1.
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
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Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is an installation of the United States Air Force Space Commands 45th Space Wing, headquartered at nearby Patrick Air Force Base. Located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida, CCAFS is the primary head of Americas Eastern Range with three launch pads currently active. The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Skid Strip provides a 10, 000-foot runway close to the launch complexes for military airlift aircraft delivering heavy, a number of American space exploration firsts were launched from CCAFS, including the first U. S. Earth satellite, first U. S. astronaut, first U. S. astronaut in orbit, first two-man U. S. spacecraft, first U. S. unmanned lunar landing, and first three-man U. S. spacecraft. The CCAFS area had used by the United States government to test missiles since 1949. On June 1,1948, the U. S. Navy transferred the former Banana River Naval Air Station to the U. S. Air Force, with USAF renaming the facility the Joint Long Range Proving Ground Base on June 10,1949. On October 1,1949, the Joint Long Range Proving Ground Base was transferred from the Air Materiel Command to the Air Force Division of the Joint Long Range Proving Ground. On May 17,1950, the base was renamed the Long Range Proving Ground Base, in 1951, the Air Force established the Air Force Missile Test Center. Early American sub-orbital rocket flights were achieved at Cape Canaveral in 1956 and these flights occurred shortly after sub-orbital flights launched from White Sands Missile Range, such as the Viking 12 sounding rocket on February 4,1955. Following the Soviet Unions successful Sputnik 1, the US attempted its first launch of a satellite from Cape Canaveral on December 6,1957. However, the rocket carrying Vanguard TV3 blew up on the launch pad, NASA was founded in 1958, and Air Force crews launched missiles for NASA from the Cape, known then as Cape Canaveral Missile Annex. The row of Titan and Atlas launch pads along the coast came to be known as Missile Row in the 1960s, nASAs first manned spaceflight program was prepared for launch from Canaveral by U. S. Air Force crews. Mercurys objectives were to place a spacecraft in Earth orbit, investigate human performance and ability to function in space. Suborbital flights were launched by derivatives of the Armys Redstone missile from LC-5, Orbital flights were launched by derivatives of the Air Forces larger Atlas D missile from LC-14. The first American in orbit was John Glenn on February 20,1962, three more orbital flights followed through May 1963. Flight control for all Mercury missions was provided at the Mercury Control Center located at Canaveral near LC-14 and he had also convinced Gov. C. Farris Bryant to change the name of Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy and this resulted in some confusion in public perception, which conflated the two. This name was used through the Gemini and early Apollo programs, however, the geographical name change proved to be unpopular, owing to the historical longevity of Cape Canaveral
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
V-2 rocket
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The V-2, technical name Aggregat 4, was the worlds first long-range guided ballistic missile. The V-2 rocket also became the first artificial object to cross the boundary of space with the launch of MW18014 on 20 June 1944. Research into military use of long range rockets began when the studies of graduate student Wernher von Braun attracted the attention of the German Army, a series of prototypes culminated in the A-4, which went to war as the V-2. Beginning in September 1944, over 3,000 V-2s were launched by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets during the war, first London and later Antwerp and Liège. As Germany collapsed, teams from the Allied forces—the United States, the United Kingdom, Wernher von Braun and over 100 key V-2 personnel surrendered to the Americans. Eventually, many of the original V-2 team ended up working at the Redstone Arsenal, the US also captured enough V-2 hardware to build approximately 80 of the missiles. The Soviets gained possession of the V-2 manufacturing facilities after the war, re-established V-2 production, in the late 1920s, a young Wernher von Braun bought a copy of Hermann Oberths book, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen. Starting in 1930, he attended the Technical University of Berlin, von Braun was working on his doctorate when the Nazi Party gained power in Germany. An artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for von Braun, von Brauns thesis, Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket, was kept classified by the German Army and was not published until 1960. By the end of 1934, his group had launched two rockets that reached heights of 2.2 and 3.5 km. At the time, Germany was highly interested in American physicist Robert H. Goddards research, before 1939, German engineers and scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly with technical questions. Von Braun used Goddards plans from various journals and incorporated them into the building of the Aggregat series of rockets, during 28–30 September 1939, Der Tag der Weisheit conference met at Peenemünde to initiate the funding of university research to solve rocket problems. By late 1941, the Army Research Center at Peenemünde possessed the essential to the success of the A-4. The four key technologies for the A-4 were large liquid-fuel rocket engines, supersonic aerodynamics, gyroscopic guidance, at the time, Adolf Hitler was not particularly impressed by the V-2, he pointed out that it was merely an artillery shell with a longer range and much higher cost. Hitler was sufficiently impressed by the enthusiasm of its developers, and needed a weapon to maintain German morale. The V-2s were constructed at the Mittelwerk site by prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora, the A-4 used a 74% ethanol/water mixture for fuel and liquid oxygen for oxidizer. The rocket reached a height of 80 km after shutting off the engine, the fuel and oxidizer pumps were driven by a steam turbine, and the steam was produced by concentrated hydrogen peroxide with sodium permanganate catalyst. Both the alcohol and oxygen tanks were an aluminium-magnesium alloy, the combustion burner reached a temperature of 2,500 to 2,700 °C
4.
