This time we start our listings with last year’s satellite launches - those for 1999 which consisted of 73 launches.
Two spacecraft series are detailed, those of the Soviet ZOND series which explored the Moon and the techniques of manned Moon travel, and also the American KH-9 HEXAGON satellite series which photographed strategic targets on the Earth.
Complete rocket launch histories of the FARSIDE sounding rocket, the THOR-ABLE satellite and probe launcher, the C-1 Soviet satellite launcher, and the TITAN-3C military satellite launcher are covered.
The story this time is of the Soviet GIRD rocket series of launches in the 1930s concurrent with German VfR firings and the American Rocket Society rockets.
We begin with the flight history of the Soviet LUNA programme, which sent various spacecraft to the Moon in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s showing amazing precision in both targeting and recovery of lunar samples collected from the later probes.
Rocket projects covered this time include the British SOLSTICE rocket, the JOURNEYMAN sounding rocket, the TITAN-3B-AGENA-D military satellite launcher and Robert Goddard's rockets from the 1930s in our story for this edition.
The obscure OV-1 project is covered, and we also cover Space and Missile data for 1975 and 1979 together with additions to our survey of annual satellite launches.
This special edition of Space Lists is about satellite launch failures. Since the space age began on 4th October 1957, there have been hundreds of failures to reach orbit and quite a number of other incidents involved in reaching orbit. The technology has come a long way in those forty-three years, but one thing has not changed - the necessity to reach about 17,500 mph (28,200 kph) to achieve that goal.
What is a launch failure? Is it a launcher that explodes immediately after lift-off, or is it a probe that fails in the last seconds of landing on another planet? Some may say that a rocket destroyed on the pad whilst it is being fuelled is not a launch failure. Others may say that a satellite placed in the wrong type of orbit is not a launch failure, while others may say that a satellite in a slightly inclined geostationary orbit is a failure.
Most of the 385 incidents listed here are obviously failures of one kind or another, some much more extreme than others, but the intention here is to list a representative number of failures and events ranging from the killing of perhaps a thousand people in China to the impact of part of a payload shroud in someone’s back garden in Siberia, not forgetting the cow killed in Cuba in 1960 of course!
A particularly striking comparison between the Soviet and American results of launch failures is that whereas the United States had very little to worry about if a rocket crashed on the way to orbit, with its conclusion in either the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans, the over-land ranges in the Soviet Union resulted in every wayward rocket falling on or near a village or even a town in the downrange area. With that geography even launch successes have their problems. Consider the R-7 derived rocket and the D-1 PROTON rockets and their strap-on liquid boosters. When fired at the slightly different launch azimuths those boosters all fall in an arc at a roughly fixed range and litter the country-side with spent boosters.
About half of all maiden flights of satellite launchers fail to orbit their satellites, and in some instances this is a terrific dent in a nation’s pride. But sometimes this challenge spurs a nation to do marvellous work in the area of launchers - it is a matter of courage, and often a symbol of national technological will.
In the course of documenting the history of British Rocket and Missile Projects it was found that to properly cover all of the subject, two issues of Space Lists would be needed, so welcome to Part One.
Almost half of this edition of Space Lists consists of a British chronology of rockets and missiles dating back to the Second World War, and perhaps most readers will be surprised at the scope and variety of projects in that list. They are arranged in order of firing, as accurately as possible, as a lot of the effort is still secret. Tantalising glimpses of rocket test vehicles have been released over the years, but a lot of this work has been related to the development of guided weapons or pure military research.
Undoubtedly the availability of Woomera in Southern Australia between 1949 and 1980, as a rocket launching base enabled extensive work to be carried out, but the ranges at Aberporth in Wales and at South Uist in the Outer Hebrides played important roles in the development of rocket technology.
One of the biggest development programmes of all was initially termed RED-HEATHEN, begun in 1948, the intention being the development of surface to air missiles for all three Services. These programmes eventually evolved into the THUNDERBIRD for the Army, BLOODHOUND for the RAF and SEASLUG for the Royal Navy, and were essentially similar in size, concept and range, and were large weapons. Second generation missiles came along in the 1960s typified by the RAPIER and SEAWOLF for surface to air defence.
