Word: liquid-fuel
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Missile Deterrent. The U.S. will continue to rely on liquid-fuel Atlas and Titan intercontinental missiles. The bill will complete the Air Force's 13-squadron Atlas program (with a total of 135 missiles), allow for twelve squadrons of Titans (with a total of 108 missiles). But the future of strategic deterrence clearly belongs to two solid-fuel missiles: the Navy's submarine-carried Polaris, and the Air Force's Minuteman, which can be fired from concrete "silos" buried in the ground, eventually will also be carried on special trains roaming at random through...
...doing reasonably well in military space craft. The solid-fuel Minuteman proved long ago that it can take off handily from an underground silo; last week a two-stage, 110-ton liquid-fuel Titan also took off from a silo. Pre ceded by a burst of flame, it roared out of a 146-ft. concrete-lined hole at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Since it carried a dummy second stage, it flew for only 140 seconds before it was deliberately "destructed" by radio command. But it proved that even comparatively tender liquid-fuel rockets, which are heavy weight lifters...
...steam-white smoke billow up in a few seconds and drift over hills and valleys. Monstrous vehicles with curious burdens lumber along the roads. All these strange goings-on mark the development of the Minuteman, the solid-fuel missile that its proponents confidently expect will ultimately replace the liquid-fuel Atlas as the U.S.'s standard ICBM...
...production of rocket engines filled with the rubbery solid fuel that was Thiokol's first contribution to rocketry. It has grown into 84 smallish structures scattered over miles of desert, but it still reflects the basic simplicity that is solid fuel's chief advantage over liquid. The liquid-fuel rocket engines that push the Thor and Atlas must be static-tested with their flames shooting downward, which requires massive, well-anchored test stands to resist the upward thrust. Their liquid fuel and oxidizer call for pumps, tanks, valves and tubing. Instruments watch every part of their twisted intestinal...
Minuteman. Most promising solid-fuel rocket is the Minuteman, the Air Force's long-range (6,300 miles) missile. Not much has been revealed officially, but an air of success hangs around men who are working on it. Much smaller than its rivals, the liquid-fuel Atlas and Titan, it has three stages filled with fuel made mostly of a rubbery plastic holding together crystals of an oxygen-supplying material, such as ammonium perchlorate. The ingredients are first blended to form a semiliquid mass like peanut butter. This is pumped with extreme care into the rocket casing and cured...