Word: thor
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Force had long been concerned about the mounting costs and complexities of the U.S.'s liquid-fueled missiles-the ICBMs Atlas and Titan, the IRBMs Thor and Jupiter-and had also been aware that long-countdown liquid-fuel missiles were not weapons of true instant retaliation. Barred by the Defense Department temporarily from solid-fuel development, the Air Force was impressed by the rapid progress and strategic potential of the Navy's solid-fuel Polaris. Months ago Schriever's men got down to work adapting the Polaris' developments to Air Force concepts...
...prowled Pentagon corridors, passing out word that, given the chance, the Army could develop a rocket motor to put a 15-ton satellite into space with a man aboard. The Air Force stood that sort of talk as long as it could, then leaked a story about using its Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile to put up a 1,000-lb. satellite as early as June. The Army promptly upped the ante to 1,500 Ibs.-and the Pentagon's interservice storm signals were flapping furiously...
...most experienced, were specifically ordered to forget about satellite work. They did no such thing, and neither did their U.S. Army bosses. The Von Braun team had been authorized to develop the Army's Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missile as a competitor of the Air Force's Thor-and Von Braun said he needed test vehicles to iron out some of the problems. He wangled permission to build twelve Jupiter-Cs-actually, almost the same jazzed-up Redstones with which he had proposed to put a small moon into orbit...
Then Came Termites. Jupiter was put into blazing competition with the Air Force's Thor IRBM, and the race more than occupied the energies of the Huntsville scientists. Even so, says Von Braun, the Army missilemen "had clear sailing for about a year." And then: "The termites got into the system again." Ironically, some of the termites were hatched by the Army itself...
...Braun, the same equipment plus a few more tricks can put 50% more weight on orbit. But he and other Army men point out that the Redstone is a comparatively small rocket, not nearly so powerful as the ones that launched the Russian Sputniks, or as military rockets-Atlas, Thor, etc.-now being tested in the U.S. Dr. Jack E. Froelich of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that the Army's Jupiter rocket (not to be confused with the Jupiter-C) could boost a much bigger satellite into an orbit, or even send it around the moon...