Development of a Medium Range Ballistic Missile called BLUE-STREAK began in the mid-1950s, but by 1960 it was clear that this was simply too ambitious for a Britain still recovering from the War. The space age saved the rocket, for a second life as a space booster, but the addition of international upper stages never quite managed to produce the desired result. Regrettably Britain excluded itself from European rocket development for decades afterwards. One final chance at space came with the BLACK-ARROW in the late 1960s and early 1970s when one satellite, PROSPERO, was orbited, but after cancellation the launch pad was sold to an Australian scrap merchant for A$600.
[Part 2 is in the form of SPACE LISTS 19 - April 2002]
This time we have several features on Sounding Rockets. We have detailed the flight history of both the ASTROBEE-1500 and the JAVELIN (ARGO-D4) rockets, both large vehicles used by NASA and other agencies. In addition we have included all the Sounding Rockets launched in the year 1960 that we can find. Special thanks are due to Willy Jacquemijn and to Jean-Jacques Serra for helping to fill in gaps and give us new launches for this feature. We are currently assembling a list of all Sounding Rocket launches from 1944 to the present day. This list is likely to contain almost 30,000 firings, and will be available both in Space Lists and perhaps on the internet at a later date.
We are also continuing our history of the TITAN flight history in preparation for a Special Issue on this rocket, together with illustrations and photographs. There are also two Space Diaries in this issue, including a repeat of 1980 with all the additions obtained since its first appearance in Space Lists No 5.
Satellite launches for the year 2000 are also included to bring things right up to date, while the story is a continuation of the great pioneer Robert Goddard’s experiments in the 1930s. There are also four pages to update the A to Z of Satellite projects.
This time in Space Lists we have a wide range of subjects, from German rocketry in the 1930s to the US Space Shuttle astronauts.
Three main articles have a common theme through Space Lists No 16. They are the first three major missile programmes in which Wernher von Braun made major contributions. These are the A-4 (V-2), the REDSTONE and the JUPITER-IRBM missiles. The articles research production numbers and actual launch histories for each type.
Two annual Satellite Launch lists are included, these being for 1992 and 1993 which completes the 1957 to 2000 listing started in Space Lists No 1. There are also two more Space & Missile Diaries included, for 1977 and 1978, which completes the run from 1956 to 1980 so far covered in Space Lists.
Finally, the work of Karl Poggensee in 1930 and 1931 is detailed in a small article celebrating his launch of Europe’s first sounding rocket.
It may seem strange to dedicate a whole issue of Space Lists to sounding rockets, but it is a form of introduction to the Space Lists web site at http://www.spacelists.co.uk which will eventually hold records of a total of over 12,000 sounding and test rocket launches. When combined with the firings of the Meteorological Rocket Network (available at a future date), it can be seen that over the last 55 years a total of about 1,000 tons of instruments have been launched into the upper atmosphere and space with this type of rocket.
All of the sounding rockets detailed in this issue are NIKE-boosted types, which used the boost motor developed for the NIKE-AJAX surface to air missile of the early 1950s, as first stage. Not all the types are included here, but a selection starting at the NIKE-DEACON in 1953, through to the NIKE-ORION, which is still used, are given.
The NIKE booster is 16.44”(0.418m) in diameter and 11’1”(3.38m) long, has a quarter inch thick steel case (6.35mm), and uses double-base propellant. Unit weight is 567 kg with the fins adding another 34 kg. The interstage unit varies depending on which upper stage is used and can weigh another 20-30 kg. The 347 kg charge gives an average thrust of 22,090 kg over a 3.5 second burn time, although other marques of motor have variations of those figures. The casing was manufactured by Goodyear, while the propellant was by Hercules/Allegheny Ballistic Laboratory.
Between 1951 and February 1958, production of NIKE-AJAX totalled about 15,500 units. It remained in operational use until the late-1970s, despite being obsolescent by the early 1960s, but during that time about 7,000 were fired in development and training. This left about 8,500 spare boosters for the sounding rocket programme.
The NIKE-HERCULES surface to air missile replaced the NIKE-AJAX, and was in production between 1958 and 1962, during which over 15,000 were made, but this larger missile used a cluster of four NIKE boosters as first stage, making 60,000 NIKE motors. During development and training, about 5,000 were fired, leaving about 40,000 NIKE motors left over. When added to the 8,500 from the NIKE-AJAX programme, perhaps up to 48,500 NIKE motors were available for the sounding rocket programme, although a figure of 40,000 is probably more realistic.