General Electric
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General Electric, often abbreviated as GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in New York and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 68th-largest firm in the U. S. by gross revenue, as of 2012, the company was listed the fourth-largest in the world among the Forbes Global 2000, further metrics being taken into account. The Nobel Prize has twice been awarded to employees of General Electric, Irving Langmuir in 1932, on January 13,2016, it was announced that GE will be moving its corporate headquarters from Fairfield, Connecticut to the South Boston Waterfront neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The first group of workers arrived in the summer of 2016, morgan and the Vanderbilt family for Edisons lighting experiments. The new company also acquired Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company in the same year, both plants continue to operate under the GE banner to this day. The company was incorporated in New York, with the Schenectady plant used as headquarters for years thereafter. Around the same time, General Electrics Canadian counterpart, Canadian General Electric, was formed, in 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average. After 120 years, it is the one of the original companies still listed on the Dow index. In 1911, General Electric absorbed the National Electric Lamp Association into its lighting business, GE established its lighting division headquarters at Nela Park in East Cleveland, Ohio. Nela Park is still the headquarters for GEs lighting business, owen D. Young, through GE, founded the Radio Corporation of America in 1919 to further international radio. GE used RCA as its retail arm for radio sales from 1919, in 1927, Ernst Alexanderson of GE made the first demonstration of his television broadcasts at his General Electric Realty Plot home at 1132 Adams Rd, Schenectady, NY. The sound was broadcast on GEs WGY, experimental television station W2XAD evolved into station WRGB which—along with WGY and WGFM —was owned and operated by General Electric until 1983. GEs history of working with turbines in the field gave them the engineering know-how to move into the new field of aircraft turbosuperchargers. Led by Sanford Alexander Moss, GE introduced the first superchargers during World War I, superchargers became indispensable in the years immediately prior to World War II, and GE was the world leader in exhaust-driven supercharging when the war started. This experience, in turn, made GE a natural selection to develop the Whittle W.1 jet engine that was demonstrated in the United States in 1941, GE ranked ninth among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. In 2002, GE acquired the assets of Enron during its bankruptcy proceedings. Some consumers boycotted GE light bulbs, refrigerators and other products in the 1980s and 1990s to protest GEs role in weapons production. With IBM, Burroughs, NCR, Control Data Corporation, Honeywell, RCA and UNIVAC, GE had a line of general purpose and special purpose computers
5.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in La Cañada Flintridge, California and Pasadena, California, United States. The JPL is managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology for NASA, the laboratorys primary function is the construction and operation of planetary robotic spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASAs Deep Space Network and they are also responsible for managing the JPL Small-Body Database, and provides physical data and lists of publications for all known small Solar System bodies. The JPLs Space Flight Operations Facility and Twenty-Five-Foot Space Simulator are designated National Historic Landmarks, JPL traces its beginnings to 1936 in the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology when the first set of rocket experiments were carried out in the Arroyo Seco. Malinas thesis advisor was engineer/aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán, who arranged for U. S. Army financial support for this GALCIT Rocket Project in 1939. In 1941, Malina, Parsons, Forman, Martin Summerfield, in 1943, von Kármán, Malina, Parsons, and Forman established the Aerojet Corporation to manufacture JATO motors. The project took on the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory in November 1943, during JPLs Army years, the laboratory developed two deployed weapon systems, the MGM-5 Corporal and MGM-29 Sergeant intermediate range ballistic missiles. These