BIOGRAPHY OF A MISSILE

a member of the Department of Defense recently made a challenging segment American industry has failed to live up to the exacting standards of space technology have we failed to meet the standards when the manned lunar mission becomes fact will we share in its success or be singled out for its failure one of the ways we are sure mission success is through quality control the man entrusted for this said North American space and information systems division the director of quality control ray Martin Quality Control Department is a multi-faceted organization comprising a broad spectrum of skills it is supported by one of the most modern Inspection laboratory facilities in the country however these are not enough to assure the quality of Essen IDs present program rather it is a responsibility in which we all must share we must be prepared to provide parts components subsystems and systems as near to perfection as possible are we meeting this challenge we can if each of us directs the some of our diligence skilled and craftsmanship to the task before us these are the factors which will decide success in other words our job no matter what it is is the end of the line sometime tomorrow come rain or shine this missile will attempt to loft a satellite and put it into orbit we've been living with this missile for several months when we undertook this project neither the United States Army or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration nor we knew whether project 16 would be a success or a failure at the time that this is being recorded we still don't know they make this missile and we report its biography this is the cast of characters who helped build a project 16 Wernher von Braun at 27 head of the German rocket development during World War 2 at 47 technical director of the United States Army Group that built this missile next the working partnership that actually fires the missile from the blockhouse at Cape Canaveral Kurt Debus the - test director who fired our first successful satellite our moon probe and the space monkey the junior end of the blockhouse partnership Bob Moser Vanderbilt University 1950 Jimmy a check from all stations autopilot rack William Pickering born in New Zealand director of Cal Tech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is breakthrough with solid fuel Rockets got our first satellite into orbit James Van Allen State University of Iowa the Van Allen belt was discovered by the radiation experiments of Explorer one and three may be may payload safety clear telemeter hanger D project 16 five million dollars eighteen months from drawing board to launching pad ordered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration built for the army ballistic missile agency at Huntsville reporter ed Murrow ninety percent of the weight and bulk of a ballistic missile is a flying fuel storage tank the skin made of aluminum alloy less than a tenth of an inch thick and will hold over 100,000 pounds of jet kerosene and highly volatile liquid oxygen 300 degrees below zero because it will be subject to the hot Florida Sun the extreme temperatures in the vacuum of space and the violent vibrations at its explosive liftoff it must be perfectly balanced and precision welded to a thousandth of an inch next this welding machine joins the ringlets together nine of them make up our missile as they roll through a full 360 degrees under a stationary arc although this is a mass production technique each weld is so critical that every missile every section every weld is minutely inspected and x-ray each missile is given a high-pressure water test to simulate flight pressure and to detect any structural weakness our project 16 skin passed its test and then moved across the vast Huntsville Fab Lab to be married to the giant rocket engine whose enormous fuel reservoir she will be for the first three minutes of project 16 s planned eternity in space 11 months ago land 2100 miles away in the canyons of Southern California the engine sometimes called a rocket sometimes called the powerplant sometimes the booster is born produced by Rocketdyne a division of North American here in a valley of the moon atmosphere in the Santa Susana mountains each engine is tested first by components and then as an entire powerplant each full test will burn $10,000 worth of fuel and liquid oxygen this engine which has 150,000 pounds of thrust equal to the thrust of 20 f-86 jet fighters which this company also made is basically the same engine made for the Air Force's Thor and Atlas missile but up until now the engine has not been part of a missile its fuel has come from fixed storage tanks which have been used to make hundreds of such htech now in Huntsville the first two major components are aligned and meshed into what will from now on be referred to as the main stage or first stage booster in this new missile configuration it must be tested again to ensure compatibility during this live firing test the missile will be held down by a huge steel ring embedded in 50 feet of reinforced concrete a waterfall of 9,000 gallons per minute keeps the steel deflector plate from burning up in the black house an electronic portress a thousand feet removed and connected to the missile by a tunnel containing over 1,100 information and control channels we talked with dr. von Braun [Music] well no dr. von Braun what are you working at out here on the left side of that tower which