Photos of Minuteman air launch

For air-launch aficionados out there - you will have heard of the
USAF's test airdrops of a Minuteman from a C-5A in 1974, with
the first stage live and fired. Just saw a note in rec.aviation.military
pointing to some long-range pictures of the drop:
http://www.siloworld.com/MINUTEMAN/A.../airmobile.htm

Sort of cute to note how small the B-66 flying chase looks next to
the carrier plane.


Bill Keel

William C. Keel wrote:
For air-launch aficionados out there - you will have heard of the
USAF's test airdrops of a Minuteman from a C-5A in 1974, with
the first stage live and fired. Just saw a note in rec.aviation.military
pointing to some long-range pictures of the drop:
http://www.siloworld.com/MINUTEMAN/A.../airmobile.htm

Sort of cute to note how small the B-66 flying chase looks next to
the carrier plane.


Bill Keel

Here are some PDF documents that have color pictures of the event:

Trade Studies for Air Launching a Small Launch Vehicle from a Cargo
Aircraft
(photo of C-5A preparing to air launch Minuteman)
http://www.airlaunchllc.com/AIAA-2005-0621.pdf

A Study of Air Launch Methods for RLVs
(photo of C-5A preparing to air launch Minuteman)
http://mae.ucdavis.edu/faculty/sarig...a2001-4619.pdf

Loadmasters
http://www.loadmasters.com/loader_is...er_15Nov00.pdf


Rusty

On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, William C. Keel wrote:

For air-launch aficionados out there - you will have heard of the
USAF's test airdrops of a Minuteman from a C-5A in 1974, with
the first stage live and fired. Just saw a note in rec.aviation.military
pointing to some long-range pictures of the drop:
http://www.siloworld.com/MINUTEMAN/A.../airmobile.htm

Cool pictures.

Now, where can I find photos, or film, of MX launch tests? I refer to the
original scheme where-- to keep spy satellites guessing-- the MX would ride
around on railcars concealed somewhere in a miles-long underground rail
network.

If I understand correctly, on launch the roof of the tunnel was to be blown
off, then the missile was erected and launched.

Later, this scheme was abandoned in favor of more conventional silos.

I once saw a photo sequence in a magazine. Real Gerry Anderson stuff.
Would like to see more. A video would be even more interesting.

--
Engineer of Hijacked Train: Bill Higgins
"Is this a holdup?"
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Masked Gunman:
(Hesitates, looks at partner,
looks at engineer again)
"It's a science experiment!" Internet:

Bill Higgins wrote:

original scheme where-- to keep spy satellites guessing-- the MX would ride
around on railcars concealed somewhere in a miles-long underground rail
network.

If I understand correctly, on launch the roof of the tunnel was to be blown
off, then the missile was erected and launched.

Later, this scheme was abandoned in favor of more conventional silos.

IIRC, the miles-long underground tunnel was an early concept that did
not progress very far. Before the eventual conventional silos, the
basing methods that was further developed were the multiple protective
shelters or "racetrack", and the "dense pack".

Racetrack had 23 (IIRC) horizontal shelters spaced some distance apart
on a closed loop road. Each racetrack would have one MX on a launcher
that would be moved between the shelters. The shelter spacing was
intended to be far enough apart to require an RV (or two) targeted to
each shelter for a counterforce attack against the MX. The shelters
were an evolutionary descendant of the buried coffins used by Atlas.

Dense pack put super-hardened silos in a small area of land so that
RV's targeted on nearby silos would face fratricide from each other.

"Rusty" wrote in message
oups.com...
http://www.airlaunchllc.com/AIAA-2005-0621.pdf

Great quote from this paper (p. 10):

"Gravity has been around for billions of years so it is very reliable."

On p. 11, there's this gem:

"The sled's weight ... would generate a lot of TFOA (Things Falling Off of
the Aircraft)."

Musta had a few drinks while they were writing captions for the line art...


Jim McCauley

Mike Chan wrote:
Bill Higgins wrote:

original scheme where-- to keep spy satellites guessing-- the MX would ride
around on railcars concealed somewhere in a miles-long underground rail
network.

If I understand correctly, on launch the roof of the tunnel was to be blown
off, then the missile was erected and launched.

Later, this scheme was abandoned in favor of more conventional silos.

IIRC, the miles-long underground tunnel was an early concept that did
not progress very far. Before the eventual conventional silos, the
basing methods that was further developed were the multiple protective
shelters or "racetrack", and the "dense pack".

