Titan I missile drawings--detailed but not complete

[PeterAlway]

Someone's been looking for Titan I data. Here's some:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1965017028.pdf

I hope this helps.

Peter Alway

[luke strawwalker]

Hey, Thanks a lot, Peter... that's a big help!

I actually measured the interstage on the Titan I at CCAFS while I was there a couple weeks ago (and took tons of pics of the rockets in the rocket garden there) and my measurement came out at 99.75 inches, which agrees pretty close to the drawing dimension of 98.75... course I might have been measuring from the wrong side of the weld or something too... and I didn't have a real measuring tape, just a sheet of paper from a notebook to end over end measure with.

Thanks! I appreciate it! Saved this study to the computer!
I'll have to snip and summarize it later on...

Thanks again! OL JR

[NJRick]

Hey Luke...is the Titan 1 your favorite missile/rocket of all time? I know you have been looking for detailed drawings for quite some time.

Hey, Thanks a lot, Peter... that's a big help!

I actually measured the interstage on the Titan I at CCAFS while I was there a couple weeks ago (and took tons of pics of the rockets in the rocket garden there) and my measurement came out at 99.75 inches, which agrees pretty close to the drawing dimension of 98.75... course I might have been measuring from the wrong side of the weld or something too... and I didn't have a real measuring tape, just a sheet of paper from a notebook to end over end measure with.

Thanks! I appreciate it! Saved this study to the computer!
I'll have to snip and summarize it later on...

Thanks again! OL JR

[luke strawwalker]

Hey Luke...is the Titan 1 your favorite missile/rocket of all time? I know you have been looking for detailed drawings for quite some time.

Thanks for asking, but no not really... I think it has pretty elegant lines, with the transition from the 10 foot lower diameter to the 8 foot upper diameter, and with the interestingly shaped RV warhead on top... I've thought of building a model of it, though...

I've been tinkering with ideas since I read a thread on the alternate history forum about what would have happened if the Cuban Missile Crisis had turned into WW III. It's a given that the USSR and most of Europe would be a smoking radioactive ruin, but the US would have actually come through it fairly decently-- they Russians only had a handful of ICBM's at the time capable of hitting us, and their SLBM forces were just getting started good, and their long range bombers would have had a distinct disadvantage against our air defences at the time, while our Atlases and Titan I's could EASILY have struck them hard, and SAC was basically at the height of its power, or very close to it... the idea that had the Cuban Missile Crisis turned nuclear that all of humanity would have been destroyed is actually rather rediculous... don't get me wrong, it would have been BAD and probably close to a billion people would have died, and radiation would have circled the planet from high-level fallout injected into the stratosphere, so probably we'd have had it worse from dust and smoke from our own weapons detonating on Soviet soil crossing the Pacific and dusting the US, and nuclear winter (which was completely not known or understood at the time) would have taken a heavy toll... I sorta took this idea and ran a "what if" type scenario from there...

After the war, the US would have been very badly economically hurt. A few cities would have been bombed or severely damaged from attacks on nearby military or strategic installations, so millions of people would be displaced. The vast majority of America would have been 'perfectly intact' but with the virtual collapse of the economic system, things would rapidly grind to a halt and the Great Depression would start looking healthy by comparison, probably within a few months. We'll assume (as the thread did) that Kennedy got killed in the war, and Johnson took over. In this climate of having to rebuild the US and protect it militarily, while at the same time controlling domestic unrest and upheaval at home (undoubtedly through martial law) there would be a distinct shift to the conservative hawkish tendencies in leadership, among the military and the executive branch, with the idea of "never again", at ANY cost... China, which was developing the bomb at the time (and test detonated their first weapon in 64) would have been our "new enemy" and the military would be tasked with reserving and rebuilding their capabilities to strike China if needed. Johnson would have signed orders giving priority to producing as many Minuteman missiles "as necessary" to protect the US and give us a complete and overwhelming capability. It's also likely the hawks would have adopted a policy of *not allowing* ANY hostile or potentially hostile state from ever again developing the capability to strike the US mainland with nuclear weapons ever again. (After all, just think what would have happened if the war hadn't occurred until the early 70's or early 80's, when both we and they had enough weapons to destroy the planet!) IE Pre-emptive war... With the US facing massive rebuilding of the relatively few bombed areas, a nationwide crop failure in '63 due to the unforeseen nuclear winter, riots and hunger in significant parts of the US, economic depression, and a lingering threat from abroad (even though China suffered much more from fallout blowing down from the Soviet Union, with the resultant effects leading to a worldwide epidemic similar to 1918, only this time the "Peking flu" kills about 90 million worldwide instead of 30 million like 1918). The US faces hard choices, and NASA is something that simply cannot be afforded any longer. Wally Schirra's "Sigma 7" had been the last flight before the war, and NASA Administrator James Webb made a persuasive argument about how demonstrating the US's continuing capability to launch manned spacecraft would send a message to the world that "we are still in business", Johnson approved Gordo Cooper's "Faith 7" mission in mid-63... while Gordo brought back lots of interesting photographs of the damage to Soviet territory, Europe, and the strange "shroud effect" of smoke and haze hanging over the northern hemisphere due to smoke and ash from the war (which luckily didn't affect the southern hemisphere very much) his mission raised as many hackles as it did garner national pride... to a suffering US citizenry, it was a sign of a disconnected gov't, wasting efforts on frivilous space missions while the country was beginning to suffer a crop failure from the bitter cold weather that hung on all spring and the unseasonably cool weather that destroyed the crops in the summer of 63. Gordo's goodwill tour basically fell flat on its face... after a brief surge of national pride, common folks simply had too much else bitterly pressing in on them and soon were decrying the government waste... By the fall of 63, Johnson took the hard decisions that the numbers and his advisors had been telling him since late summer-- in November of 1963, Johnson signed the orders that officially put NASA out of business, for all intents and purposes, while massively re-allocating the available resources to satellite reconnaissance under the Air Force. Most of the NASA technicians and scientists soon found them working for the Air Force or its contractors on improved secret spysats to figure out what the Red Chinese were doing, along with everybody else, to protect our country. Von Braun's dreams were shattered, as the "folly" of the moon mission gave way to the pressing needs of national defense, and he found himself sidelined, managing a frozen rump of an administration after Webb left in late 64 after putting NASA "in mothballs" as best he could, hoping for the day it could be "resurrected". With no competitor any more and no reason to waste money on "frivilous" moon missions, the Apollo program was permanently mothballed (IE canceled) in late 63, as was the nascent Mercury Mark II "Gemini" program, which was stillborn. With the conclusion of the Mercury Program, NASA itself was retired, with NO plans for manned space vehicles in the future... (except for a secret Air Force project called "Dyna Soar", but nobody knew if the nation would have the resources available to pull it off... with the ex-NASA whiz kids all pulling to get advanced spysats up and running, it was looking like this was the best way forward anyway). Von Braun could only try to keep the idea of NASA alive, keep its basic structures and institutions alive in some form or fashion, and look at the deteriorating half-finished Saturn infrastructure and dream of what might have been-- and what might be, SOMEDAY... maybe...

