Chapter 3: The Viking’s Life for Me
One of the most consequential partnerships of the Space Age began, as many conversations in early 1950 did, with a discussion about atomic Armageddon. The Soviet Union had detonated its first atomic bomb the previous August and, for most, the subject was one of trepidation about a world in which the United States no longer possessed a nuclear monopoly. For Captain Robert Heinlein and Dr. Wernher von Braun, however, it was on the usage of orbital nuclear bombardment as a plot device in the latter’s novel. [*1]
Von Braun had sent an unsolicited copy of his manuscript to GMIO in the hopes of obtaining the Navy’s assistance in bringing the novel to market. While the Army had not objected to
Project Mars’ publication on national security grounds – focusing on the fancifulness of the novel’s Martians rather than its five-dozen pages of equations and technical drawings [*2] – von Braun still faced the problem of finding someone willing to publish it. Thus far, he had found no one interested in
Project Mars, with the typical criticism finding the space rocketry to be just as fantastical as the denizens of its titular destination. [*3] He hoped that he might improve his chances of finding a publisher if the Navy – and specifically the Naval Research Laboratory, a serious academic institution currently enjoying positive press from Project Viking’s initial success – supplied a kind word about the technical plausibility of
Project Mars.
NRL, however, was willing and interested in providing von Braun with more than a mere kind word. Captain Heinlein believed, after reading the novel, that
Project Mars offered him an opportunity. As it was an excellent teaching aid to illustrate the complexity of space travel, the myriad fields with which space rocketry could plausibly intersect, and at least some of the ways that the complexity of going to space might be conquered. He wished to make
Project Mars required reading for everyone at NRL working on astronomy- and space rocketry-related projects. With NRL’s budgets increasing precipitously in Fiscal Year 1950 [*4], it was estimated that at least a thousand copies would be necessary for existing staff and expected hires over the next few years. With a firm order of that size – and access to NRL’s rolodex – the search for a publisher was transformed, with
Project Mars eventually being sent to press by P. F. Collier & Son later that year. [*5] The Navy’s beneficence was not, however, without its price: NRL insisted that any copy of
Project Mars it purchased must utilize naval ranks and ratings for the extensive cast of military personnel in the novel, a concession von Braun happily made.
The effort to publish
Project Mars would also be the prologue to the next chapter in the story of Project Viking. The first half of 1950 would see the RTV-N-12 Viking rocket go from success to success. In February, Viking 3 operated flawlessly – with its XLR10-RM-2 rocket motor having finally cured its peroxide leak – and became the first Viking to reach space, attaining a maximum altitude of 89 nautical miles. [*6] This would be followed in May by another successful launch, as Viking 4 would be launched from the U.S.S.
Norton Sound in the vicinity of Johnson Island, setting both set a new altitude record for the RTV-N-12 at 91 nautical miles, as well as a new altitude record for a rocket launched from a ship. Viking 4 also marked the launch of the first “operational” Viking rocket, serving to focus the minds of Project Viking’s leadership – Commander Robert Truax and Milton Rosen – on what would come next for the Navy’s rocket program.
In principle, by the end of 1949 both Truax and Rosen agreed on what needed done in the next phase of Project Viking’s development. The success thus-far attained by the RTV-N-12 would be built-on with a follow-on rocket – the Viking II – which could deliver better performance while also integrating the lessons learned from the Viking launches thus far. [*7] How to accomplish that, however, was a more contentious matter, as the visions of the project officer and technical director for Project Viking differed. As the man who had in no small part birthed Project Viking, Rosen conceived of the Viking II as an enlarged, advanced sounding rocket to continue the existing upper atmospheric research being undertaken by the Viking I. This stood in stark contrast to the rather grander ambition of Commander Truax. Cognizant of Project Viking’s expanded portfolio of responsibilities, what he envisioned was a much larger vehicle, using a clean-sheet design capable of serving as a testbed and demonstrator for various ballistic missile technologies. [*8] Such a rocket would also serve the Navy’s scientific endeavors, Truax felt, as it would be able to conduct upper atmospheric research as a single-stage sounding rocket while also being capable, with the addition of additional stages, of launching a satellite. Further complicating matters was that, while the decision was ultimately Truax’s, there was a strong expectation – on both practical grounds and the unique way NRL operated – that the recommendations of the program’s civilian management would be heeded unless military necessity absolutely required otherwise.
January 1950 saw Rosen and Truax discuss – and then argue – about their respective preferences, with the decision being taken to refer the matter out for several study contracts to the same firms that had worked on various components of HATV: Martin, Douglas, and North American. Each firm was directed to assess the relative merits of an evolution of the Viking I against a new rocket for the current and anticipated programmatic needs of both Projects Viking and BOWDITCH. Unsurprisingly, when the results of those contracts were delivered a few months later, they had deadlocked in their analyses. [*9] The Martin study emphasized the strong progress of Viking I, the adequacy of an evolved Viking for the Navy’s current high-altitude rocketry needs, and the technological risks associated with an overly ambitious new rocket in comparison to the much lower risks associated with continued development of the Viking I platform. Douglas and North American, meanwhile, downplayed the developmental risks due to the speed at which the state of the art in rocketry was advancing and emphasized the inadequacy of a follow-up based on the Viking I for anything other than the most immediate of the Navy’s programmatic needs. Just how inadequate, however, was a question where North American and Douglas differed: North American could find no plausible future use-case for an enlarged Viking I, while Douglas believed that with sufficient staging and sufficiently energetic propellants, an enlarged Viking I could place a small satellite into orbit if demanded to.