missiles were the first US ballistic missiles developed at JPL and it also developed a number of other weapons system prototypes, such as the Loki anti-aircraft missile system, and the forerunner of the Aerobee sounding rocket. At various times, it carried out testing at the White Sands Proving Ground, Edwards Air Force Base. A lunar lander was developed in 1938-39 which influenced design of the Apollo Lunar Module in the 1960s. The team lost that proposal to Project Vanguard, and instead embarked on a project to demonstrate ablative re-entry technology using a Jupiter-C rocket. They carried out three successful flights in 1956 and 1957. Using a spare Juno I, the two organizations then launched the United States first satellite, Explorer 1, on February 1,1958, JPL was transferred to NASA in December 1958, becoming the agencys primary planetary spacecraft center. JPL engineers designed and operated Ranger and Surveyor missions to the Moon that prepared the way for Apollo, JPL also led the way in interplanetary exploration with the Mariner missions to Venus, Mars, and Mercury. In 1998, JPL opened the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA, as of 2013, it has found 95% of asteroids that are a kilometer or more in diameter that cross Earths orbit. JPL was early to employ women mathematicians, in the 1940s and 1950s, using mechanical calculators, women in an all-female computations group performed trajectory calculations. In 1961, JPL hired Dana Ulery as their first woman engineer to work alongside male engineers as part of the Ranger and Mariner mission tracking teams, when founded, JPLs site was a rocky flood-plain just outside the city limits of Pasadena. Almost all of the 177 acres of the U. S, the city of La Cañada Flintridge, California was incorporated in 1976, well after JPL attained international recognition with a Pasadena address
6.
Douglas Aircraft Company
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The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace manufacturer based in Southern California. It was founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas, Sr. Douglas Aircraft Company largely operated as a division of McDonnell Douglas after the merger. MD later merged with Boeing in 1997, the Douglas Aircraft Company was founded by Donald Wills Douglas, Sr. on July 22,1921 in Santa Monica, California, following dissolution of the Davis-Douglas Company. An early claim to fame was the first circumnavigation of the world by air in Douglas airplanes in 1924. In 1923, the U. S. Army Air Service was interested in carrying out a mission to circumnavigate the Earth for the first time by aircraft, Donald Douglas proposed a modified Douglas DT to meet the Armys needs. The two-place, open cockpit DT biplane torpedo bomber had previously produced for the U. S. Navy. The DTs were taken from the lines at the companys manufacturing plants in Rock Island, Illinois and Dayton. The modified aircraft known as the Douglas World Cruiser, also was the first major project for Jack Northrop who designed the system for the series. After the prototype was delivered in November 1923, upon the completion of tests on 19 November. Due to the expedition ahead, spare parts, including 15 extra Liberty L-12 engines,14 extra sets of pontoons. These were sent to airports along the route, the last of these aircraft was delivered to the U. S. Army on 11 March 1924. After the success of the World Cruiser, the Army Air Service ordered six similar aircraft as observation aircraft. The success of the DWC established the Douglas Aircraft Company among the aircraft companies of the world. Douglas adopted a logo that showed aircraft circling a globe, replacing the original winged heart logo, the logo evolved into an aircraft, a rocket, and a globe. It was later adopted by the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, and then became the basis of the current logo of the Boeing Company after their 1997 merger, many Douglas aircraft had long service lives. Douglas Aircraft designed and built a variety of aircraft for the U. S. military, including the Navy, Army Air Forces, Marine Corps, Air Force. The company initially built torpedo bombers for the U. S. Navy, within five years, the company was building about 100 aircraft annually. Among the early employees at Douglas were Ed Heinemann, Dutch Kindelberger, and Jack Northrop, the company retained its military market and expanded into amphibian airplanes in the late 1920s, also moving its facilities to Clover Field at Santa Monica, California
7.
