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Tales of the IGY
On Tue, 23 Sep 2003 20:50:21 GMT, Doug...
wrote: In article , says... snip some truly excellent stuff Well, Andrew and Doug, you only have yourself to blame. I should not be encouraged. Oh, yes you should! That was wonderful. More. Please. ....And while you're at it...Henry? How about reposting your correction submissions? OM -- "No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society - General George S. Patton, Jr |
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Tales of the IGY
In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote: More. Please. ...And while you're at it...Henry? How about reposting your correction submissions? More commentary than corrections... In article , Len wrote: ...The U.S. was trying to preserve the "research" heritage by deriving the first stage from the Viking, rather than from a ballistic missile. The Vanguard was a rather sophisticated vehicle for its time... I note with interest that in his book, Kurt Stehling (Vanguard's head of propulsion) says that if the Vanguard launcher had really *been* what it was frequently billed as -- a slightly improved Viking plus a slightly improved Aerobee-Hi plus a solid third stage -- it would probably have been flying a year earlier and probably *would* have launched the first satellite, although only a rather small one. He thought much of Vanguard's grief came from the rather drastic revisions made to increase the performance of both the "existing" stages (the all-new third stage was ready on schedule and never gave the slightest trouble), and that if the Stewart committee had really understood how much new development was involved, it might well have chosen Jupiter C instead. (I'm less sure. I see signs of a familiar pattern: valuing promises of greater immediate science return over getting something flying quickly and then improving it to increase science return. It's terribly tempting to think that there is no need to experiment and evolve if you are smart enough to do it right the first time. As it was, three generations of successively-improved Explorers flew before the first instrumented Vanguard.) official recognition for Jupiter C--which was derived from the Redstone and had a "tub" of, if I recall correctly, 11 solid rockets derived from the WAC Corporal by JPL, surrounding three more of these solid rockets, and topped off with a similar, single, final, fourth rocket stage... Correct. The solid rockets don't seem to have had a name of their own; a JPL paper on them described the design as "a 6-in. OD scale model of an early version of the powerplant of the Sergeant missile", with minor modifications, notably structural reinforcements to the second-stage nozzles to keep them from deflecting outward under spin loads (180G at the design spin rate). ...The modified Redstone could reach orbital altitude, at which point the "tub" of solid rockets was to be spun up to 700 rpm for spin stabilization. Small correction: the tub was already spinning at launch, although the spin rate was actively controlled (and in fact was varied in flight, to stay away from the first-stage body-bending vibration-mode frequencies). I don't know why they did it that way; Vanguard's approach of spinning up the third stage just before ignition was better, although unproven until its flight test on Vanguard TV-1. -- MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! | |
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Tales of the IGY
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