is what about twenty two four five something like that isn't it yes we are converting the left side of this tower for the static testing of our loose Saturn booster this will be the biggest rocket that has been tried anywhere probably including the Soviet Union it will be our next generation space vehicle it will produce one and a half million pound thrust with eight engines which are in a way an advanced version of the engine that you see right there only if we're gonna have eight of them eight all in a cluster yes and just to illustrate the tremendous power and dimensions of this unit it will use a complete ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile as a second stage and what about the third stage well there would be a pretty advanced and sophisticated third stage the total thing will be a three stage vehicle and we'll be able to carry many times ten tons into orbit in one flight in launch a whole busload full of astronauts and one flight into orbit so this will be the real spaceship well is there in theory any limit to the size of the object that you can hoist up there so I would sue the area the only limitation that I know office the taxpayer but if a missile had only a power plant on a fuel storage tank it would still be nothing more than a mammoth fourth of July sky rocket what distinguishes project 16 or any ballistic missile from uncontrolled fireworks is the guidance and control section in a manned bummer it is the pilot the Navigator the engineer and all the instruments of their flight deck this section of our missile which will be attached just above the booster unit is eight feet high and contains more than a hundred sensing and command instrument the heart of it is the gyroscope platform made under surgical conditions to tolerances of a 15 million of an inch when this gyro or any gyro is not energized and spinning it has no stability and no effect upon the missile or itself the unit has three whirling gyros in principle like a child's toy which make it possible to keep the missile stable and aimed at Huntsville Alabama this simulated missile was built over this gyro platform to teach us how it operates in flight the missile has been called an exercise in perfection the blending of a hundred thousand different parts and instruments into an orchestrated technological entity where one bad note one malfunction means disaster for the whole almost every misfire in our nation's missile program has been traced to such a failure and every failure has produced a new testing sequence there is no end to the checking and testing a gyroscope that works in a lab won't react the same way as it will when exposed to the shock and recoil vibrations of those millions of molecular machine gun bullets the dr. von Braun described so it is tested under conditions of extreme heat and cold and shakin a precision instrument such as a accelerometer may have to respond accurately to a force of 15 times that of gravity so it is exposed to 20 G's [Music] the satellite itself will be baked shaken and spun on the ground to ensure its accurate performance most of what the scientists learn from it and from the missile will come back through a system called telemetry for in space there can be no tunnel of multiple wired circuits such as dr. von Braun demonstrated at the static test small sensing organs in the missile transmit vital information by radio from space down to the telemeter equipment on the ground where the real autobiography of a missile is written approximately 13 months after fabrication began project 16 is coaxed up the ramp of a Maps Globemaster transport for shipment to Cape Canaveral a cape canaveral project 16 is trucked to pad 5 and hoisted into position the gantry crane which will service it for the next five or six weeks rolls into place beside it and around it this is only the first stage the liquid fuel part which will hoist the payload only to the edge of space the final kick which will last for only a matter of seconds will develop power equal to five diesel locomotive and be in the form of 15 small solid fuel Rockets such as the one we are now looking at these Rockets arranged in a three-stage cluster were pioneered and tested by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology during a spin test which is similar to what happens in flight dr. Pickering explains to reporter Jack Beck how it works now we have the cluster assembled we see the cluster of eleven Rockets first and then three Rockets that fits inside the group of eleven and then the single rocket which constitutes the fourth stage why do you spin the upper stages of the rocket dr. Pickering by spending the cluster the Rockets come shooting out of this club and maintain their direction quite accurately now about the system itself is three the magic number or do you foresee that in some future time you'll have a greater number of successive stages firing well if I think about a space vehicle which is perhaps going to man or another planner and bring him back to earth then I had up a lot of stages because whatever it takes to get him up to speed I then have to add a stage to slow him down on the moon a stage to get him off or perhaps to another stage to slow him down when he comes back to the earth so it adds up to seven or eight stages perhaps a courier from Caltech will accompany the cluster to the Cape the second and third stages are lifted up onto the top of the booster stage just above the