“The warhead, is no longer on top of the missile.”

[bitchstewie]

Worth a read http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/communities...

[Tango13]

This is worth a read...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CDBZ6NA/ref=dp-kind...

The Titan missile was an accident waiting to happen and a dropped socket caused one hell of a fubar

[Eric Mc]

Permanently fuelled liquid fuelled rockets is not a great idea.

[Tango13]

Eric Mc said:

Permanently fuelled liquid fuelled rockets is not a great idea.

The Titan used a single, relatively thin skin and relied on the pressure of the highly toxic fuel to stop the rocket collapsing under it's own weight, not a great idea at all.

There was a faction within the USAF that wanted to scrap the Titan as they considered it too dangerous and maintenance intensive but its' ability to deliver a W53 'physics package' over such huge distances kept them in service much longer than originally planned.

[Eric Mc]

I didn't realise that the Titan required on pressurised fuel to keep it rigid. I do know that was true of the Atlas missile.

[anonymous-user]

Tango13 said:

This is worth a read...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CDBZ6NA/ref=dp-kind...

The Titan missile was an accident waiting to happen and a dropped socket caused one hell of a fubar

I’d second that-a great book.

It’s also slightly scary in places and it sometimes seems like it was more by chance than design that a nuclear weapon was never accidentally detonated or launched.

[Scobblelotcher]

Thanks for posting Stewie, that’s fascinating!

[Krikkit]

Tango13 said:

Eric Mc said:

Permanently fuelled liquid fuelled rockets is not a great idea.

The Titan used a single, relatively thin skin and relied on the pressure of the highly toxic fuel to stop the rocket collapsing under it's own weight, not a great idea at all.

There was a faction within the USAF that wanted to scrap the Titan as they considered it too dangerous and maintenance intensive but its' ability to deliver a W53 'physics package' over such huge distances kept them in service much longer than originally planned.

That's true of a lot of rockets once fuelled... Most of them aren't kept that way though!

[Yipper]

Been loads of near-misses. Some stories seem exaggerated, but some appear genuinely squeaky-bum time, like the 1961 North Carolina accidental nuke-b*mb drop.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-5...

[Eric Mc]

Krikkit said:

That's true of a lot of rockets once fuelled... Most of them aren't kept that way though!

ICBMs need to be kept permanently fuelled because they need to be ready to fire at a moment's notice. These days they are all solid fuelled, which means they can be kept in silos or subs for years before the solid fuel begins to deteriorate.

Early ICBMs, such as the Atlas and the Soviet R7, used liquid oxygen and kerosene as their propellants. Kerosene can be kept for long periods in a rocket fuel tank but liquid oxygen cannot as it boils off at normal ambient temperatures. Therefore, liquid oxygen can only be pumped into the rocket in the hours preceding the launch. As a result, these types of rockets are not that useful as ICBMs - although they are fine as space launchers and variants of the R7 and the Atlas are used to this day to launch satellites.

An alternative type of liquid fuel rocket are rockets that use hypergolic liquids. These are liquids that spontaneously combust when mixed in a combustion chamber. The reason why this type of rocket fuel was used for some ICBMs is because the liquids remain liquid at ambient air temperatures and consequently can be stored in the rocket's own fuel tanks without the fuel boiling off The downside is that they are almost always highly dangerous and toxic substances which need very careful handling and storage. The American Titan ICBM used such fuels. Some of the Chinese Long March space launchers use hypergolic fuels as do the missiles that North Korea has been testing recently.

[handpaper]

For anyone who likes chemicals and/or rockets and hasn't read it, John D Clarke's history of rocket propellant chemistry is interesting, informative and often very funny.
Long out of print, physical copies are rare and expensive; PDF available here :

https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/i...

[Eric Mc]

Wonderful. Thanks for that link. That's a book I wasn't aware of and look forward to reading it. Even the forward sounds funny.

[Tango13]

handpaper said:

For anyone who likes chemicals and/or rockets and hasn't read it, John D Clarke's history of rocket propellant chemistry is interesting, informative and often very funny.
Long out of print, physical copies are rare and expensive; PDF available here :

https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/i...

Started reading this last night.

Very well written and you don't need to be a chemist to appreciate the chemistry if that makes sense?