Armed with contractor reports to support their respective preferences, Rosen and Truax reconvened in March to attempt to sort out their differences. This proved as difficult as expected, as Truax remained just as bullish on building as big of a rocket as possible for Project Viking’s next phase. Several changes, however, had softened his willingness to override Rosen on the Project Viking’s next rocket. The first was Viking 3’s successful launch: Given the number of times Truax had nearly blown himself up, he could not deny the accomplishments of the RTV-N-12. The second was a set of follow-up study contracts, issued at GMIO’s behest, requesting first-order approximations of the schedules anticipated for each contractor’s preferred rocket, assuming reasonable budgets and priority were made available. Martin estimated between 12 and 18 months for an evolution of Viking I from the date of project approval, while North American estimated no less than 36 months and Douglas no less than 48 months. GMIO, in its memorandum reviewing the supplemental studies, candidly found the timelines of North American and Douglas to be “exceedingly optimistic” and believed that, as with many other guided missiles the office had chronicled, Douglas’ and North American’s concepts would suffer from considerable delays and adverse budgetary effects due to working on the bleeding-edge of technology. GMIO also pointed out the developmental risks from such: If the Navy’s future of rocketry was tied to a large, new rocket and it was not ready in the 1953-54 period as anticipated, then the Navy’s own rocketry programs would be left with only the Viking I to shoulder the whole of its space rocketry scientific research until whenever the new rocket’s teething problems were solved. This risked massive fiscal contagion and the creation of significant redundancies, including going forward with an evolved Viking I, at some point, as a bridge vehicle necessitated by delays.
Confronted with the Viking I’s success and GMIO’s own skepticism, Truax was forced – as a good steward of Naval resources – to relent and approve proceeding with Rosen’s vision of the Viking II. But that was not the end of the matter of Truax’s desire for a bigger rocket. As a concession for the ease of his acquiescence, Truax secured Rosen’s agreement to a formal recommendation from Project Viking that the pursuit a rocket larger than Viking II would be required to meet the Navy’s long-term requirements and requesting approval to begin preliminary design work on it. Supporting development of this rocket – the unsurprisingly named Viking III – was an easy concession for Rosen to make, as it was for him not much of a concession at all. He concurred with Truax that an even larger follow-on rocket to Viking II was desirable, as his difference of opinion with Truax had only been over pursuing something like Viking III at the expense or in lieu of Viking II. By June 24, 1950 – the day the Navy’s fiscal drought finally ended [*10] – both the Viking II and Viking III programs were, to various degrees and with various levels of enthusiasm, being pursued at NRL. [*11]
As it was birthed over the spring and summer of 1950, Viking II would be defined by attempting to squeeze as much possible improvement out of the core Viking I within the limits that time permitted, as it was expected that the last of original ten Viking I flights would be expended by mid-1952, when it was expected the first of its replacement and successor to be ready by. This would require improving upon the Viking’s rocket engine. A process which, as immortalized in
The Boys from Jimmy Oh’s [*12], was very much akin to, and only slightly less painful than, having sex with a very angry porcupine.
History has not been kind to the reputation of the XLR10-RM-2 that powered the Viking I. Which is hardly surprising, considering modern hobbyists attempting to build replicas have never been able to duplicate its performance: No reproduction has yet to perform as badly as the originals did. [*13] The engine was also, by its own metrics, a failure. Designed by Reaction Motors (RMI) to deliver 20,000-lbf of thrust at 200s of specific impulse from a fuel of 92.5% ethyl alcohol/7.5% water and liquid oxygen oxidizer, it could never achieve better than 90% of the latter target. Despite having been state-of-the-art when it was designed in 1946 and remaining the largest American rocket motor to fly, there was felt by NRL, Martin, and RMI to be considerable room for improvement given how far the design of large rocket motors had progressed.
RMI’s plans for an upgraded and improved XLR10 took the form of the 25000C1, which – per the company’s naming conventions – represented a 25,000-lbf engine with a single thrust chamber. The 25000C1 was an entirely new engine that grew out of RMI’s ongoing work for BuAer. The previous year, RMI had been issued contracts to begin development of two new rocket engines: The 5,000-lbf XLR22 and the much larger 50,000-lbf XLR30. Both shared a number of innovative design features: The utilization of the new “spaghetti”-style combustion chamber [*14], turbopumps powered by combustion gases rather than the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, the usage of an anhydrous ammonia/liquid oxygen (“ammolox”) propellant, and a bell-shaped nozzle. RMI wished to build upon its developmental experience with the XLR10 to apply those same new design features to an engine in the XLR10’s thrust range. And beyond its increased thrust, the 25000C1 would deliver a third more specific impulse – 240s versus 180s at sea-level – while weighing only two-thirds that of the XLR10-RM-2.
