V-2's Rival

The famous German V2, designed in 1939, still holds the altitude record for single-stage rockets: 114 miles.* This week the U.S. Navy showed pictures of the Viking, designed to top the V2. The Viking is slimmer and lighter (10,000 Ibs.) than the V-2 (see cut). In the picture, the complicated structure to the left of the rising rocket is a "gantry": a staging from which technicians can reach all parts of the rocket as it stands on its launching platform. When the rocket is ready for launching, the gantry is moved away.

The Viking's inner works are much like the V-2's: it burns alcohol and "lox" (liquid oxygen) in a single combustion chamber. Chief improvement is in the control mechanism. When a big rocket first takes off, the air is not moving past its fins fast enough to provide steering control. The Germans got around this difficulty by putting small, movable graphite vanes in the blast of hot gas from the combustion chamber. By deflecting the gas stream slightly when the rocket wobbled, the vanes kept it upright until it was moving fast enough for the outside fins to take over.

But the vanes gave so much trouble that the Viking's designers (Glenn L. Martin Co. and Reaction Motors) eliminated them entirely. The Viking's gas blast is deflected for steering purposes by tilting the whole combustion chamber from side to side.

At White Sands, N. Mex. last month, a test Viking climbed only 51^ miles and landed ten miles away. But this first trial flight was intended to test the controls and propulsion unit, not to try for an altitude record. The Viking's designers claim that the new rocket, as produced at present, will reach something like 190 miles. An improved model, now in preparation, may reach 225 miles.

* A two-stage rocket, a small "WAC Corporal" launched from the nose of a V2, reached 250 miles in March.

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