''For most of their major payloads, they've got a Titan 4 in production and a shuttle launch reserved. Pike, director of space policy for the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, said the Air Force had been overzealous in its drive to acquire rockets, and he contended that the result would be a ''glut'' of launchers in the late 1980's. 254, which said that any new expendable rockets for NASA were to be bought from commercial vendors, if available, and otherwise from the military.Īll three types of new rockets, the Titan 2, Titan 4 and Delta 2, have been developed at the behest of the Air Force. As for buying Air Force rockets, he said, the agency's policy was mandated by White House National Security Decision Directive No. He said NASA was trying to diversify its program by asking for a supplemental $100 million in its budget for the fiscal year 1988 that would allow the agency to expand its modest program of expendable rockets. ''They took the initiative and have continued to take the initiative, both in rockets and upper stages,'' he said in a telephone interview. ![]() Gunn, director of unmanned launch vehicles at NASA headquarters in Washington, agreed that the ''creative initiative'' had gone to the military. This is especially paradoxical in the case of the Delta 2, he said, because that vehicle was originally developed by NASA.Ĭharles R. Murray noted that in some cases NASA is now asking for budget authority to buy rockets from the Air Force as backups to its shuttles. ''NASA has failed to provide leadership,'' he asserted.ĭr. Murray praised the recent rocket purchases by the Air Force and faulted NASA for not moving vigorously to acquire expendable launching vehicles that could complement its shuttle program, which has suffered setbacks and delays amid preparations for renewed flights next year. Once scheduled for extinction, there are only about a half-dozen of these big rockets in the Air Force's inventory and there are no plans to order more. Sometime this year, the Titan 34-D, now the nation's largest unmanned rocket, is also expected to begin launching payloads after a two-year hiatus, marking another important step in recovery from the string of launcher failures. With considerable understatement, Secretary Aldridge said today that he hoped every launching of the Titan 2 ''will be successful.'' Return of Big Rocket These failures combined to temporarily end the nation's ability to put large payloads into space. Its drive for launcher independence was redoubled after an explosion destroyed the space shuttle Challenger in January 1986, killing its crew, and by the back-to-back failures of Air Force Titan 34-D rockets in August 1985 and April 1986. The production of expendable launching vehicles was all but stopped, and remaining military rockets were marked for extinction.īut the Air Force was loath to rely exclusively on the civilian shuttles, and after much lobbying it was given permission by the White House in early 1985 to order a few expendable rockets. The stage for this reversal was set in the early 1980's when the Federal Government decided that NASA's re-usable shuttles were to dominate the nation's space transportation, both civilian and military. ''The bad news is that the agency we have set up around the idea of developing launch vehicles, NASA, is not involved.'' ''These rockets are good news for the country, because the United States of America is getting back into the expendable launch business,'' said Bruce Murray, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology who is a former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Air Force has also placed orders for 20 Delta 2's, a medium-size rocket made by McDonnell Douglas for launching navigation satellites, and 23 Titan 4's, a very large rocket made by Martin Marietta that can lift a variety of shuttle-size payloads into space. ![]() Twelve more of the 130-foot-long rockets are on order. It is to be launched early next year from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The rocket unveiled today was a Titan 2, a medium-size launcher made by Martin Marietta Space Launch Systems in Denver that can place weather, spy and scientific satellites into low orbit around the earth. ![]() Most critically, the launcher crisis has halted the routine replacement of key military satellites, leaving old spacecraft aging in orbit and increasingly prone to failure. The 56 new Air Force rockets are to aid in the recovery from a series of rocket and space shuttle failures that have left the nation with only a handful of small operational launching vehicles and no major ones.
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