Florida
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Florida /ˈflɒrᵻdə/ is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, Florida is the 22nd-most extensive, the 3rd-most populous, and the 8th-most densely populated of the U. S. states. Jacksonville is the most populous municipality in the state and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States, the Miami metropolitan area is Floridas most populous urban area. The city of Tallahassee is the state capital, much of the state is at or near sea level and is characterized by sedimentary soil. The climate varies from subtropical in the north to tropical in the south, the American alligator, American crocodile, Florida panther, and manatee can be found in the Everglades National Park. It was a location of the Seminole Wars against the Native Americans. Today, Florida is distinctive for its large Cuban expatriate community and high population growth, the states economy relies mainly on tourism, agriculture, and transportation, which developed in the late 19th century. Florida is also renowned for amusement parks, orange crops, the Kennedy Space Center, Florida has attracted many writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, and continues to attract celebrities and athletes. It is internationally known for golf, tennis, auto racing, by the 16th century, the earliest time for which there is a historical record, major Native American groups included the Apalachee, the Timucua, the Ais, the Tocobaga, the Calusa and the Tequesta. Florida was the first part of the continental United States to be visited and settled by Europeans, the earliest known European explorers came with the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León. Ponce de León spotted and landed on the peninsula on April 2,1513 and he named the region La Florida. The story that he was searching for the Fountain of Youth is a myth, in May 1539, Conquistador Hernando de Soto skirted the coast of Florida, searching for a deep harbor to land. He described seeing a wall of red mangroves spread mile after mile, some reaching as high as 70 feet. Very soon, many smokes appeared along the whole coast, billowing against the sky, the Spanish introduced Christianity, cattle, horses, sheep, the Spanish language, and more to Florida. Both the Spanish and French established settlements in Florida, with varying degrees of success, in 1559, Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano established a settlement at present-day Pensacola, making it the first attempted settlement in Florida, but it was abandoned by 1561. Spain maintained tenuous control over the region by converting the tribes to Christianity. The area of Spanish Florida diminished with the establishment of English settlements to the north, the English attacked St. Augustine, burning the city and its cathedral to the ground several times. Florida attracted numerous Africans and African-Americans from adjacent British colonies who sought freedom from slavery, in 1738, Governor Manuel de Montiano established Fort Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose near St
8.
Kennedy Space Center
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The John F. Kennedy Space Center is one of ten National Aeronautics and Space Administration field centers. Since December 1968, Kennedy Space Center has been NASAs primary launch center of human spaceflight, Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC. Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources, and even own facilities on each others property. Additionally, the center manages launch of robotic and commercial missions, researches food production and In-Situ Resource Utilization for off Earth exploration. Since 2010, the center has worked to become a multi-user spaceport through industry partnerships, there are about 700 facilities grouped across the centers 144,000 acres. There is also a Visitor Complex open to the public on site, the military had been performing launch operations since 1949 at what would become Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. In December 1959, the Department of Defense transferred 5,000 personnel, President John F. Kennedys 1961 goal of a manned lunar landing before 1970 required an expansion of launch operations. On July 1,1962, the Launch Operations Directorate was separated from MSFC to become the Launch Operations Center, therefore, the decision was made to build a new LOC site located adjacent to Cape Canaveral on Merritt Island. NASA began land acquisition in 1962, buying title to 131 square miles, the major buildings in KSCs Industrial Area were designed by architect Charles Luckman. Construction began in November 1962, and Kennedy visited the site twice in 1962, on November 29,1963, the facility was given its current name by President Lyndon B. Johnson under Executive Order 11129. Johnsons order joined both the civilian LOC and the military Cape Canaveral station under the designation John F. Kennedy Space Center, spawning some confusion joining the two in the public mind. Located on Merritt Island, Florida, the center is north-northwest of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic Ocean and it is 34 miles long and roughly six miles wide, covering 219 square miles. KSC is a major central Florida tourist destination and is one hours drive from the Orlando area. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex offers public tours of the center, Center workers can encounter bald eagles, American alligators, wild boars, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, the endangered Florida panther and Florida manatees. From 1967 through 1973, there were 13 Saturn V launches, the first of two unmanned flights, Apollo 4 on November 9,1967, was also the first rocket launch from KSC. The Saturn Vs first manned launch on December 21,1968 was Apollo 8s lunar orbiting mission, the next two missions tested the Lunar Module, Apollo 9 and Apollo 10. Apollo 11, launched from Pad A on July 16,1969, Apollo 12 followed four months later. From 1970–1972, the Apollo program concluded at KSC with the launches of missions 13 through 17, on May 14,1973, the last Saturn V launch put the Skylab space station in orbit from Pad 39A
9.