Beyond the increased technical capabilities, the 25000C1 also offered novel administrative benefits as well for the Navy as a whole. It would also create a unified family of ammolox engine development at RMI, with active work on the XLR22, XLR30, and 25000C1, all of which possessed a number of common technologies. This would allow knowledge gained from any of the three in-development ammolox engines to be used to support the others in their respective development. It might even permit the simple scaling-up of already demonstrated components, such as from the XLR22 to the 25000C1 or the latter to the XLR30. This would effectively increase the amount of money available to each individual development program, as every dollar spent on any of the three engines would – theoretically – be a dollar spent in support of each of the XLR22, 25000C1, and XLR30.
The 25000C1 was well-received by both Martin and NRL. The former was confident that the engineering problems from an ammolox propellant were easily surmounted, while the latter was generally – but not unconditionally – happy with improved performance on offer. The wider Navy also smiled upon the proposal, with NRL and BuAer both finding its balancing of innovation, cost-consciousness, and maximization of scarce development dollar desirable. At the end of April 1950, a $662,000 contract was issued to Reaction Motors to deliver a flight-ready 25000C1 – officially designated the XLR34 [*15]– to NRL within 18 months. While this would put the Viking II’s development over the long-end of Martin’s previously studied timeline, all the parties were confident that the goal of having a Viking II ready for the launchpad by the time of the last Viking I launch was achievable.
And thus began the two years of agony that would prove to be the development of the XLR34. Helmed by Edward A. Neu – who had designed the XLR10’s combustion chamber and was the inventor of the spaghetti-style chamber – the XLR34 promised to be the most advanced rocket engine in the world, if it could be made to work. [*16]
If, however, would prove to be a dangerously operative word. Ammonia would prove to be a difficult nut to crack in terms of stable combustion, as was already being learned on the XLR22. The problem was significant enough that it threatened to quickly snowball the entire XLR34 timetable. After a long, hard examination of the problem, RMI determined there were only two potential options: Usage of an additive to cure the combustion instability – one possibility being adding 22% acetylene to the ammonia, for example – or radically improving the XLR34’s injectors.
That the XLR34 was running into considerable technical headwinds was not a surprise to NRL. None other than Milt Rosen had counseled caution in consideration of the 25000C1, as it was a new engine using a new fuel, whose properties as a propellant were not well understood. This would make the Viking II for all intents and purposes a new rocket, one that would take considerably longer to build than what was foretold by Martin’s Viking I evolution study. He recommended pursuit of an alcolox-powered 25000C1 which he was confident could be delivered in 18 months. On this matter, however, Commander Truax overrode him. As one of Truax’s final acts before departing BuAer to helm Project Viking had been helping develop the specifications – including those for an ammolox propellant – which would be issued to RMI to produce the XLR22 and XLR30. As the ammolox rocket was as much a brain-child of Truax’s as of RMI’s, Truax was not inclined to abandon it and military necessity required its continued development. As the problems mounted with the XLR34, Truax and Rosen reached out to Dr. John Clark, the Navy’s foremost propellant chemist and chief of the Naval Air Rocket Testing Station (“NARTS”), for input to get the project back on track.
Dr. Clark was already well aware of the issues which RMI was having with hard-starts in its ammolox engines. RMI’s headquarters was located a mere ten miles from NARTS and he could frequently hear how badly things were going. Of the two choices presented by RMI, he counseled forcing the firm to improve its injectors, liable as it was to being a long and even noisier process that it already was. But it was better than the ammonia-acetylene witch’s brew, which Dr. Clark was steadfast he would not be allowed on his test-stands. Or, if he was ordered to do so, he would only do it from a safe distance. Like White Sands. Or the French Riviera. [*17]
Emphatic rejection of additives – or at least the ones which were known of that promised to quickly solve the combustion instability problem – seemed to leave only the “long and loud” option for RMI. But Dr. Clark’s formulation also neglected the Iron Triangle of Procurement: “You can have any two of fast, cheap, and good.” Project Viking had, at its inception, chosen “fast and cheap” due to its shoestring budgets, though it still accomplished a considerable amount with the resources it had. But if the Viking II were approached like a more traditional procurement program, with “fast and good” being chosen instead, perhaps the XLR34 might still be kept on-schedule.
