Word: titan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Chairman George M. Bunker of the Martin Co. announced last week that he would take personal charge of the company's Titan ICBM program and revamp the whole operation. All missile production, testing and launching will be brought into a new division, with headquarters shifted from Baltimore to Denver, where Martin produces the Titan. Denver's current boss, Howard W. ("Bucky") Merrill, will stay on as a Martin vice president, but relinquish top operational control of the Titan program to Bunker, who is moving to Denver...
...Bunker's action came none too soon. The Titan, on which the U.S. has spent some $1.2 billion to date, is in trouble. After four preliminary successful shoots (none beyond the first stage), the missile designed to be more sophisticated than Convair's Atlas has not been able to get off the pad for seven months...
While the number of Titans built is secret, best guess is that 35 have come off the lines, of which five have been lost in accidents; another nine have been damaged, and of the nine, only two of the birds could be put back into flight condition. The accidents did not stem from any basic flaw in design. Most of the troubles came from unrelated, random-type failures that plague every missile, including the Atlas, which failed five times in a row earlier this year before the bugs were taken out. The big problem is that Martin...
...Part of the blame can be laid to the pressures inherent in a crash program. But as the failures pile up, Martin is getting so edgy (Martin crews call their pads at Canaveral "the inferiority complex") that the experts accuse it of becoming "fail-safe happy," of burdening the Titan with too many extra safety relays and circuits, gadgets that in themselves fail...