After the devastating decade of the 60's, with its turmoil and social unrest and martial law finally behind it, the nation was starting to revive in 1972... the worst of the Depression was over; in fact, the Federal Rebuilding Administration put millions of Americans back to work, rebuilding destroyed cities and cleaning up contamination zones that were "unrecoverable" so they at least would be contained. The massive public project had partially revived the economy, but it had shrunk from the years of depression and was slow to grow back. With the work of the FRA now largely behind it, what was needed was a NEW project... something to prove to a shaken people that we COULD excel, that we COULD do great things... something an idealistic young President had proposed, but which was no discounted... but perhaps, just perhaps, if finessed in just the right way, a Moon program could be distanced from its Cold War competition and "saber-rattling" past and be used to reinvigorate the US, give it something to aspire to, and employ hundreds of thousands in the process... it would have to be done one step at a time... the US population was still reeling from the events of the preceding decades and the tense relationship between the US and Red China, but maybe that national patriotism could be leveraged into support... if it's spun right... It'll have to be done one step at a time...

Perhaps, just perhaps, we could use the existing Titan II infrastructure to build a new heavy lift rocket... the earlier Titan I used in the war was kerosene fuelled, and the rocket scientists said that was a better fuel for space launches than storable propellants used in the newer missile versions of Titan, or the solids used in Minuteman, Polaris, and Poseidon... Titan I even got another production run right after the war, missiles which are now outdated, which the rocket guys say can be adapted to be liquid rocket boosters flanking the new "Barbarian" space launch vehicle they've been proposing for thier newest and largest spysats (which they say can read a typewritten page sitting on a desk visible through a window in Beijing, if they're right). The rocket guys even think that perhaps they can lift a page from Von Brauns old book (even though he's retired now) and strap seven of these old Titan I first stages together into a MASSIVE new first stage... maybe use the tanks off the Titan II to carry more propellant, with some work, maybe it'll work... 3.5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff... that could do it! Maybe a new upper stage, with the liquid hydrogen version of LR-87 that they were tinkering with years ago... that could work...

Course there's a few "graybeards" suggesting we just dust off Von Braun's plans, but most of that stuff hasn't seen daylight in years, and wasn't too far along when it was all canceled. They talk about F-1's with 1.5 million pounds of thrust EACH and say the LR-87 is puny by comparison, BUT, they overlook the fact that F-1 was never finished, where LR-87 has been in the silos for over a decade and launcing spysats for nearly as long... they mention reviving the plans for J-2, but RL-10's have been pushing spysat second stages into orbit for nearly a decade. They make the case we need a more powerful hydrogen second stage engine, but they were tinkering with a hydrogen LR-87 years ago, and even test fired it, though we never developed it. That should make a good combination... kerosene LR-87 powered first stage, hydrogen LR-87 second stage, and RL-10 cluster on the third stage... Revive the old "Mercury Mark II" (we need a snappy new name for it though... maybe "GEMINI"...) and put that on top, and we've got a start... the rocket guys tell me for the short term, we'll have to do some missions in low Earth orbit to learn how to do this stuff again, and how to rendezvous and go to the moon, since it's obvious we can't do a direct-ascent mission-- we just don't have the money... They suggest we start testing the ideas by strapping THREE of the kerosene Titan I/II's together, a core and two liquid boosters, to launch the early Gemini's... Then maybe strap FIVE of them together, four boosters and a core, which can loft a pretty big payload, or a capsule and sizeable payload, or a capsule and powerful upper stage, maybe enough to go to the moon...

That should make for a NICE start to "The Phoenix Project"...

Does that answer your question??

Later! OL JR

PS. Am I nuts, yeah, probably...

[PeterAlway]

A bit more on the Titan I: This time a wind tunnel model of the top end with the big ugly blunt RV: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1965018601.pdf

Peter Alway

[PeterAlway]

Even more wind tunnel model stuff: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1971068136.pdf

Peter Alway

[PeterAlway]

Here's a wind-tunnel model of the complete missile including different noses! http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1971064983.pdf

Peter Alway

[luke strawwalker]

Wow, those are great! Thanks Peter for digging those up. You seem to have the touch when it comes to finding good stuff on the NTRS thing... I seem to get about 10,000 returns of mostly related minutae with little actual usable studies...

Later and Thanks again! OL JR

[Meatball 1]

Nice finds, Peter. This is great stuff.