First Titan Launch, Fifty Years Ago Today

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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first successful flight of a Titan missile — in this case, a Titan-I — from Cape Canaveral. From there the variants of the Titan family took shape, including:

  • The Titan-34D, the test firing of which I was involved in at Edwards AFB
  • The Titan-IV … I have a piece of one on the desk in my office
  • The Titan-IVB, for which I helped get some of the support and maintenance facilities built

The Titan was a vital part of the U.S. launch fleet for many years, and I’m proud to have been a (small) part of the program.

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50 Years Ago in Space History — Plus Two

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Fifty years ago today — February 5, 1959 — NASA formed a working group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to lay the groundwork for what would become the Apollo lunar exploration program. I find that interesting, since it pre-dates President Kennedy’s challenge to achieve a moon mission by the end of the 60s.

Two additional tidbits today:

First, I feel really bad for missing another big space anniversary. Fifteen years ago Tuesday (February 3, 1994), Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-60. This was the SPACEHAB-02 and Wake Shield Facility-1 mission, and included astronauts Charles F. Bolden, Kenneth S. Reightler, Jr., N. Jan Davis, Ronald M. Sega, Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, and first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard the Space Shuttle, Sergei K. Krikalev.

Why do I feel particularly bad about missing this one? Because I wrote speeches for Ron Sega as my last assignment in the Air Force, when he was the Under Secretary, and he presided over my retirement ceremony:

(Click for larger image)

And finally: it takes a long time to print out nearly 600 manuscript pages. I’ve got several copies of the MS about ready to mail out to early readers, but I got those done at the copy shop. I’m printing out another one here at home, and it’s taking a lot longer than I expected. And the printer has started making funny noises …

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A Day Late and a Dollar Short …

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… as my dad says.

Yesterday, in my zeal to comment on the Iranian satellite launch — which all too few people seem to recognize as a danger — I missed a space anniversary.*

On February 3, 1984, the Space Shuttle Challenger launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-41B. Astronauts Vance D. Brand, Robert L. Gibson, Bruce McCandless, Ronald E. McNair, and Robert L. Stewart deployed two satellites, Westar-VI and Palapa-B2, but they did not reach orbit because the Payload Assist Module failed. This mission also tested the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), and featured the first untethered space walks by McCandless and Stewart. NASA photograph S84-27562 captured one of the MMU tests and became an iconic photograph of the space age:

(Click for larger image)

You can read more about the STS-41B mission on this NASA page.

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*Okay, I also missed it because I spent the evening at choir practice and on the phone. You caught me.

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Iranian Satellite = Decent Rockets = Serviceable Missiles

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Cross-posted and expanded from the Space Warfare Forum: The top item on Spaceflight Now this morning was a single paragraph about Iran launching a satellite. I expect they’ll expand that as they get more information.

The Reuters story about the launch quotes the Iranian foreign minister saying the satellite was for “purely peaceful purposes,” but what else are they going to say? You think they’re going to say, openly, “Yes, we want to use our new satellite to look at the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and imagine what it will be like once we have destroyed the nation of Israel”?

Of course they say it’s for peaceful purposes.

Kudos to Reuters for pointing out that “The long-range ballistic technology used to put satellites into orbit can also be used for launching weapons,” even though “Iran says it has no plans to do so.” Again, what else are they going to say? I just hope our government — and by that, I mean the upper echelons, outside the military — keep their eyes open as they consider the possibilities.

Finally, an invitation: If you or anyone you know is interested in space policy, space strategy, etc., you’re welcome to join the Space Warfare Forum.

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Lots of Launch Activity on This Day in Space History

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Several notable launches on January 30th in years prior:

30 Years Ago (1979): The “Spacecraft Charging at High Altitude,” or SCATHA satellite, launched from the Eastern Space & Missile Center on a Delta rocket. SCATHA was the first spacecraft with a primary mission to study the space environment near the earth, “to obtain information about the processes and effects of spacecraft charging, a phenomenon known to have contributed to several on-orbit satellite failures.”

40 Years Ago (1969): ISIS-1, the International Satellite for Ionospheric Studies, launched from the Western Space & Missile Center. ISIS-1 was a Canadian-built satellite on a joint U.S./Canadian mission to monitor the Earth’s ionosphere.

