Word: minuteman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...There is as yet no active defense against an intercontinental ballistic missile in flight," warned the report, or any yet in sight. The report also found present liquid-fueled U.S. ICBMs to be wanting. Recommendation: "a most strenuous effort" behind solid-fuel missiles, e.g., the Air Force's Minuteman and the Navy's Polaris...
...facilities, costly ground-handling equipment and training, as Jupiters are being installed in Italy and Turkey while Thors go to Great Britain. In second-generation, solid-pro-pellant missiles, the Navy's submarine-launched Polaris fits the same general specifications as the Air Force's land-based Minuteman. By Pentagon estimates, $1.5 billion could be saved over the years by a combined program. Yet the two overlapping development programs continue. Other 1961 specifics...
...1960s, must have smaller, higher-yield thermonuclear warheads to fit their smaller nose cones. The Navy's Polaris engineers managed to test their bird's initial warhead just before the moratorium, but could not test its higher-yield follow-up warhead; the Air Force's Minuteman (see SCIENCE) and the Army's Pershing are being developed at a cost of millions to fit warheads that have not been tested, and, under the moratorium, may not be. All these tests could be made underground without fallout. "Without further tests the development of our next generation of weapons...
...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...
...rocket is always ready. Liquid fuels are so combustible and dangerous to handle that the)' must be pumped in at the last moment. This means a delay of many minutes or even hours between an alert and firing time, also involves costly storage tanks and pumps. In contrast, Minuteman should be able to wait quietly, year after year, in a cylindrical hole in the ground, then take off on a 6,000-mile flight on a few seconds' notice...