United States Army
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The United States Armed Forces are the federal armed forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, from the time of its inception, the military played a decisive role in the history of the United States. A sense of unity and identity was forged as a result of victory in the First Barbary War. Even so, the Founders were suspicious of a permanent military force and it played an important role in the American Civil War, where leading generals on both sides were picked from members of the United States military. Not until the outbreak of World War II did a standing army become officially established. The National Security Act of 1947, adopted following World War II and during the Cold Wars onset, the U. S. military is one of the largest militaries in terms of number of personnel. It draws its personnel from a pool of paid volunteers. As of 2016, the United States spends about $580.3 billion annually to fund its military forces, put together, the United States constitutes roughly 40 percent of the worlds military expenditures. For the period 2010–14, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the United States was the worlds largest exporter of major arms, the United States was also the worlds eighth largest importer of major weapons for the same period. The history of the U. S. military dates to 1775 and these forces demobilized in 1784 after the Treaty of Paris ended the War for Independence. All three services trace their origins to the founding of the Continental Army, the Continental Navy, the United States President is the U. S. militarys commander-in-chief. Rising tensions at various times with Britain and France and the ensuing Quasi-War and War of 1812 quickened the development of the U. S. Navy, the reserve branches formed a military strategic reserve during the Cold War, to be called into service in case of war. Time magazines Mark Thompson has suggested that with the War on Terror, Command over the armed forces is established in the United States Constitution. The sole power of command is vested in the President by Article II as Commander-in-Chief, the Constitution also allows for the creation of executive Departments headed principal officers whose opinion the President can require. This allowance in the Constitution formed the basis for creation of the Department of Defense in 1947 by the National Security Act, the Defense Department is headed by the Secretary of Defense, who is a civilian and member of the Cabinet. The Defense Secretary is second in the chain of command, just below the President. Together, the President and the Secretary of Defense comprise the National Command Authority, to coordinate military strategy with political affairs, the President has a National Security Council headed by the National Security Advisor. The collective body has only power to the President
10.
MIM-3 Nike Ajax
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The United States Armys Nike Ajax was the worlds first operational surface-to-air missile, entering service in 1954. Nike Ajax was designed to attack conventional bomber aircraft flying at high subsonic speeds, Nike was initially deployed in the US to provide defence against Soviet bomber attacks, and was later deployed overseas to protect US bases, as well as being sold to various allied forces. Some examples remained in use until the 1970s, technological development during the 1950s quickly rendered Nike obsolete. It was unable to defend against more capable bombers or multiple targets in formation, even while Nike was being deployed, these concerns led to the contracts for the greatly improved MIM-14 Nike Hercules, which began deployment in 1959. As Hercules developed, the threat moved from bombers to ICBMs, all of the Nike projects were led by Bell Labs, due to their early work in radar guidance systems during World War II. Originally known simply as Nike, it gained the Ajax as part of a 1956 renaming effort that resulted from the introduction of Hercules and it was initially given the identifier SAM-A-7 as part of an early tri-service identification system, but later changed to MIM-3 in 1962. Part of the Nike Ajax development program designed a new solid rocket motor used for the missiles booster. This had originally designed for the US Navys missiles, and was enlarged for the Nike efforts. The rocket was so useful that it found numerous applications outside the world as the Ajax missiles were decommissioned in the 1960s. Many sounding rockets used the booster as their first or second stage, the inherent inaccuracy of anti-aircraft artillery means that when shells reach their targets they are randomly distributed in space. This distribution is larger than the lethal radius of the shells. Successful anti-aircraft gunnery therefore requires as many rounds to be fired as possible, during The Blitz, UK gunners fired 49,044 shells in January 1941 for 12 kills, almost 4,100 shells per success. German gunners did better, as they had radar assistance and most aircraft were targeted during daylight, flying faster means that the aircraft passes through the range of a gun more rapidly, reducing the number of rounds a particular gun can fire at that aircraft. Flying at higher altitudes often has an effect, as it requires larger shells to reach those altitudes. Aircraft using jet engines roughly double the speed and altitude over piston-powered designs, as early as 1942, German flak commanders were keenly aware of the problem, and expecting to face jet bombers, they began a missile development program to supplant their guns. The western allies maintained air superiority for much of the war, nevertheless, by the mid-war period the US Army had reached the same conclusion as their German counterparts, flak was simply no longer useful. Accordingly, in February 1944 the Army Ground Forces sent the Army Service Forces a request for information on the possibility of building a major caliber anti-aircraft rocket torpedo. The ASF concluded that it was too early to tell if this was possible
11.
