Jonathan’s Space Report No. 533 2004 Aug 27
* Space Station
Russia launched the Progress M-50 (spacecraft No. 350) robot cargo
tanker on Aug 11. It docked with Zvezda at 0501 UTC on Aug 14, bringing
supplies to the Expedition 9 crew, who are slated to do another
spacewalk next week.
* Scout, and Blue Scout Jr.
Since this has been a very quiet month for launches, I’ll fill this
short issue out with a note on some historical research I’ve been doing
on one of my favorite topics, the Scout launch vehicle. This will
be of particular interest to about five of my readers, you know who you are.
Scout was a four-stage solid propellant rocket developed by NASA and was the
standard small US launch vehicle from 1960 to 1990; it was last launched
in 1994. Many famous early scientific satellites – San Marco, Uhuru, Ariel
5, ESRO 2, etc. – were launched by Scout.
The standard Scout used an Algol solid propellant first stage, a Castor
second stage, an Antares third stage and an Altair final stage; for some
reentry missions it had a NOTS-100B Cetus fifth stage. The Castor motor
was an improved version of the Sergeant missile, while the early
versions of Altair came from a third stage built for the last Vanguard
rocket. Antares was a scaled-up Altair developed just for Scout, while
Algol was also a scaled-up 1.02m diameter motor developed for Scout.
Later versions of Scout (D onwards) used a larger 1.14m diameter Algol
III motor. One of the interesting things about Scout is that, as well as
orbital missions, it flew quite a few suborbital probe and reentry test
missions, and many of these reached orbital energies – the Scout
missions dominate the list of suborbital flights which were close to
being orbital, in a precise sense I’ll explain in some future article.
What’s less well documented, though, is Scout’s relative, the Air
Force’s Blue Scout. There were a bunch of versions of this rocket.
Sometimes – the source of much confusion – the five Air Force-funded
NASA-launched Scouts (X-2M variant and relatives) used to launch
classified NRO weather satellite payloads from Vandenberg in 1962-63 are
called Blue Scout, but properly the Blue Scout refers to a separately
managed all-Air-Force vehicle. Blue Scout I and II were almost identical
to the NASA Scout X-1, except that the Blue Scout I omitted the fourth
stage. They launched 6 of these in 1961-62 and decided they weren’t much
good.
Air Force Scout launches – owned by AF, launch services by NASA
————————
Date S/N Type Stages1962 May 24 S-112 X-2M AF Scout Algol/Castor/Antares/MG-18 1962 Aug 23 S-117 X-2M AF Scout Algol/Castor/Antares/MG-18 1963 Feb 19 S-126 X-3M Sold to AF Algol/Castor/Antares 2/MG-18 1963 Apr 26 S-121 X-2M AF Scout Algol/Castor/Antares/MG-18 1963 Sep 27 S-132 X-2B Sold to AF Algol/Castor/Antares 2/Altair 2
Note: AF bought 4 X-2M Scouts direct from manufacturer (S112, S117, S121
and one other which had its motors split up and used for other missions; AF
then
bought motors from NASA Scout program for S126 and S132).
Blue Scout I and II launches
—————————-
Date S/N Type Mission1961 Jan 7 D-3 BS-I Suborbital probe 1961 Mar 3 D-4 BS-II Suborbital probe 1961 Apr 12 D-5 BS-II Suborbital probe 1961 May 9 D-6 BS-I Suborbital probe 1961 Nov 1 D-8 BS-II Mercury tracking satellite, orbital failure 1962 Apr 12 D-7 BS-I Reentry test
More interesting is the Blue Scout Junior (hereafter BSJr), and that’s
where I’ve found out some new stuff. The classic work on the BSJr is
Joel Powell’s article in Journal of the British Interplanetary Society
(35, 22, 1982). Hi, Joel! It notes that the standard (SLV-1B) BSJr had a
Castor first stage, an Antares second stage, an Alcor third stage and a
Cetus fourth stage (so it’s a bit like a 5-stage reentry Scout with the
big first stage missing, but the Altair is replaced by Alcor). But there
were at least two other variants – a modified SLV-1B used for suborbital
ion engine tests and an SLV-1C used for Project Beanstalk, the Emergency
Rocket Communications System, a funky idea in which communications
payloads were launched on high altitude suborbital flights so that the
Pentagon could still communicate with the folks in the missile silos and
tell them to nuke the Soviets, even if normal comm channels had been
nuked themselves by a Soviet attack. (I am *so* glad the Cold War is
over…)
By combining information from a NASA document (TM-X-72628) and
declassified USAF launch reports, I have figured out that the modified
SLV-1B used for the three ion engine tests in 1962-1964 was just a
three-stage Castor-Antares-Alcor, the normal SLV-1B with no fourth
stage, but that the SLV-1C model used for Beanstalk was a three-stage
Castor-Antares-Altair. The NASA memo shows that the Beanstalk budget
included the purchase of X-248 Altair stages. Note that the AvWeek
report, cited by Joel, that the May 1962 SLV-1C used an M-18 final stage
is clearly a mistake – they got confused with the Scout X-2M launch 7
days earlier which was the first use of the LPC M-18 (MG-18) motor, as
I’ve documented elsewhere. I’ve never seen the Altair connection to BSJr
mentioned anywhere before. (Mark, Gunter, etc., you may now take a
break to correct your encylopedia pages).