In this regard, the XLR34 was blessed with a considerable amount of institutional support. As Commander Truax had not been wrong when he considered the engine’s success a matter of military necessity. Beyond his own the whole-hearted support, the Naval brass was also highly supportive of the XLR34. Both Rear Admiral Stevens at ONR and the man who took his old job as chief of research at BuAer – the recently promoted Rear Admiral Thatcher – were friends of the XLR34, though each for their own reasons. Rear Admiral Stevens supported the XLR34 as a matter of institutional prestige, as the Viking II was an important program and its advancing the state-of-the-art for large rocket engines would be a feather in the Navy’s cap. Rear Admiral Thatcher, meanwhile, supported the XLR34 because every advancement made on it moved the ball forward for the project BuAer was truly invested in, the XLR30. For, despite Project Viking’s investiture with the responsibility for researching ballistic missiles, BuAer had nonetheless almost immediately moved forward with its commissioning of the XLR30, which it intended to be used in a large ballistic missile. That ballistic missile was the rather unimaginatively named Super Viking, though in 1949 and 1950 it was more an idea than actual design. [*17] But, despite the Super Viking’s nascency, the XLR30’s success non-negotiable, which in turn – thanks to the unified ammolox development program – also made the XLR34’s success non-negotiable, as well.
This meant, as a practical matter, considerably more money and priority were afforded to the XLR34 than it would otherwise have been privy to. And Truax, in his management of the Viking II program, did not intend to hesitate in using the fiscal bulldozer he had been given. Subcontracting was to be the tool with which the Navy kept the XLR34 on schedule, as for anything RMI did not have a ready answer for, they would be expected to immediately contract for the needed solution. This was met with protests from RMI, which were silenced by a none-too-subtle threat: If RMI did not wish to continue to be involved in the contract, it would be given to Aerojet or Curtiss-Wright. Muttering from its corporate leadership aside, RMI acquiesced, and in short order the first major shakeup of the XLR34 program occurred in August 1950 as a contract, at the Navy’s insistence and brokered by NRL, was signed with Pratt & Whitney to supply the turbomachinery necessary for the XLR34. Divestiture of responsibility for the turbopumps would, it was hoped, allow RMI to focus on the problem of combustion instability.
The process of attaining smooth combustion from an ammolox engine would, however, still be one which rained bits of detonated combustion chamber and turbomachinery on northern New Jersey. Learning in the rocket world required putting rocket motors on the test-stand and failure was more often than not explosive: Hence Dr. Clark’s prediction regarding the loudness of RMI’s work. Even freed of the need to spend engineering time on the XLR34’s turbopumps, it would take Neu’s team fifteen months – and, on average, both a new injector design and sacrificial XLR22 per month – to smoothly and reliably operate an ammolox rocket motor. While combustion instability had paced the XLR34’s development, the work on the rest of the engine’s components had proceeded apace and – with smooth combustion finally perfected – an entire prototype engine, the XLR34-RM-1, would be test-fired on RMI’s test-stand just before Thanksgiving of 1951. Another prototype would be delivered to NARTS a few weeks later for the Navy’s own independent test-firing. While RMI had failed to meet its original contract goal of delivering a production engine by end of 1951, there was still considerable satisfaction at the firm – and considerable relief from the Navy – that the XLR34’s delivery deadline had been met in spirit, if not fact.
Despite this Christmas gift, there would still prove to be a lump of coal in the Navy’s stocking. On December 17, 1951 the XLR34-RM-1 was test-fired at NARTS for the first time, generating 25,541-lbf of thrust at 225s of sea-level specific impulse. While the thrust was absolutely on-target, the specific impulse fell decidedly short of the promised 240s. RMI advised the Navy and Martin that work on the shortfall was ongoing and that, based upon a more recent iteration of the XLR22, another five-to-seven seconds of specific impulse could be expected from the XLR34-RM-2, the engine’s production version. Beyond that, Neu’s team was certain another six months would be required to attain the desired performance, due the need to make changes to the combustion chamber and turbopumps to allow the XLR34 to run hotter.
Six additional months of delay posed a quandary for NRL. The cost of the XLR34 had exploded, both literally and figuratively, to reach the stage where the XLR34-RM-1 was on the test-stand. By the end of 1951, the engine’s development had cost the Navy more than $12 million. [*19] That was more than twenty times what the program had initially been expected to cost and more than five times what, in 1946, had been approved to be spent on building the whole of the Viking I. The XLR34 had luckily been initiated just prior to the start of the Korean War and had been carried forward by the initial euphoria which had infected all development programs as a fiscal monsoon poured money into the uniformed services. That the XLR34 was massively over-budget had, thus far, simply not mattered given the sheer volume of funding which the fighting in Korea had made available to the Navy. But the halcyon days of money raining from the sky were ending, as the demands of war proved that even a fiscal monsoon is not the same thing as an infinite money-geyser. It was also an election year in which a stalemate in the Orient persisted, raising the specter of a more fiscally sober eye turned to how the services spent their money as an outlet for public discontent with the war’s progress. There was also the fact that, while ammolox had been the propellant of the future in 1949 when the XLR22 had been initiated, by the start of 1952 its competitors were on the march. [*20] A six-month delay in obtaining a new prototype which provided the originally contracted-for performance could put the whole program in danger if the ground continued to shift.
