957-58.
Construction of the Atlas D, E and F bases are covered in detail, as
is the
testing, deployment (and decommissioning) of the Atlas weapons from
1959 to
1965.

The second part of the book covers Atlas' second career as a space
booster from the SCORE orbital flight in late 1958 to the upcoming
retirement
of the original balloon-tank Atlas in February 2005. A complete
chronology
of all 582 Atlas launches is included in the appendices. This book
will be
extensively illustrated with many unique photographs from the former
Convair
archives now housed at the San Diego Aerospace Museum.
Details such as the page count, format and price are not yet
available,
but the author or myself (contributing editor) would be happy to
answer
inquiries about the book (see attachment). Details should be released
early
next year at the website of Apogee Books.

Joel Powell"




- Rusty Barton