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QotD: Milt Rosen on Rockets
Milt Rosen is far less famous than Wernher von Braun, but he played a major role in the early space program. I heard him speak at the Naval Research Lab’s 75th anniversary celebration in 1998 and briefly talked with him in 2009. He wrote an excellent book about Project Viking which he signed for me. Here’s Milt and Sally Rosen in 2008.
With SpaceX this week reusing a first stage for the third time and landing it intact, it’s easy to forget how challenging rocket development was in the 1940s-60s. Milt’s comment was:
Rockets are just another name for trouble. Either you just had trouble, you are having trouble, or you are going to have trouble.
Tomorrow is the 61st anniversary of the explosion of Vanguard TV-3. The Vanguard people thought that this first experiment of all three Vanguard stages live was unlikely to work perfectly and place the payload in orbit. Under pressure, the Eisenhower Administration announced that that would be the case. Flopnik was the result.
Here’s the satellite which obviously survived:
I discussed this last year on the John Batchelor Show.
Published in Group Writing
I enjoy this story about Simon Ramo, one of the founders of the now defunct TRW.
Ramo’s comments are legendary for capsulizing some of the more complex ideas into off-the-cuff witticisms. During a series of key experiments of ballistic missiles in the 1950s at Cape Canaveral, Fla., at which Ramo and Air Force Gen. Bernard Schriever were observers, test rockets kept blowing up on their launching pads. When at last one missile rose about 6 inches before toppling over and exploding, Ramo reportedly beamed and said: “Well, Benny, now that we know the thing can fly, all we have to do is improve its range a bit.”
Substitute the word “Rockets” with: women/men, cars, boats, airplanes, people, etc.
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@Richardeaston
Did your father work with or mention a propellent chemist named John D. Clark? He wrote the famous book Ignition an informal history of rocket propellents and worked for the naval space program.
I will ask my Dad’s colleagues about this.
They had problems landing the first stage in today’s Falcon 9 launch. You may get dizzy watching this.
We eventually succeeded because failure was accepted rather than an excuse for shutting down for years and only restarting with additional layers of bureaucratic overhead.
Apparently the grid fins not only lost hydraulic power, but at least one was stuck off center. It’s utterly amazing that they managed to plop the stage into the drink, more or less under control, with nothing other than thrusters and maybe a little main engine vectoring.
As of now, they have the floating stage tethered to a boat, and may try to bring it into Port Canaveral for retrieval tomorrow.
Be careful what you buy at Honest Elon’s Used Rocket Lot, you don’t know where it’s been!
I love Milt Rosen.
Was you dad the Tom Easton who wrote articles or stories that ended up in Analog Magazine, circa late 1970’s or thereabouts? (Sorry but I haven’t followed discussions of who your father was.)
No, my dad was Roger Easton the inventor of GPS.
You’ve probably seen this video SpaceX did of its landing challenges.
I ordered the book as a Christmas present to myself. Thank you for the link. I knew G. Harry Stine, who was a safety engineer for Viking.