The quandary over the XLR34 deepened due to the state Project Viking found itself in as 1952 began, as well. Project Viking had intended to expend all ten of the production run of Viking Is by the end of 1951: Two in 1949, four in 1950, and four in 1951. As events transpired, it had not done so. After the successful launch of Viking 4, the next flight in November – Viking 5 – had set another new record altitude for a Viking launch, this time of 93 nautical miles. It had been hoped that Viking 6 would continue this trend and, in December, shatter the record for the highest altitude ever reached by a single-stage rocket, which at the time was 99 nautical miles and had been attained in 1946 by an Army-launched V-2. Viking 6, however, would not clear half of that. During ascent, one of its fins sheared off and caused it to nose-over, careening back to Earth while still under power and crashing into the New Mexican desert. It would not be until August 1951 that a Viking I would fly again, as Viking 6’s failures were identified and fixes implemented. Viking 7 would prove to be a vindication for the Viking I, as this time the V-2’s altitude record would be shattered, with Viking 7 attaining a height of 118 nautical miles. It was hoped that Viking 7 marked a return to normalcy for the Viking I: This would prove not to be, as the planned launch of Viking 8 that October would be aborted after the rocket was destroyed in a pre-flight static-firing that ripped itself loose from its tie-downs and prompted a review of all prelaunch procedures that would keep the Project Viking grounded well into 1952. [*21]
And to further add to the confusion, in the first week of January 1952, Project Viking lost its project officer. As of the new year, it became the formal policy of the Navy that, with the ongoing fighting in Korea, that ballistic missiles were a developmental consideration rather than a research consideration. And pursuant to that policy, responsibility for researching ballistic missiles would be transferred from NRL to BuAer. This decision was protested by both NRL and ONR, but the protests fell for the most part upon deaf ears. There would be no stopping Commander Truax’s transfer back to the West Coast, where he would become the chief of propulsion on a committee helmed by Captain John Hayward [*22] evaluating the technical feasibility of a seagoing ballistic missile and establishing the operational requirements for one. [*23]
It would fall to Milt Rosen, once more handed the administrative as well as technical reins of the freshly reorganized Project Viking, to sort out the competing priorities which pulled at the program as 1952 dawned. Rosen was determined that the great should not be allowed to become the enemy of the good enough. While payloads of experiments were already coming together for the last two RTV-N-12s – what should be Vikings 9 and 10 – Project BOWDITCH had already shifted its energies toward developing things to be launched by the Viking II. Those payloads, all but the PTV-N-4 HELIOS, were nascent enough to accommodate a slightly less capable Viking II. HELIOS – Hydrogen Experiment for Launching Into Outer Space – would, meanwhile, be ready by the time the first XLR34-RM-2-powered Viking II would be available and its own mission would not be compromised by the mild diminishment in its first-stage’s performance. If the XLR34 was accepted, that could put a Viking-HELIOS on the launchpad in White Sands as early as April 1952 if the integration of the XLR34-RM-2 went without incident. Refusing to accept the XLR34 would push that back to October at the earliest and only if RMI met its anticipated schedule. Which, given Rosen’s experience with the XLR10 [*24] and XLR34, seemed incredibly optimistic. More probably it would be mid-to-late 1953 by the time Viking II became available, meaning NRL would need to acquire another 4 to 6 Viking Is – exactly what GMIO had predicated almost two years ago would be necessary if delays on the Viking II mounted– to fill the gap between Viking 10 and Viking II’s first launch. This would, in turn, delay the proper commencement of the next phase of NRL’s upper atmospheric research until 1954 when multiple Viking IIs were available.
In consideration of 18 to 24 months of effective delay for NRL’s research agenda, the eight to ten seconds of possible specific impulse gain by refusing acceptance of the XLR34 was not worth the cost to the agency’s launch manifest. That, by itself, was reason enough for Rosen to accept the XLR34. Captain Heinlein concurred with the decision, both as an engineering and as a political matter. For he reasoned there was also an additional benefit to accepting the engine as it was. The XLR34 was, as far as he – and more importantly GMIO – was aware, the most technologically advanced rocket engine in the United States. Flight data from the operational use of it was highly valuable, given the degree it was advancing the state-of-the-art. And that data was more valuable today than in two years, given how fast rocketry was evolving. Given the princely sum which the Navy had paid for the XLR34, providing a good return on investment in the form of practical results demonstrated that NRL’s space rocketry program was still militarily useful. As, Heinlein’s reasoning continued, the continuance of high levels of funding was far, far more likely if it was believed that NRL’s space rocketry had tangible benefits for the uniformed service beyond its advancement of scientific knowledge.
Nothing involving rocketry ever proves easy, however. Teething problems abounded with the XLR34-RM-2, with the promised gains to 230s of specific impulse not being demonstrated on a test-stand until mid-February, when the first production engine was supposed to be in Martin’s hands three weeks earlier. And it would take another month still to deliver the first XLR34-RM-2 to Martin, with the first fully assembled RTV-N-12a being deemed completed on April 7, 1952, about the time it’d been hoped to see Viking II’s maiden flight if all had gone well. “Completed”, however, did not mean “flight-ready”, as another six weeks of gremlin-hunting would be required at Martin’s facility in Maryland and at White Sands before the Viking team finally thought that the RTV-N-12a was ready.