45 Years Ago (1964): Ranger-6 launched from ESMC on its way to the Moon. As this NASA page explains,

On February 2, 1964, 65.5 hours after launch, Ranger 6 impacted the Moon on the eastern edge of Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility). The orientation of the spacecraft to the surface during descent was correct, but no video signal was received and no camera data obtained. A review board determined the most likely cause of failure was due to an arc-over in the TV power system when it inadvertently turned on for 67 seconds approximately 2 minutes after launch during the period of booster-engine separation.

That launch on January 30, 1964, was the second launch in as many days from ESMC. I think about those heady days, when on one day you had a test launch of a Saturn rocket and the next a launch of a small satellite as one of the pathfinders to the moon … and I weep that we have gone no further, and done no more.

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Last Day to Register Your Opinion on U.S. Civil Space Policy

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Today is the last day the National Academies will take public inputs for their “report to advise the nation on key goals and critical issues in 21st century U.S. civil space policy.”

This page describes the project and what they are investigating for the report. Click on Questionnaire for Public Input to tell them what you think our civil space program should do.

I submitted my comments yesterday. Submit yours today!

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Space History, Novel Update

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Forty-five years ago today, on January 29, 1964, unmanned Apollo test mission SA-5 launched from the Eastern Space & Missile Center. The mission was the first test flight of the new Block II vehicles, with the S-IV second stage. As noted on this page, the mission was postponed from a January 27th launch attempt, but was otherwise successful.

[Break, Break]

In only tangentially-related news, today I sent my manuscript to be reproduced so I can send copies to a few folks who have volunteered to read it and give me feedback. How much they find that needs fixing will determine how long it’ll be before I can start pitching it to publishers.

We shall see.

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We Told Them, But They Didn’t Listen

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Back in March of 2008, my old boss prompted me to start a new thread in the Space Warfare Forum on whether President Obama might de-weaponize space. Here’s what we wrote then:

Not to overstate the obvious, but space is already weaponized. Not, perhaps, in the form of constantly orbiting weapons platforms, but then again we haven’t seen many proposals for those, have we? But in the form of dedicated platforms necessary to our national defense, space is weaponized. And in the form of recently demonstrated anti-satellite capability that challenges the Senator’s “unproven missile defense systems” line — and that we argued elsewhere were already evolving — the use of weapons in and near space is here today, and probably here to stay.

Fast forward to this weekend, and Reuters reports that “Challenges loom as Obama seeks space weapons ban.” But their article doesn’t seem to consider the already existing uses of space systems to enable terrestrial warfare, instead mentioning that two “officials” said “it was difficult to define exactly what constituted a ‘weapon’ because even seemingly harmless weather tracking satellites could be used to slam into and disable other satellites.”

That example seemed to me to be poorly chosen, but the Reuters folks apparently liked it.

In my follow-up SWF entry, I related what I told my best friend the last time I spoke with him:

I hope President Obama, when he took his first briefings on the very real threats facing us, sat up a little straighter and began to take his responsibility to protect this nation a little more seriously. I hope.

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Space History Yesterday — Clementine

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A day late and a dollar short, as my Dad says, but I couldn’t leave out a launch I actually saw, could I?

Yesterday — January 25, 2009 — was the 15th anniversary of the launch of the Clementine mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. In 1994 I was stationed at Vandy as part of the Titan (launch vehicle) System Program Office, and we watched the Titan-II launch from the parking lot of our building. One of my office-mates — Deb Fort, with whom I was stationed years earlier at the Rocket Lab — worked facilities support for the mission.

Clementine, for those who don’t remember it, was also known as the Deep Space Program Science Experiment, and was “designed to test lightweight miniature sensors and advanced spacecraft components by exposing them, over a long period of time, to the difficult environment of outer space.” So says this Naval Research Lab page, and they should know since they built the thing.

The Clementine mission plays an important role in my novel, MARE NUBIUM, as it was the first mission to return data that indicated ice in craters at the lunar south pole. Even though subsequent data show the ice probably isn’t as plentiful as once thought, it still makes (in my opinion) a good prop for a story.

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What about an Islamic Reformation?

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Typing out loud on twitter* this morning before I got into the day’s work — which, I’m doing this before getting into the day’s work, too — I wondered: what is the possibility that Islam might experience a re-thinking of its doctrines equivalent to the Protestant Reformation?

What cleric might have the courage to be the Muslim version of Martin Luther?

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*Follow me at http://twitter.com/GrayRinehart

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