Word: titanically
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...paved with concrete so thick that months must pass before it cures. Then the U.S. Air Force will slide a 90-ft., 117-ton monster into its perpendicular den and seal it with heavy concrete doors against the megaton shocks of man-made thermonuclear quakes. The monster is the Titan intercontinental ballistic missile, the first weapon in Air Force history to go underground...
...such, Titan presages the day when all long-range missiles will lurk beneath the earth, invisible and well-nigh invulnerable to enemy attack. The sunken silo at Vandenberg is only one part of a subterranean complex under construction as Titan's first "hard base." Adjoining the missile tank are other sunken cylinders (see diagram), housing air-conditioning and hydraulic equipment, a power station, liquid oxygen and fuel tanks, and a command control center for the launch crew. Tunnels connect the widely dispersed elements, but after the alert, only the control center will be occupied. Remotely controlled, the monster, fueled...
...allow in a nose cone. A solid-fuel missile like the projected Air Force Minuteman ICBM (due in 1963) would be badly overloaded with a heavy copper nose. Now the Minuteman will reportedly get a sharper, ablative nose, as may later advanced versions of the liquid-fuel Atlas and Titan, thus returning advanced missilery to orthodox streamlining...
GUIDANCE SYSTEM for missiles that defies enemy jamming has been developed by American Bosch Arma Corp. for Titan ICBM, and company will adapt it for use in Atlas ICBM. Air Force calls system a "major breakthrough," is now planning to give sizable new Government contract to American Bosch...
...that all this research comes high. In its 16 years Aerojet has paid only one common-stock dividend. All the rest of the profits go for research in a ratio that holds company expenditures to 30% for production and 70% for research each year. Eventually, probably by 1960 when Titan and Polaris are in production, Aerojet will pay its stockholders regular dividends. But never so much that it cannot lay a big bet on any exciting new field that opens...