The delays and teething problems, however, would prove to be a blessing in disguise. As the Hayward Commission’s ongoing work had shown an interest in conducting rocket-launchings of its own, the two remaining Viking Is in inventory were earmarked by the Pentagon to support the Hayward Commission’s work rather than launching scientific payloads as Vikings 9 and 10. This meant the first launch of the Viking II, as the first-stage of a Viking-HELIOS, would launched as the new Viking 9. And with the abandonment of the need to prepare for further Viking I launches, the Navy’s personnel at White Sands had several months to focus exclusively on ensuring the smooth transition to the new Viking II platform.
And, after Viking 8, that attention to detail was essential. As for the first time, both the press and the public would be interested in a Viking launch. On March 22, 1952,
Collier’s had run its seminal “Man Will Conquer Space Soon!” article and set off a bout of space madness, which had still not fully subsided by late May. Launching a novel rocket like Viking-HELIOS in that environment would have attracted some attention no matter what. But as Captain Heinlein had been featured in “Man Will Conquer Space Soon!”, writing about how liquid hydrogen was the fuel that would power the future of spaceflight, attention – and lots of it – was all but guaranteed it. [*25]
As eyes turned to New Mexico as May gave way to June, the future of the Navy’s rocketry endeavors teased what it may hold. Thus far the Navy’s achievements in space rocketry had been accomplished by its East Coast rocketry establishment: The men of Project Viking and the firms close to NRL’s campus in Anacostia. The future, however, harkened was the arrival of the West Coast rocketry establishment, the men of Project BOWDITCH whose dreams for CESFR and HATV were merely deferred and not forgotten, along with the firms of the Southern California aerospace-industrial complex.
For they would be the men who tamed liquid hydrogen and brought it to the desert.
=*=*=*=*=
*1)
Marsprojekt begins with a recounting of the state of the world in the distant year of 1980 A.D., in which the Eastern Bloc’s Siberian bastions have been obliterated by orbital nuclear bombardment from Lunetta, the 440-person orbital space station which is the story’s “Goddess of a new, strong peace” which enables the United States of Earth to launch a Martian expedition.
*2) 62 pages to be precise, from Page 215 to 277. As taken from 2007’s
Project Mars: A Technical Tale.
*3) This is, sadly, entirely OTL. Nineteen publishers in total would eventually pass on
Marsprojekt, meaning it would not get to see the commercial market until
Project Mars: At Technical Tale was finally published in 2007.
*4) The federal government’s fiscal year runs from October 1 through September 30. FY 1950 therefore covers the funding period from October 1, 1949 through September 30, 1950. This is the first fiscal year with Captain Heinlein at NRL and Rear Admiral Stevens at ONR. And it is telling, as NRL’s spending on astronomy, ballistic missile, and space rocketry programs totals ~$7.2MM, which is about 15% of what the whole of ONR spent OTL in FY 1950. Almost all of which is new money – owing to the importance of guided missiles in their myriad shapes and sizes to the Navy’s future – and not cannibalized from other ONR programs. For contrast, OTL’s Project Viking cost ~$6.6MM over its first ten launches from 1946 to 1954.
*5) Yes,
that Collier. P. F. Collier & Son being the book-printing subsidiary of the Cromwell-Collier Publishing Company, whose stable of magazines included the weekly
Collier’s magazine.
Project Mars is initially treated as a low-volume academic text by P. F. Collier & Son with the belief the primary customer is going to be the Navy, rather than as a potential mass-market product, which is ironic given what the next few years have in store.
*6) One of the problems of writing about an alternative Project Viking with considerably more – but by no means lavish – amounts of money is how to handle the various failures which characterized much of the program. OTL, Viking 3 was aborted mid-flight by the range safety officer after it began to veer off-course. To what extent was Viking 3’s faulty guidance system the result of the inevitable failures of late Forties electronics and to what extent was it that Project Viking was operating at the cutting edge of technology with meager resources which precluded being as rigorous with quality control and/or pre-flight hardware check-out as might otherwise have been desirable? My operating assumption is that it’s a bit of Column A and a bit of Column B, so the butterflies of the availability of additional funds at the end of 1949 tips the balance to having everything work as intended with an apogee comparable to what Viking 4 would turn in a few months later.
On the other grasping-tentacle, some failures are also inevitable. As they teach important lessons that can’t be learned otherwise. (OTL’s Vikings 6 and 8 come to mind in this regard.)
*7) One of which, that Rosen chronicles in a fair amount of detail in
The Viking Rocket Story, was related to their original placement of access hatches relative to the turbopump and needing to disassemble the entire bottom-end of the rocket to access it. Which is quite the problem when your rocket is plagued by persistent turbopump leaks.
