TODAY TOMORROW AND TITAN III

project Apollo Cape Kennedy Florida objective Perl 45 tons of men and equipment to appoint 250,000 miles away and return the three astronauts safely to earth this dress rehearsal for a round trip to the moon is part of a national commitment with a peaceful exploration of space it is a twenty billion dollar investment in the world of tomorrow by 1970 when the objective is reached we will have a firm foothold on the future the seeds of a deep space capability but Apollo is not a named in itself it is a beginning our total effort is lost intricate mobilization of government industry and science in history it is not necessarily geared to the fascination and excitement that have accompanied Mercury Gemini and Apollo but aimed at an era when space travel is as common as air travel an era when intercontinental ballistic airliners go to and from space ports all over and rocket fleets bring back the wonders of the universe as a matter of routine that content holding momentarily the day is not as distant as it seemed like NASA and the Department of Defense are already turning the theory into reality this is the basic concept that will someday fulfill the dream total maneuverability outside of and within the atmosphere the capability to launch maneuver in orbit withstand reentry and then maneuver inside the atmosphere so that a landing can be made at will it is a concept that is being refined by today's research astronauts men in space who risk their lives in prototype vehicles to determine the requirements of tomorrow when compared to the heralded men of Mercury Gemini and Apollo they're not well-known with rare exceptions their past efforts have been confined to these scientific journals of space but the world of tomorrow is within reach and the chronicle of their success is about to explode on the front page of history this is the United States Air Force titan-3 complex at Cape Kennedy Florida in effect the Titan free launch system is to the Department of Defense what the Saturn Apollo launch system is to NASA it supplies a versatile launch capability for support of future space programs described as a common carrier for space it can accommodate a wide variety of military pay loads including spacecraft in conical lifting body or wing shapes the launch vehicles are no longer assembled on the pad as they were during mercury and Gemini they are built up in stages transferred to the pad and then launched this is called the integrate transfer launch procedure and is the key to titans economy of operation Colonel mark Dakota division chief pikemen three launch on from the launch window which is approximately 180 feet in the air in the vertical integration building of the Titan three launch system I use system because Titan 3 is not just a white bird as you see here but it is an entire system designed for space this is an titan 3c space launch vehicle which is an adaptation of the Titan 2 ballistic missile it also is similar to the Gemini launch vehicle to the basic two-stage Titan 2 we have added yet a third stage or the trans stage we also have added on either side 120 inch diameter solid rocket motors which individually produce nearly a million and a quarter pounds of thrust we put together the parts of the liquid core vehicle in the building in which I'm house now the vertical integration building this is done vertically these stages and the subsystems are checked out completely and when ready they are withdrawn from this building on a large railed transporter by locomotives and transported to the solid motor assembly building in that building simultaneous with the checkout of the core we have been putting together these huge solid rocket motors each of which weighs in excess of 250 tons these motors are assembled in the vertical they are completely checked out and when we bring the transporter in the mobile launcher into the solid motor assembly building by the rail system these are lifted into position as you see them here side by side to the core and mechanically and electrically mated after this has been accomplished then they are moved on out to the launch complex and you see that over my left shoulder or in this direction and the vehicle is put into position for launch on the complex following a series of integrated check mark in which the the total system is checked and the vehicle is fuel we are in a position to go ahead and initiate our launch hero and Rox control go nomadic go for launch commit lights are green t-minus 10 seconds the first manned mission that will utilize Titan 3 is the United States Air Force manned orbiting laboratory a program designed to evaluate man's performance in space over extended periods of time the manned orbiting laboratory is one of the nation's most advanced research concepts but initially it will require the use of a Gemini type capsule or astronaut transportation to and from orbit capsule transportation is acceptable for the immediate future but as space activity increases there are a variety of reasons why it will become both unwieldy and expensive the brilliant success of project Gemini was marked by the astronauts ability to maneuver orbiting space capsules this ability was the key to rendezvous and docking in space an essential element of project Apollo lunar flights by comparison the lack of maneuverability during capsule reentry seems primitive the method is simple but the astronaut has no flexibility and an ocean landing is mandatory this requires an extremely expensive commitment of naval forces which must remain in recovery areas throughout all manned space mission time was an important factor during Mercury Gemini and Apollo and parachute recovery was selected because it's technology offered the path of least resistance however if we are to extend space activities in the future a more versatile and far less expensive system must be found the answer is maneuvering reentry and recovery on land and it looms ahead is one of the major breakthroughs in the brief history of man in space in stark contrast to prime recovery areas on the high seas the solution to maneuverable reentry is filtering back from a barren desert located 100 miles northeast of los angeles california the site is Rogers dry lake home of Edwards Air Force Base and the NASA Flight Research Center NASA began the quest to replace parachute recovery some time ago the man who conducted test operations