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Last Titan Launch from Florida
The Breeze writes "Driving along San Diego's freeways, I often passed a large Lockheed Martin facility that had big ATLAS and TITAN logos on them - it looked like it was still operating, even though I thought the Titan missile had been retired years ago. Well, according to CNN, the last Titan to be launched from Florida just took off with a classified military payload. I had no idea that they were still using 50-year old technology to launch stuff into space. If you are not adverse to MS Word documents, Patrick AFB, (the Air Force station at Cape Canaveral) has some press releases about the launch. Interested parties might want to click here for more info on Titan, along with links to the Titan Missile Museum where you can actually see a Titan in a silo -- and where Zeframe Cochrane launched his first warp ship from."
But it's not the last Titan, just the last to launch from Cape Canaveral. According to the article on Florida Today: "This Titan is the last of a family of 168 to be launched from Cape Canaveral. One last flight is scheduled to take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California."
Quite the powerhorse. Congrats to all who worked on it over the years for jobs well done.
The last Skylark rocket is to be launched on Sunday. It's also a 50 year old rocket!
Amazing to think there was a British space program once!
Have physics and the law of gravity changed in the last 50 years?
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
sometimes older and simpler is better than supersuper complicated stuff. Soyuz puts the shuttle to shame in the reliability department for example.
So I'd say if Titan rockets worked, why change them?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The Booster that flew was a Titan 4B (and is not the last Titan-4B to fly, just the last at the Cape--One more will fly from Vandenberg) The Titan 4B first flew in 1997 and was an upgraded verson of the Titan 4 that first flew in the mid 80s. The Titan 4 was primarly used as a replacement for Mil Payloads after Challenger. The Titan 3 was a workhorse of launchers during the 70s (Including Voyager and Viking). The Titan 2 serverd as the bases of the following lines and was an ICBM and booster for Gemini. The Titan Rocket that flew is not old tech wise, its old in the same sense as the cars we drive today being based on improved designs of the past. Please google before you post something without knowing all the facts.
Even Hondas suffer from this problem. If I must have the most reliable vehicle, I would choose a Civic model in its last year of production over a brand new, completely redesigned Civic.
Since the Titans have been in use for a long time, the engineers have already fixed any outstanding, serious problems. The Titan is a reliable workhorse and should be the delivery vehicle for a military payload. Such payloads are vital to the national security of the United States, and we absolutely must avoid mishaps, especially given the emerging threat from China.
50 year old technology is proven technology. If you are going to risk a multi-billion dollar satelitte- something that has had thousands of launches under its belt sounds good to me.
"...and where Zeframe Cochrane launched his first warp ship from."
No. It's where Zeframe Cochrane WILL launch his first warp ship from. Get your facts straight.
Beautiful launch on a beautiful launch and a fitting end to a legacy and a tradition in space.
A memorable night there for those who attended and worked many years at the Cape.
Parent is right AND wrong about 50-year old technology. The basic premise is the same in processing but the avionics and software are FAR from ancient and are in fact very recent. Titan is too expensive however now because of the previous use of hypergolics transitioning to newer and safer fuels as well as refinements in processing and launching that were implementing in the Atlas V.
Long live the Titan.
I worked on my first Titan-Centaur in 1989, and at that point there were already end-items assigned out 10+ years. Launch vehicles are based on methodical and tested revisions to proven platforms. Mistakes are expensive. For context, I got the task to replace a program that managed end item change tracking. I was given the original source code on green-bar; the change note entries were in double letters by 1959.
I live in Titusville, FL and work in Cocoa Beach as a subcontractor to the military. Patrick Air Force Base is a different and separate entity to Cape Cavanaveral Air Force Station.
As a badged and cleared employee, I've walked around the base of the gantries from which they launch Titans, after attaching the boosters, the payload, then the command (autopilot, etc.) module on top.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
The current theory, supported by the orbit it was launched into, is that its the 5th in a fleet of radar imaging satillites, known as "LACROSSE".
Also I had the pleasure of taking apart an one of these Titan guidance computers. It was about the size of a big suitcase. Built to take many G's-- it had a aluminum case about 3/4 inch thick. All thge modules inside were potted in a tough pink styrofoam.
An amazing device with about 300 credit-card sized PC boards all plugged in and soldered into a backplane. Each PC board had what looked like four to six Westinghouse flat-pack IC's, probably DTL logic, maybe four gates max per chip. Amazing what they could do with that little hardware. The memory was some PC-board version of magnetic wire memory, as cores probably couldnt take the g's and vibration. Sobering to be poking through a device designed to land 9 Megatons on the Ruskies.
The US Military promised to blow up the rocket should it veer off course and potentially endanger Canadians off the coast of Newfounland.
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http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/04/3
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Well that an 50 year old cars have terrible gas milage, put out way more pollution than a modern car (orders of magnitude), and require near constant maintence to keep running. People romanticize about old cars all the time, but forget that it used to be rare for a car to make it 100,000 miles, a feat that is commonplace today, even among cheap and nasty cars. The old hardware isn't worthless, but the new stuff is considerably better in most areas. The only major area where modern cars continually score worse than older cars is in maintainability by shade-tree mechanics. Old cars are a lot simpler and don't need sophisticated tools to be worked on, unlike many modern cars.
I read the internet for the articles.