The last normal use of the BSJr was in June 1965, and the operational
Beanstalk system was retired in 1967 in favor of another system using
Minuteman. I’ve long been confused by two later launches: a ‘modified
three-stage BSJr’ used for George Carruthers’ UV astronomy suborbital
mission NB22.208 in November 1970, and a single-stage Castor rocket used
for a scramjet development test in 1967 incorrectly described by
Technology Week (1967 Jan 23 p3) as a Blue Scout launch. I’ve now
realized that the Beanstalk program must have had several rockets left
over (a couple are still on display) and I strongly suspect that these
two missions were reassigned SLV-1Cs. Only the first stage was used in
the case of the 1967 test, but programmatically it was part of the Blue
Scout project and so that’s why Tech Week called it that (in the
official Vandenberg launch list it’s “Castor/Scramjet”). An odd echo of
the X-43 scramjet, which uses the first stage of a Pegasus, Scout’s
successor.
The biggest remaining mystery in the BSJr program is mission O-1 in
1961, which various sources claim reached anywhere from 104000 km to
225000 km apogee, the highest suborbital mission ever (although it
wasn’t actually tracked, since the telemetry failed on the way up). It
would be great to find a launch time and some kind of trajectory data
for this record-breaking mission – perhaps a declassifiable mission
report is gathering dust in a USAF archive somewhere, but I haven’t
managed to find it.
Blue Scout Jr SLV-1B four-stage launches (Castor/Antares/Alcor/Cetus)
—————————————-
Date S/N Mission1960 Sep 21 D-1 Suborbital probe 1960 Nov 8 D-2 Suborbital probe 1961 Aug 17 O-1 Suborbital deep space probe 1961 Dec 4 O-2 Suborbital deep space probe 1963 Jul 30 22-1 Radio astronomy suborbital probe 1964 Mar 13 22-2 Magnetosphere suborbital probe 1965 Jan 28 22-3 Magnetosphere suborbital probe 1965 Mar 30 22-4 Magnetosphere suborbital probe 1965 Apr 9 22-9 Magnetosphere suborbital probe 1965 May 12 22-8 Magnetosphere suborbital probe 1965 Jun 9 22-5 Magnetosphere suborbital probe
Blue Scout Jr SLV-1B three-stage launches (Castor/Antares/Alcor)
—————————————-
1962 Nov 21 21-1 Ion engine test 1964 Aug 29 21-2 Ion engine test 1964 Dec 21 21-3 Ion engine test
Blue Scout Jr SLV-1C launches (Castor/Antares/Altair)
—————————–
1962 May 31 102 Beanstalk 1 1962 Jul 24 101 Beanstalk 2 1962 Nov 12 201 Beanstalk 3 1963 Feb 2 202 Beanstalk 4 1963 Mar 14 203 Beanstalk 5 1963 May 17 301 Beanstalk 6 1963 Dec 17 302 Beanstalk 7 1967 Jan 11 - Scramjet test (first stage only) 1970 Nov 25 - NB22.208 astronomy suborbital launch
* Astrofizika
In last issue’s item on the Astrofizika spacecraft, I failed to mention
that the Russian article I cited was by, and reporting the research work
of, Belgian space historian Bart Hendrickx. Sorry Bart, I didn’t
recognize your name transliterated into Cyrillic! What’s worse, the
information already appeared in English in his massive paper in the
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (2004, Vol 57, Suppl.1, p
56), and somehow I didn’t notice it when I read that article a few
months ago. Further discussion with Bart about his interview with
Trifonov leads me to lean slightly away from the laser-test explanation;
Trifonov explained that the detection of light sources on the ground was
used by Astrofizika essentially as a navigation device, to give an
accurate measurement of the ability of the ion engine to allow
overflight of a precise location. If this is the complete story, it
makes Astrofizika basically a propulsion technology mission.
Table of Recent Launches
———————–
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES.
Jul 15 1002 Aura Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Science 26A Jul 18 0044 Anik F2 Ariane 5G+ Kourou ELA3 Comms 27A Jul 22 1746 Kosmos-2407 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Navigation 28A Jul 25 0705 Tan Ce 2 CZ-2C/SM Taiyuan Science 29A Aug 3 0616 MESSENGER Delta 7925H Canaveral SLC17B Probe 30A Aug 4 2232 Amazonas Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 31A Aug 11 0503 Progress M-50 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 32A
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