was an ex-navy fighter pilot and veteran of the x-15 program NASA research pilot Milt Thompson one of the recovery systems proposed to replace the parachute was a paraglider this is a wing that was developed by enas a research scientist by the name of rugello is a very simple triangular shape similar to the paper airplanes that people have made during their school days and Neil Armstrong and I became quite interested in paraglider concept and actually proposed that we build one and try and fly it we did build the vehicle in-house in our own shops and with our own materials and as you can see the construction was quite simple when it was primarily based on safety considerations to protect the pilot in case of an accident our paraglider demonstrated to us that the pilot could maneuver it and flare and land it we did however find a number of disadvantages to this type of system it is very susceptible to turbulence and it's quite possible that in rough air or high winds you may not land on the normal gear system you may land on your side or even on your nose the objective was to use this wing in place of the parachute to enable the capsule to be recovered on land the test program on the full-scale paraglider was not too successful in the early phases and since time was a very important factor in the gemiini program they decided to go back to the conventional parachute recovery system the failure of the paraglider as a recovery system brought back a theory conceived in the early 1950s a split wingless cone which was half airplane half spacecraft the vehicle resembled a flying wedge but had the aerodynamic properties of a wing theoretically it could be rocket in into space like a Gemini or Apollo capsule and then maneuvered to a landing like a jet fighter without power extensive wind tunnel data was available but no such vehicle had ever been flown and there were grave doubts regarding whether or not it could be controlled by a pilot in the cockpit in spite of this Thompson and a group of research pilots saw possibilities in the concept and whether head they selected what is known as the m2 shape and contracted a sailplane company to build the home it was constructed in very thin plywood the internal structure was a welded steel tube structure similar to what you might find in light aircraft this program was done pretty much on our own without funding from NASA headquarters the construction costs were approximately $20,000 we started out very cautiously by toying the vehicle with a special tow car and made a quite a number of flights at low altitude or within say five feet of the ground these flights were quite successful I call them flights they would last possibly a minute a minute and a half as we went steaming across the lake bed at speeds in excess of 100 miles an hour and as a result of this we went on to an air tow we can prove a pilot can actually land the vehicle as he would a conventional aircraft you eliminate the necessity for a large recovery force in a primary recovery area and additional recovery forces at various locations around the earth which may be required in emergencies so there could be a tremendous saving of money and manpower 10 seconds now okay five four three two water critics okay Roger a lifting body derives its lift from the body shape alone and of course the aerodynamics are similar to that which you have with the wing in that you have higher pressures on the bottom than you do on the top surface of the shape this then provides a sufficient amount of lift to actually glide unpowered and during the ride you can maneuver and control the vehicle I think probably the only surprises that we get in color were the response to turbulence a conventional airplane tends to dip a wing or our wing come up on you the encounter turbulence there is a very rapid roll-off requiring a recovery level flight in a series of dramatic flights and to the amazement of onlookers Thompson proved his plywood Flatiron would fly the test continued with rocket-assisted landings and the two and a half ton heavyweight model of the m2 shape was ordered thompson checked out seven more Air Force and NASA research pilots like Bruce Peterson and speculated the future possibilities got in yeah I getting ready to go I got our pants on the fireline this morning I'll have to watch out for those yeah eventually lifting bodies may replace the familiar capsules on top of boosters as space vehicles for near-earth missions how many gonna try and get when as many as I can get before we have to chase the x-15 yeah what time they can take all nine nine apakah are you gonna land on the runway around the publisher's ready as most people are aware there are a number of programs that have been proposed which involved orbiting laboratories orbiting space stations these would be put into orbit and would remain in orbit for several years possibly indefinitely to man these stations of course require a rotation of personnel you can't put people up and leave them there for 10 years and let them come down with a space station okay Baba plug in your biomedical package here Wow you can when you get through the rollout bridge you can pull the plug off yeah well I don't have to record it around so how many fights you gonna make this may as I can up till nine o'clock it's like you did how about holding this have you heard somebody got away with the bottom part of your mat a possible use for lifting bodies would be to serve as a resupply vehicle to transport personnel to the space station transport cargo and then return the personnel and/or any equipment back from the space station to earth when you get off your engine and you catch it a lot of jerk off today and you'll catch a lot of buck right right chief yeah that's right okay we're right next to sorry yeah I think the thing that of course is most impressive about these vehicles or flying these vehicles is the steep descent lifting bodies of course are optimized performance wise for the high-altitude conditions right after re-entry and as a result they're transonic and subsonic or low-speed performance is not what you call good it certainly doesn't prepare to a light aircraft even with the engine off the successful checkout of Peterson land the seven other pilots continued to prove the concept was valid in the summer of 1966 the heavy weight vehicle was delivered and Thompson began final preparations for the test