guidance section now it is midnight not the final day 12 hours to zero and Bob Moser begins his countdown t-minus six hundred and forty minutes six four zero minutes cleared lit for Stage two the third level lifts the for Stage two the third level at zero minus 10 and 1/2 hours the final stage rocket is hoisted into position i above the pad and made part of the cluster t-minus four ten clear to lift the payload to the third level lift the payload to the third level at 2:45 as the payload is hoisted into position we stood in the blockhouse with dr. divas who will direct the firing of project 16 and talked about the shot now dr. Davis when you shoot the booster the engine that we saw being made in California will lift the entire missile and how far will it carry it it will carry it until burnout of the first stage and how long will I take they will take a hundred and seventy eight or there abouts seconds and where will it be when the first stage falls away then the first stage for the way it will be 90 miles out about at this point then we have obtained sufficient velocity to carry the upper configuration that is the instrument compartment and the spinning cluster to the point where we want to ignite the upper stages the shroud and shroud support on the missile at 4:45 a.m. the satellite having been secured the shroud which covers the payload and the second third and fourth stages is hoisted to the top of the gantry and fastened into place you have no control once that missile is one inch off the launching pad no control from the ground right no control forms of Buccos the flight safety people can cut it off if it misbehaves this is the only control that we as humans have at 6:00 a.m. fueling began t-minus two 75275 minutes install the angle of attack meter install the angle of attack meter at 7:40 a.m. the angle of attack meter which senses the external wind before the guidance system is fastened on top of the shroud t-minus two hundred and fifteen minutes two one five minutes you have a clearance to load locks you have a clearance to load liquid oxygen a liquid oxygen is all being pumped aboard it comes from three fluxes wave as it goes aboard there will be about thirty tons of with oxygen when the fuelling has been completed in temperature it is almost 300 degrees below freezing t-minus 100 minutes one zero zero attention all personnel please clear the service structure and paired of all non operational personnel for connection in the destruct package at zero minus one and one half hours the destruct package which as dr. Davis explained will be used to destroy the missile if it becomes a menace to population is electrically connected the technique involves a long explosive primer cord attached earlier which will be responsive to a radio signal from the Range Safety Officer and will cause the tanks to rupture if necessary at central control the Range Safety man for project 16 Air Force Major help it's battery watches the final steps of the countdown with a combination of television monitors and radar equipment the decision to destruct if and when is his alone t-minus 75 minutes you are now clear to remove the service structure remove the service structure to firing location the gantry crane pulls back on its railroad track leaving project 16 alone and sweating there is less than 55 minutes remaining all the visitors in Braddock except general Barkley either he or General Medeiros is present at all made their shoot leave the area now all the fuel trucks and service vehicles including the Chow wagon and the fire engines departed as the warning lights and fractions closed the earth the blockhouse is seen [Music] t-minus 13 minutes cluster control panel speed regulator power on speaker regulator power of thoughts are clear to bring the cluster motors up to launch rpm under the shroud at the top of the missile the table holding the cluster of solid fuel Rockets begins to spend 50 rpm 100 rpm [Music] 0-8 minified the Moser tea time means zero the telemeter in calibration test begins this is the final scaling of the gauges when the missile is airborne these gauges will indicate the actions of the missile at this point they're being artificially stimulated in cadence to establish telemetry accuracy just before long [Music] man receiver number one on matters even number two on [Music] zero voltage adjustments on the ground supplied clothes ready on guidance paddle transfer the clusters to internal power question motors you own internal until this moment the missile has gotten all its power from normal ground generator just before launch it switches to its own internal batteries it is tested briefly now and then quickly returned to ground power to preserve the batteries t760 [Music] [Music] transmitted across the state on internal [Music] stations on [Music] [Music] the missile is now alive with spinning hardware the gyros are spinning the satellite is spinning and if one can see the cluster it would look like this position I'm like okay for the clustering to internal one minute 40 seconds one minute 35 longer than a 30-second transfer cluster to internal power for flight less your own the internal clarify ready to fire telemeter tape on not a major tape on [Music] the man this firing command button does not actually fire the missile but sets into motion a series of automated command which terminate 45 seconds later with final ignition and [Music] the Range Safety Officer watches hand for