*8) Practically speaking, Rosen envisions OTL’s RTV-N-12a, which flew as Viking 8 through Viking 12. While Truax wants something like a Redstone-sized HIROC.
*9) Unsurprising because each contractor just so happened to conclude that the course of action most economically advantageous to them was the one which was the obviously correct choice for the Navy to adopt.
*10) That being the day Operation Pokpung began (in Washington at least), igniting the Korean War and more generally causing money to rain like manna from heaven for all of the uniformed services. It is no accident that both Redstone and Atlas both traced their origins to within the months immediately following June 1950.
*11) The initial years of the development of the Viking III will be a major topic explored in a near-future chapter.
*12)
The Boys from Jimmy Oh’s is a cult classic single-season TV show, helmed by Leslie C. Stevens IV, which aired for one season on ABC during the 1965-66 season. The show resulted from an extended series of conversations Stevens had been engaged in with his father – Admiral Leslie C. Stevens III, the Chief of Naval Research from 1949 until 1956 – during the run of
The Outer Limits about using the Space Race as a basis for a television series. With the cancellation of
The Outer Limits, Stevens pitched using most of the remaining production time and staff from the show for a half-season run of a new show that prominently featured the Space Race as a narrative backdrop. The reuse of mostly budgeted-for assets and the promise of unprecedented access from the Navy was sufficient for ABC to greenlight to project for the following fall season.
The show’s premise was that in the distant future, the United States of Earth was locked in a protracted war with a sinister alien species referred to only as The Enemy. (The Enemy, conveniently enough, always appeared on-screen dressed in red and with stereotypical Russian accents.) The Enemy planned to send a team back in time to prevent the formation of the United States of Earth, which required Earth to do the same to make sure The Enemy failed. A team is assembled and sent back in time – to late-Forties Southern California – where their arrival is witnessed by the elderly Jinzaburo Otada, out of whose Japanese restaurant (the titular Jimmy Oh’s) the team from the future would operate for the duration of the series.
The Boys from Jimmy Oh’s is remembered in equal measures for being the third season of
The Outer Limits as well being a precursor and harbinger of
Star Trek’s success. Which is hardly surprising, given the number of people from both
The Outer Limits and
Star Trek worked on the project: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and James Doohan would all appear in all three series. One of the controversial decisions of Stevens’ was that the team from the United States of Earth were a cast of extras: They came and went as the story demanded, with the anchor characters instead being Jinzaburo and his family, including his wife (Midori), daughter (Megumi), and son-in-law (Lt. Peter Bainbridge), a Navy rocketeer stationed at the fictional NAS Magoo Point. Despite its B-movie premise,
The Boys from Jimmy Oh’s, was a surprisingly character-driven drama, focusing on the Otadas and the legacy of the Second World War as much as anything else as they intersected with The Enemy’s machinations.
The unique 15-episode run which ABC authorized provided
The Boys from Jimmy Oh’s to pursue far greater narrative continuity than was common at the time. Much of the show’s meta-plot revolved around the death of Jinzaburo’s son during the War and the seeming contradictions associated with it, which are assumed to be the work of The Enemy manipulating time and are part of the glue which binds the team from the future to the Otadas, as well as raising questions about just how friendly Jinzaburo even is, as he might himself be working with The Enemy. Only for it to be revealed in the season finale the apparent contradictions arose from Jinzaburo having had
two sons, one from his current marriage and another from half-a-lifetime ago in Japan, prior to his emigration to the States. Both of whom died – one in Italy fighting the Germans and the other in Burma fighting the British – over the course of the war, and which taken together explain the contradictions. The series’ unique combination of hokey premise, serious drama, and heavy inter-episode continuity failed to find an audience, however, and while its rating were superior to those of the second season of
The Outer Limits, it was not picked up for a full season by ABC after its initial run.
Despite its lukewarm ratings, the show did eventually find an audience in syndication, and remains a favorite genre-piece to this day. It’s most fondly remembered for the sheer amount of Space Race trivia that is crammed into nearly every episode. This ranges from the obvious, such as Peter Bainbridge being a very transparent expy of a young Robert Truax; to the subtle, with many blink-and-you’ll-miss-it references to real-world events at Point Mugu, White Sands, and China Lake; to the downright infamous, in which none other than Krafft Ehricke guest-starred as a Werner von Braun expy whom The Enemy plotted to assassinate.
The
other reason why it is fondly remembered is because of Jinzaburo Otada, who would rather shamelessly be transplanted into ITTL’s “The Trouble With Tribbles” episode of
Star Trek, where he would be Deep Space Station K-7’s barkeep and play an expanded role compared to that of his OTL counterpart.
*13) This is entirely OTL, sadly. A lot of RMI’s brilliance has tended to be overshadowed by the ignominy of its demise and depressing factoids like that.
*14) This being the same as the tubular/tube-wall combustion chamber that formed the basis for Rocketdyne’s first generation of large rocket motors, such as the XLR43. As well the combustion chambers of almost every other noteworthy rocket engine, for that matter.