When the NIKE-CAJUN was first produced in 1956, the price per round was
quoted as being $5,500, so the investment in this programme alone over the 590
launches listed here was $3,245,000 in 1956 dollars. Unit cost for the
NIKE-APACHE was $6,000 in 1961, with about an equal split between each stage of
the rocket.
Details given of the scientific projects carried out with the payloads in these
sounding rockets covers a wide range of disciplines, and was an essential
addition to the early satellite instruments developments in the late 1950s and
early 1960s.
This issue of Space Lists celebrates both ends of the rocket and space programmes of the world. America’s most modern satellite launch vehicle, the TITAN-4 has its flight history documented, while the German REPULSOR series of liquid propellant rockets of the 1930s are covered in an article at the back of this issue.
We have begun a listing of the first fifty launches of the Russian PROTON (D-1) launcher, which is the biggest ex-Soviet launcher which has been commercialised. Of the same era, we have an article on the US SATURN-5 moon rocket and reveal that its stack was made up of 97 rockets.
Topically, we have a listing of the mail-rocket flights of Gerhard Zucker, for whom a movie film is being made in the near future. There are more Space Diaries and an annual Satellite launch listing, while the high-speed re-entry test rocket X-17 has its flights documented.
Also listed are all the sounding rockets launched during the International Geophysical Year.
UPDATE ON SPACE LISTS No17. Following distribution of Space Lists No17, which focused on some NIKE-based sounding rocket flight histories, we have had some response from a reader. We were sent a huge lists of American sounding rocket launches from 1945 to 1995, and it includes many non-NASA launches which we did not have. For example there are an additional 56 NIKE-CAJUN launches for 1962 alone! This is a major step to our goal of finding every major rocket launch of the space programme.
This edition of Space Lists is the Part Two of a study of British rocket, missile and satellite projects. Both these parts document those projects which reached the hardware-stage, rather than the large number of projects which didn’t reach the “metal-bending” phase.
This part of the work has nearly eighty pages, while that for Part One had about seventy pages. Even now it is clear that to complete the picture, several more articles are needed. These include space and missile proposals, missiles that do not specifically use rockets for propulsion, and most important of all, liquid rocket engines. The latter has proved to be a much more complicated story than originally envisaged, but will be covered fully at a later date.
This issue of Space Lists has three “all-British” satellite projects, six rocket projects, and a section detailing UK solid rocket motor types. Another significant section is a picture gallery, which is an addition to the UK rocket & missile chronology of Part One, where additional pictures, from contributors, and obscure files that have been thrown up since Space Lists No 14 was published.
After a suitable period of consolidation, both parts of this study will be re-edited and published as a book, later in 2002, and subscribers to Space Lists will be informed. Our website will also give details later in the year.
In this issue of Space Lists we have added another project to the series of early Moon exploration spacecraft. This one is PIONEER, which began in 1958 with Moon probes, but by the end of the series, in the 1970s, involved sending spacecraft to Jupiter and Saturn.
Last year’s satellite launch list, that for 2001, is given and shows that year having fewer launches than any year since 1961. This has been due to an even sharper decline in launches by the ex-USSR.
There are two space diaries presented, one for 1984 and the other is an up-dated 1960 diary. 1960 was the first diary presented in Space Lists No1, chosen to represent a year when the launch rate really picked up in Space and Missile launches. In the original printing it contained 396 launches. As a result of so many readers making contributions from then-unknown sources, this updated diary now contains 905 launches, more than double the original content. One side effect of adding all these new rocket firings is that gaps which represent Sundays and holidays at launch sites now show up. August and late December/early January have very few launches, while hardly any American launches are made on a Sunday unless planetary targets or military needs dictate.
Another major missile launch list begun in this issue is that for MINUTEMAN. Since 1959 over 800 launches have been made with firings still being made, with nine in 2000 and several last year.
Continuing our coverage of early German rocket work, we have the story of Wernher von Braun’s A-1 and A-2 rockets of the series where A-4 was the V-2.