one hour the blockhouse remained closed there was no crisis no confusion just the depression that comes from defeat and no air conditioning and the disbelief that a year's worth now looked like an oil dump fire occasionally sprinkled with luminous splinters of drifting to breathe most of the payload is down here in this gully you'll find other bits and pieces of it scattered out here in the smoking debris on the other side of the road but normally after a launch that launching pad is as clean as a dinner plate and you can see what it looks like now the life of this missile was a little more than five and a half seconds it was blown up by the Range Safety Officer just shortly after it tilted that off the pad the price of missile Ria's high you see here only a little bit of it but you can't see is the fact that thousands of people spent more than a year developing this project testing at feeling its pulse taking its temperature until they all develop the real affection for it it came to be almost like a human being and as you watch them walking around that missile while it was standing there in solitary splendor you had the feeling good everyone somehow stood up a little straighter than he normally did a great sense of pride and accomplishment and then in five and a half seconds it was all over dr. Davis what happened well mr. Mehra I think we have traced this failure element back to an inverter which is a machine to transform DC this battery power into a 400 saiga AC and is used for control purposes and at liftoff the missile lost control and tilted over and was 5 seconds later destroyed by the flight safety officer and I understand that you have already retrieved that vital part and it's on its way in an aircraft on spell is that right this is right yes we have checked it and then has absolutely not I would pretend must have an internal failure developed at liftoff a twin this is rather it's right here and you can see that stick that's the one that worked properly and the other one or was this is right this one Robert is the other one this inflate post-modern well we hope you will permit us to be with you when you fire the next one 24 hours ago when we were shooting some of the Assembly of the component parts of this missile we thought that by this time we would be tracking it while it was in orbit as you see this is what is left of project 16 the disappointment is not the loss of money the twisted metal or the man-hours involved it is rather the fact that had it succeeded it would have pushed back the frontier of man's knowledge just a little but payload would have been one of the reaching fingertips of science that would have brought the mankind a little knowledge that he never before had had so this is the end of this particular project there will be another and when it is done we shall hope to report it to you a brief footnote is required here the postmortem dr. Davis mentioned was completed less than a week later and revealed that two diodes in the inverter shown here which should have been a quarter of an inch apart touched during vibration at liftoff shutting off power to the guidance system and causing it to fail dr. Davis reports that in the future all inverters will be potted in a special plastic compound to prevent such a thing from happening again three months later on October 13th just two weeks ago today they tried again with 16 a the same kind of Juno 2 missile the identical igy satellite payload as before the countdown started 12 hours before launch time liftoff was 10:30 Eastern Standard Time as the 60-ton space vehicle slowly lifted itself off a meticulously clean pad dr. Davis and his colleagues watched from the front of the block house then they all move to the teleme Turing panel to sweat out the mission in the first 18 seconds the missile Rises only 1,200 feet [Music] as the doormat tone increased to that satisfying growl indicating proper performance the gyroscope informed the computers that the tape machine can begin to program the trajectory of the missile at the beginning the art northward is imperceptible at 20,000 feet they are increasing [Music] [Applause] at 55,000 feet or 90 seconds after takeoff the big bird is visibly on its way northward [Music] tend to turn up chat a little bit the big jupiter booster now practically drained of its fuel and liquid oxygen was scheduled to have cut off its engine after 180 second that came at 179 seconds separation which means the empty booster dropped off from the upper stages occurred six seconds later Susilo pay at 214 seconds the Shroud was jealous again from a signal programmed into the tape machine now you have to wait for the next six minutes there is nothing to do but wait now right on schedule at 542 seconds the second stage the cluster of eleven spinning solid fuel Rockets are fired nine seconds later the third stage of three rockets fired again nine seconds later on or nine minutes 3045 seconds after liftoff the final rocket pushing the satellite ignite then at 100 minutes the Goldstone tracking station in the California mountains back to satellite crossing the Pacific coast in its first pass over US soil the 90-pound scientific payload is now firmly in spate circling the Earth once every 101 minutes much will be learned from Project 16a about the cosmos of outer space but perhaps even more will be learned from the tragedy and failure of project 16 that is the end of our biography of a missile [Music]