Word: skybolts
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...bomber that soared high overhead last week held a special significance. Telescopes and electronic eyes on the Atlantic Missile Range traced every mile of the big ship's progress. The reason for the intense interest was obvious. Under the bomber's right wing hung a slim Skybolt missile, the newest and most promising weapon of the U.S. Air Force...
Precisely on schedule, the Skybolt dropped away from its mother plane. As it fell, the eight-finned after section kept it from tumbling. Then, just after the fins separated and went astern, the first of the two-stage missile's solid-fuel engines ignited, spouting a rooster tail of naming gas. Quickly Skybolt accelerated, spurted far ahead of the B-52, turned its nose upward and climbed sharply out of sight. By the time its dummy warhead splashed in the ocean far downrange, it was clear that Skybolt, which has been under forced-draft development by Douglas Aircraft...
Little Fuss. All qualified observers agreed: the Skybolt-B-52 combination makes a splendid weapon. (In Britain, even before last week's test, R.A.F. pilots were itching to strap the rockets under the wings of their Vulcan bombers.) A combat-ready B-52 will carry four Sky-bolts under its wings, each armed with a nuclear warhead that will make it as devastating as the submarine-borne Polaris missiles that are now in service. Both in eventual impact and versatility on the way to its target, Skybolt is an impressive testament to nuclear age technology...
...prospered by putting its chips on missiles and space, and lately has branched into such solid civilian products as cement. In time, most of the major planemakers went over to missiles and space. Today, General Dynamics has its Atlas, Boeing Airplane Co. its Dyna-Soar and Minuteman, Douglas its Skybolt, and McDonnell Aircraft Corp. its Mercury capsule. Lockheed Aircraft Corp., which is the prime contractor for the Discoverer, Midas and Samos satellites, gets more than half its sales from missilery and space. So does the company that has built more planes than any other in the past-giant North American...
Bailing Out Astronauts. Most fruitful fallout came from the Snark. A refinement of the Snark's star-tracking guidance system now helps to guide the Polaris-firing submarines and the Air Force's air-to-ground Skybolt missile; it will also ride on the Project Ranger moon shoot and the Project Mariner probes to Mercury and Venus. "Ultimately," says Jones, "the same technology will serve on long-distance airliners and ocean liners." Work on the Snark also convinced Jones of the need for a pulse-taking computer to run a continuous inspection on every missile. From that experience...