Word: thor
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Navy's lagging Vanguard. He figured that the IRBM rivalry between the Air Force Thor and the Army Jupiter had gone so far, taken so long and cost so much that both should be put into production. McElroy upgraded Deputy Assistant Secretary William Holaday to the post of missile boss. To those who doubted Holaday's ability, McElroy also let it be known that the Pentagon's real missile boss was Neil McElroy...
...senator said Schriever added that the Thor and the Atlas development programs could not be accelerated but indicated that the Titan program could and should be stepped...
...Bernard A. Schriever, director of the ballistic missiles program for the Air Force, was quoted by Johnson as saying that both the Thor and Atlas missiles are being supported at an adequate rate in the development stage "but that production schedules could and should be accelerated...
...growing family of liquid oxygen ("lox") -and-kerosene-fueled missiles is that they cannot retaliate instantly. Time needed to fuel the Air Force's test-ICBM Atlas: a minimum 15 minutes after an hour-long countdown. Time needed to fuel the Air Force's test IRBM Thor, even using a promising but not fully tested method of "force-feeding": eight minutes. The U.S.'s lox missiles could conceivably be knocked out by the enemy before they could be fueled and primed for launching...
...occasions, this time was only a qualified success. In a burst of fire at night that lit the missile like a futuristic firework, Jupiter swept into the sky in a first-class launching. But, said the Defense Department, it "failed to complete its full flight because of technical difficulties." Thor, on the other hand, was eminently successful. For the first time, the Air Force fired its IRBM complete: nose cone, full guidance gear-and ballast in the nose to simulate the weight of its warhead. Thor flew a little under 1,200 nautical miles, landed within less than two nautical...