The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1959, the latest event was in 2005
Human Spaceflight:
1992 – LANDING: STS-53 (Discovery), Edwards AFB
Military and Classified Programs:
1965 – LAUNCH: Classified mission, Thor SLV-2A/Lockheed Agena D, SLC1E, VAFB
1967 – LAUNCH: Classified mission, Thor SLV-2G/Lockheed Agena D, SLC1W, VAFB
1980 – LAUNCH FAILURE: MM NOSS-4, GD Atlas E/MSD, SLC3W, VAFB – Booster engine failed, causing a pivot in the vehicle direction before shutdown
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
2002 – LM Stardust, end of interstellar dust collection
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
NONE
Commercial Programs:
NONE
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1959 – LAUNCH: GD Atlas D, LC13, CCAFS
2001 – LAUNCH (4): LM Trident C-4, SSBN621, ETR
2005 – LAUNCH: LM Trident D-5, SSBN740, ETR
Other:
NONE
The photo today is an artist’s conception of the flight configuration of Stardust for comet and interstellar dust collection.
A story for today is about the Atlas E/MSC failure in 1980 from the Space Review:
Atlas 68E, a converted CGM-16E ICBM, lifted off from SLC-3W at Vandenberg Air Force Base late one evening. All went normally for the first two minutes of flight, but a few hundred milliseconds prior to what would have been commanded shutdown, one booster engine prematurely lost thrust. The asymmetric thrust spun the vehicle around over 180 degrees in less than a second. Remarkably, the vehicle not only survived the violent pivot intact, but then stabilized in what amounted to a retrofire attitude, lost velocity, descended, and finally exploded long before reaching the Earth’s surface.
The mishap investigation revealed that the cause of the engine failure was loss of engine gearbox lubrication, which occurred at around T+100 seconds. The conclusion reached by the US Air Force Mishap Board was that a section of the lubrication feed line failed. Portions of the feed line were made of a material that was susceptible to stress corrosion. This fact had been known for years, but with the plans underway to replace all US expendable launch vehicles (ELVs) with the Space Shuttle, there was little interest in spending any unnecessary funding on the old boosters. More than 25 Atlas ICBMs had been scrapped or otherwise disposed of several years before in anticipation of the Shuttle. The cost to replace the parts that were susceptible to stress corrosion was trivial, especially compared to the costs of a failure, but the overall attitude toward ELVs deterred such a logical and prudent action.
