NEWS: Redstone rocket turns golden today - Huntsville Times

Redstone rocket turns golden today

Arsenal marks test flight that led to space program

08/20/03

The Huntsville Times

By SHELBY G. SPIRES
Times Aerospace Writer


The rocket that took its name from Redstone Arsenal and eventually
would loft America's first astronaut into space was launched on its
first test flight 50 years ago today.

The Redstone was America's earliest and most versatile rocket. It
served as a weapon in Europe, was modified to carry America's first
satellite, the Explorer I, and carried America's first Mercury
astronaut, Alan B. Shepard, into space.


"Really, that rocket, and the propulsion work that went into it, was
the beginning of space for us here," said Alex McCool, who joined the
Redstone engine program in 1954 and today manages the Space Shuttle
Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center. "There wouldn't have
been a space program, or a space shuttle or a trip to the moon without
the Redstone. It's the foundation of what we do today. It was the
beginning of the space program for America."

On Aug. 20, 1953, the Army launched the Redstone rocket from a test
area at Cape Canaveral, Fla. Spitting smoke and fire while pulsing
75,000 pounds of thrust out its exhaust, the Redstone arced out over
the Atlantic Ocean only to miss its intended mark by a few miles.

It wasn't a great disappointment, because test flights were needed to
learn and things generally go wrong in rocket development, said Dr.
Ernst Stuhlinger, a member of Dr. Wernher von Braun's German rocket
team that designed the Redstone missile for the U.S. Army.

"I don't remember specifically what that problem was, but we generally
got it right by the third test. Von Braun had a saying about testing
rockets," Stuhlinger recalled during an interview at his Monte Sano
home. "He would tell us we were like the Navy because a naval
battleship takes three shots to hit a target. It was like that for us
when we tested something."

The Redstone was the Army's first medium-range ballistic missile. It
had a range of about 280 miles and produced 75,000 pounds of thrust
burning liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol. The rocket could loft a
conventional or nuclear warhead at a target.

Developed by the Army at Redstone Arsenal, the Redstone was a direct
descendent of the V-2 that had been developed by the German rocket
scientists at Peenemuende, the German Army's special weapons test and
development area near the Baltic Sea during World War II.

"The Germans had been working on other advanced rockets after they
developed the V-2, and the Redstone used a lot of that work," McCool
said. "They brought a lot of that material with them. They had been
working successfully on rockets throughout the war."

At the end of World War II, shortages in materials, day and night
bombings and the Allied advances had choked off the German scientists'
ability to obtain advanced materials and their work to improve the V-2
or develop any other rocket was limited mostly to paper designs.

"We could not continue any advanced work over in Germany because the
war had developed so far that we were just not allowed by our military
superiors to go into new developments," said Stuhlinger. "They said
'Now you have brought this into being and you are going to produce
it.' "

At the end of the war, the Army found von Braun's team hiding in the
German mountains. They surrendered, and von Braun, Stuhlinger, and
more than 100 other German scientists came to America to continue
rocket development for the Army.

But the Pentagon didn't race to build too many rockets just after
World War II. The Germans spent their time reassembling captured V-2s
and shooting them off in the New Mexico desert at White Sands Proving
Ground.

"There were many people who believed there would be no need for
weapons or rockets after the war. They thought peace would be
permanent," Stuhlinger said. "It really wasn't until 1949 or 1950 with
the Cold War and the Korean War that we were allowed to work again."

The Korean War re-ignited the need for a rocket. The Army wanted one
and it wanted one fast, Stuhlinger said. Newly moved to Huntsville,
the Germans dusted off their improved V-2 plans and set to work
building a new, improved guided missile.

Although the Redstone's lineage can be traced back to the V-2 rocket,
it was a generation beyond the German weapon. The Redstone got the
improvements von Braun and his team were unable to incorporate into
the V-2.

The Redstone had improved fuel tanks that formed the fuselage of the
70-foot rocket, advanced guidance systems, and it used improved fuel
pumps in its engine, Stuhlinger said.

Another major difference was the aerodynamic shape. The V-2's
signature cigar shape was more than a sleek design; the shape allowed
the rocket to fly supersonic to its intended target. The whole rocket
fell out of the sky onto a target area. This cigar shape wasn't needed
for the Redstone, Stuhlinger said, because the Redstone had a
detachable warhead.

"In the V-2 case, the whole thing stayed together up to impact,"
Stuhlinger said. "That was not really very good because on re-entry
when it comes through the atmosphere at a very high supersonic
velocity that's a tremendous mechanical shock for the thing. At the
beginning when we built the V-2, a number of them blew up at the
moment they came through the atmosphere and the warhead was not
effective. It would tumble down and not hit the target.

"In the case of the Redstone, we learned from it, and we had it
separate (at the payload area). We had some air vanes and some little
rocket jets so the payload could control itself with the help of these
jets and these little air vanes" and hit its intended target.

Some items on the Redstone remained the same as the V-2, however,
McCool said. "The Redstone was guided by four control vanes that were
in the rocket exhaust," he said. "That came from the V-2. Rockets
after the Redstone used a moveable, or gimbaled, engine to control it.
The whole engine moved after that. We just weren't ready to
incorporate that into the Redstone at the time."

The Redstone was tested extensively for five years before the Army
accepted it for soldiers to use in the field. In June of 1958 it went
to the Army's inventory in Germany.

Redstones weren't just left to stand as a battlefield weapon. It was
modified for use in America's fledgling space program.

The Oct. 4, 1957, Soviet launch of the Sputnik I satellite brought
fears of Communist-controlled heavens to Americans. President Dwight
Eisenhower wanted to be able to put up an American satellite, and he
turned to von Braun's Army team to do it.

The Redstone was modified into a specially built three-stage rocket,
called the Jupiter-C, and the Explorer I satellite was placed on top
of it. On Jan. 31, 1958, America's first satellite was lofted into
orbit. That launch led to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation
belts.

By the early 1960s, other more powerful rockets and ICBMs had
surpassed the Redstone in capability, but the rocket still had one -
and perhaps its most important - mission to accomplish. It was
modified to carry an astronaut into space.

"Early on von Braun had thought about going into space," McCool said.
"He talked about it in public all the time and the Germans had been
working on rocket designs for it.

"He had worked out plans to modify the Redstone to carry a man early
on, in the mid-1950s, while still working for the Army. They had
talked about putting somebody up in space even then."

The advanced work paid off again. The Redstone was improved with
longer fuel tanks and a more powerful engine, one that could generate
more than 80,000 pounds of thrust, and it was mated with the
single-man Mercury space capsule.

On May 5, 1961, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard blasted off from Cape
Canaveral riding in his Freedom 7 Mercury capsule perched on top of a
Redstone rocket. Shepard was sent 116 miles into space and spent more
than 15 minutes on his suborbital ride.

It was the strength of this successful flight that gave President John
F. Kennedy the confidence to ask a joint session of Congress during a
May 25, 1961, address to commit $20 billion to send a man to the moon
before the end of the 1960s.

"From there we went on to the Saturns and to the moon," Stuhlinger
said. "We were very busy around here during those years."