How long to space w/o ICBMs?

Rusty wrote:


Wasn't the Viking design based on V-2 technology in the beginning?

Rusty



There was obviously a lot of input in the design from examination of how
the V-2 was made and worked, right down to the choice of propellants.
But Aerobee was pretty much an all-American design, and you can see it
evolving on its own even if there hadn't been a V-2.
The trick is the timeframe...having the V-2 to serve as a example that a
large rocket was possible served as a major incentive to build them, and
I think things would have advanced slower without it. Certainly we never
had the incentive to build something big along the lines of Goddard's
"basic rocket" in the 1930's.

Pat