*15) One of the things I’ve been dreading in this timeline has been rocket motor designations. As, sooner or later, I will by necessity be forced to assign designations which were used IOTL to things ITTL that are entirely different, creating a great deal of potential confusion. I will try my darnedest to recycle designations from existing space programs and otherwise try to use as obscure systems as possible when displacement is necessary, simply to preserve everyone’s sanity.
Needless to say, the XLR34 is one of these displacements. IOTL, as far I can find, the XLR34 was a 25-lbf RMI helicopter blade-tip rocket which was very similar to the firm’s contemporaneous work on the XLR32. Indeed, the follow-on to the XLR34-RM-1 would be the XLR32-RM-2. It’s safe to say that XLR32 program keeps all of the helicopter blade-tip rockets while the Viking II gets the XLR34.
*16) Ed Neu is one of the minor characters of the early Space Age who is often forgotten. Brilliant and innovative, his major work IOTL happened on the XLR10, XLR30, and XLR99, as well as receiving a patent for his spaghetti combustion chamber. He never rose to prominence due to working for the wrong company – as RMI would eventually go down in flames – as well as dying quite young: In 1963, at the age of 43, he died due to “health complications”. (I have been unable to find out what those complications were.) Perhaps the greatest commentary on his life was his patent. He filed for it in April 1950. It would not be granted until 1965, however, nearly two years after his untimely death.
Perhaps ITTL, history just might remember Ed Neu differently.
*17) Most of this is just paraphrasing
Ignition! and its discussion of ammolox propellants in the context of the X-15. With the exception of where he’d be for testing the ammonia-acetylene mix. But anything Clark describes as “dangerously unstable” is something no sane – or even insane but non-suicidal – rocketeer should want anything to do with.
*18) “Super Viking” is one of those terms from the early Space Age, like “Winged Atlas”, that meant a great many things to a great many people. I’ve seen it used to refer to the OTL RTV-N-12a/Viking Model 8, an even bigger and more powerful follow-on rocket to the RTV-N-12a (akin to TTL’s Viking III), and even a sub-launched ballistic missile derived from the Viking.
*19) The process of developing the XLR34 is, in many ways, like that of developing a pint-sized XLR99. So despite being non-throttleable and only half of the rated output, the XLR34 is considerably earlier in the timeline and should experience similarly painful cost growth to the XLR99.
*20) The origins of RMI’s unique ammonia/liquid oxygen propellant combination trace back to their own in-house propellant chemist – Dr. Paul Winternitz, a man who would go on to have a very unhealthy interest in boranes – and Robert Truax, also mentioned above. Ammolox, however, was not their first choice for a propellant. That was a combination of hydrazine and liquid oxygen. But in 1949, hydrazine’s propensity to self-detonate when used for regenerative cooling and the lack of money or resources to tame the problem, as well as a chronic shortage of the stuff to begin with, necessitated a different fuel. They settled on ammonia due to its ease of handling, ready availability, and ability to handle the thermal loads anticipated.
By 1952, however, that had begun to change as hydrazine production was on the rise due in no small part to the work of Dr. Clark and NARTS as part of the Navy’s own petroleum-derived propellants programs. These will be discussed in much more detail in a near-future chapter.
*21) This is simply the OTL Viking launch schedule, compressed and accelerated. While Viking 4’s turbopump maladies were solvable with the increased money in the system, Viking 6’s discovery of structural issues with Viking’s fins and the instrumentation issues with Viking 8 do not seem like they’d be cured by the same. And while OTL’s Viking 8 did involve an RTV-N-12a, the accident itself was one that could just as easily have happened with an RTV-N-12, and I think learning the lessons which need learned from it are most cleanly dealt with via keeping it mostly as OTL.
*22) Captain John Hayward was, at this time, head of the Military Applications Division at the Atomic Energy Commission. He is another character who spends a good deal of time lurking in the background of the Navy’s space-related efforts, most notably having been head of R&D for the whole Navy at the time which Vanguard TV-3 caught its case of the explosions.
*23) The Hayward Commission is interested in nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. As a consequence of the A-Ship, the idea of a surface-going boomer has some purchase. But it is only one of many ideas being looked at.
The workings of the Hayward Commission will be covered more substantively in the future when we get into how ballistic missile programs intersect with NRL.
*24) The XLR10, as originally contracted for, was to be delivered within 14 months. It took two years to deliver a working engine. Gross underestimation of cost and time required would be a recurrent theme for RMI, if you hadn’t noticed by now.
*25) Unfortunately, as
Dreams of Atomic Midshipman is trying to be more grounded than
LEVIATHAN Rising, we won’t get to see Robert Heinlein popularizing orbital infrastructure in 1952. (Which has the knock-on effect of meaning no National Radiative Propulsive Array, as well.) He’s just writing about liquid hydrogen instead, while being the head of the organization that is at the forefront of its practical applications.
Lest anyone start getting any
ideas, timelines are written about ROOST ITTL the same they’re written about it ours. SASSTO, though? Well…