PGM-11 Redstone
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The PGM-11 Redstone was the first large American ballistic missile. A short-range ballistic missile, it was in service with the United States Army in West Germany from June 1958 to June 1964 as part of NATOs Cold War defense of Western Europe. It was the first missile to carry a nuclear warhead, in the 1958 Pacific Ocean weapons test. Chief Engineer Wernher von Braun personally witnessed this historic launch and detonation, Redstone was a direct descendant of the German V-2 rocket, developed by a team of predominantly German rocket engineers brought to the United States after World War II as part of Operation Paperclip. The design used an engine from Rocketdyne that allowed the missile to carry the W39 warhead which weighed 6,900 pounds with its reentry vehicle to a range of about 175 miles. Redstones prime contractor was the Chrysler Corporation, a major effort to improve Redstones reliability produced one of the most reliable rockets of the era. Dubbed the Armys Workhorse, it spawned an entire family which had an excellent launch record and holds a number of firsts in the US space program. It was retired by the Army in 1964 and replaced by the MGM-31 Pershing, surplus missiles were widely used for test missions and space launches, including the first US man in space, and in 1967 the launch of Australias first satellite. It was named for the arsenal on April 8,1952, Chrysler was awarded the prime production contract and began missile and support equipment production in 1952 at the newly renamed Michigan Ordnance Missile Plant in Warren, Michigan. The navy-owned facility was known as the Naval Industrial Reserve Aircraft Plant used for jet engine production. Following the cancellation of a jet engine program, the facility was made available to the Chrysler Corporation for missile production. The first Redstone lifted off from LC-4A at Cape Canaveral on August 20,1953 and it flew for one minute and 20 seconds before suffering an engine failure and falling into the sea. Following this partial success, the second test was conducted on January 27,1954, after these first two prototypes were flown, an improved engine was introduced to reduce problems with LOX turbopump cavitation. The third Redstone flight on May 5 was a loss as the engine cut off one second after launch, causing the rocket to fall back on the pad. After this incident, Major General Holger Toftoy pressured Werner von Braun for the cause of the failure, the latter replied that he had no idea, but they would review telemetry and other data to find out. Toftoy persisted, asking Werner, why did the rocket explode, an exasperated von Braun said It exploded because the damn sonofabitch blew up. Subsequent test flights went better and the Army declared Redstone operational in mid-1955, testing was moved from LC-4 to the bigger LC-5 and LC-6. In 1955, the Jupiter C rocket was developed as an enhanced Redstone for atmospheric and it retained the Jupiter Cs longer propellant tanks, but went back to using ethyl alcohol/water for propellant instead of hydyne
12.
MIM-23 Hawk
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The Raytheon MIM-23 Hawk is a U. S. medium-range surface-to-air missile. It was designed to be a more mobile counterpart to the MIM-14 Nike Hercules, trading off range and altitude capability for a much smaller size. Its low-level performance was improved over Nike through the adoption of new radars. Hawk was originally intended to attack aircraft, especially those flying at medium and it entered service with the Army in this role in 1959. In 1971 it underwent an improvement program as the Improved Hawk, or I-Hawk. Improvements continued throughout the twenty years, adding improved ECCM, a potential home-on-jam feature, and in 1995. Janes reported that the original systems single shot kill probability was 0.56, Hawk was superseded by the MIM-104 Patriot in US Army service by 1994. The last US user was the US Marine Corps, who used theirs until 2002 when they were replaced with the man-portable short-range FIM-92 Stinger, the missile was also produced outside the US in Western Europe, Japan and Iran. Although the U. S. never used the Hawk in combat, approximately 40,000 of the missiles were produced. Development of the Hawk missile system began in 1952, when the United States Army began studies into a medium-range semi-active radar homing surface-to-air missile. In July 1954 development contracts where awarded to Northrop for the launcher, radars and fire control systems, the first test launch of the missile then designated the XSAM-A-18 happened in June 1956. By July 1957 development was completed, by time the designation had changed to XM3. Very early missiles used the Aerojet M22E7 which was not reliable, the missile was initially deployed by the U. S. Army in 1959, and by the US Marine Corps in 1960. The high complexity of the system, and the quality of tube-based electronics, the improved Hawk system increased this to 130 to 170 hours. Later Hawk versions improved this further to between 300 and 400 hours, Improved Hawk or I-Hawk The original Hawk system had problems engaging targets at low altitude—the missile would have problems picking the target out against ground clutter. The U. S. Army began a program to address issues in 1964 via the Hawk Improvement Program. This involved numerous upgrades to the Hawk system, A digital data processing central information coordinator for target processing, threat ordering, an improved missile with a larger warhead, smaller and more powerful M112 motor, and improved guidance section. The PAR, CWAR, HPIR, and ROR were replaced by upgraded variants, the system entered service during 1972, the first unit reaching operational status by October