Racetrack had 23 (IIRC) horizontal shelters spaced some distance apart
on a closed loop road. Each racetrack would have one MX on a launcher
that would be moved between the shelters. The shelter spacing was
intended to be far enough apart to require an RV (or two) targeted to
each shelter for a counterforce attack against the MX. The shelters
were an evolutionary descendant of the buried coffins used by Atlas.

Dense pack put super-hardened silos in a small area of land so that
RV's targeted on nearby silos would face fratricide from each other.

A rail-garrison concept was also seriously contemplated for awhile.
The missiles would have been moved across the existing rail network
(presumably in the wide-open-spaces of the Western Plains) in special
rail cars disguised to look a bit like box cars, except that they were
much too big to be confused for anything but missile carriers! See,
for
example, "http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/icbm/lgm-118.htm".

- Ed Kyle

Ed Kyle wrote:

See, for example, "http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/icbm/lgm-118.htm".

Which notes, "The defense establishment examined nearly forty basing
modes..."

That was sort of a Cambrian Explosion of basing concepts, some of which
were quite baroque. I was particularly fond of the quicksand pit
proposal.

I remember being in an Air Force briefing about their evaluation of the
various concepts while all this was going on. There was much technical
detail about overpressures and the like, but no apparent connection to
a quantitative force survivability criterion. (E.g., 95% probability
that 50 or more of a 100-MX force would survive a 2-on-1 SS-18
counterforce attack.) Presumably that would have derived from a
higher-level requirement for destroying a certain Soviet target set
after riding out the counterforce attack.

Certain that I had missed something, I asked about it; one can guess
what the answer was.

On Fri, 27 Jan 2006, Ed Kyle wrote:
Mike Chan wrote:
Bill Higgins wrote:

original scheme where-- to keep spy satellites guessing-- the MX would ride
around on railcars concealed somewhere in a miles-long underground rail
network.

If I understand correctly, on launch the roof of the tunnel was to be blown
off, then the missile was erected and launched.

IIRC, the miles-long underground tunnel was an early concept that did
not progress very far.

So I gather from my googling.

Before the eventual conventional silos, the
basing methods that was further developed were the multiple protective
shelters or "racetrack", and the "dense pack".

The scheme I recall was pre-racetrack, pre-dense-pack, and very much
pre-rail-garrison.

I think I saw a sequence of small photos in *Time*, possibly in the Carter
era. They showed a test sequence where the roof of the underground shelter
was deliberately destroyed, then the launcher was erected.

Are these photos findable on-line? Do videos exist?

A rail-garrison concept was also seriously contemplated for awhile.
The missiles would have been moved across the existing rail network
(presumably in the wide-open-spaces of the Western Plains) in special
rail cars disguised to look a bit like box cars, except that they were
much too big to be confused for anything but missile carriers! See,
for
example, "http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/icbm/lgm-118.htm".

Good history of the program, as one would expect from FAS.

As I said, the test I am recalling was from the late Seventies, long
before the rail-garrison scheme became official.

--
Kepler: "Did you know that Tycho, my boss, | Bill Higgins
had an artificial nose?" | Fermi National
Galileo: "An artificial nose! | Accelerator Laboratory
How did he smell?" | Internet:
Kepler: "Terrible!" |

On Fri, 27 Jan 2006, wrote:

Ed Kyle wrote:

See, for example, "http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/icbm/lgm-118.htm".

Which notes, "The defense establishment examined nearly forty basing
modes..."

That was sort of a Cambrian Explosion of basing concepts, some of which
were quite baroque. I was particularly fond of the quicksand pit
proposal.

I would love to hear more about the "quicksand pit proposal."

(Hey! You're quoted in *Wired* this month!

--
Creative use of management fads by David Dyer-Bennet: | Bill Higgins
"I've done one thing: The Minicon33 homepage | Fermilab
now gives you a randomly chosen vision statement |
at the top when you load it." | Internet:
(See http://www.mnstf.org/minicon33) |

In message , Jim McCauley
writes
"Rusty" wrote in message
roups.com...
http://www.airlaunchllc.com/AIAA-2005-0621.pdf

Great quote from this paper (p. 10):

"Gravity has been around for billions of years so it is very reliable."

On p. 11, there's this gem:

"The sled's weight ... would generate a lot of TFOA (Things Falling Off of
the Aircraft)."

Musta had a few drinks while they were writing captions for the line art...


TFOA seems to be widely used, though the Free Online Dictionary
http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/TFOA only has one other meaning
(there are a lot more).