Triumphant Titan II

Confidence surged last week through the U.S. missile program, which suddenly had a new hero: the Titan II, a radically new missile that moves the U.S. a giant step forward in space and nuclear effectiveness. Resigned to a series of test failures before they get a success, U.S. missilemen were jubilant when the giant Titan II climbed off its pad at Cape Canaveral on the very first try, lit its second stage exactly on schedule and flew a flawless course to the target 5,000 miles away. No big liquid-fuel rocket has ever scored such an immediate triumph.

Titan II is far more than just an improved model of the much criticized Titan I. During the development of Titan I, Aerojet-General, which built Titan II's engines; stored up dozens of new ideas for an advanced missile; instead of dribbling them into the Titan I, it saved them for a brand-new missile. Titan II is considerably bigger (102 ft. high) than Titan I or Atlas, has greater thrust (430,000 Ibs. v. the Atlas' 360,000 Ibs.) and has far fewer gadgets that can go wrong. Says Aerojet-General's A. L. Feldman, technical program manager: "We got rid of all the garbage. Titan II is the simplest, most elegant and most advanced missile we've got today."

Moment's Notice. What makes Titan II unique is a storable fuel that requires no lox (liquid oxygen) and enables the missile to be ready to fire at a moment's notice. Lox, which is used in the Atlas and Titan I, is cheap and an efficient oxidizer, but its extreme cold ( -- 297DEGF.) and its eagerness to boil away make it troublesome and unreliable. Instead of this chemical bad actor, Titan II uses nitrogen tetroxide as an oxidizer and a mixture of hydrazine and UDMH (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine) as fuel. Both are liquids that can be stored for long periods at ordinary temperatures in the missile's own tanks, require no last-minute transfusions of rebellious, bubbly lox. "This was really noticeable at Canaveral," says Feldman. "With Titan I, we had to fiddle with the lox right down to the countdown, but this time there was nothing we could worry about for the last two days before the flight. You preload, and that's the end of it." Titan II, like the much smaller, solid-fuel Minuteman, will be placed in underground silos covered with a thick lid to resist attack. After it gets the command to go into action, it can be fired in a few minutes, perhaps a few seconds. But since it is thin walled (its liquid-fuel system enables it to use its weight elsewhere), it needs special protection from exhaust gases, which can contain shock waves strong enough to do it serious damage.

The solution: a new-type silo (see diagram) that will enable the engine gases to escape to the surface through W-shaped ducts leading away from the missile's base.

Hypergolic Ignition. Besides being storable, Titan II's fuels are "hypergolic." This fancy word, too newly coined to be included in most dictionaries, means that the two liquids start burning furiously as soon as they come in contact. No igniting system is needed, and this advantage eliminates a missile designer's nightmare. Kerosene and lox, the commonest missile fuels, do not ignite on contact; furthermore, if they do not burn promptly, they form a powerful explosive mixture that can blow a missile to shreds.

Many other advances flow from the abolition of lox. Missile designers learned by many years of painful effort how to make ultra-cold liquid oxygen flow fairly dependably through tubes, pumps and valves; but this was accomplished by elaborate and costly tricks that are not necessary on the Titan II. The new missile's first stage has one-third as many controls as Titan I; its second stage has one-sixth as many. After Titan II has climbed for about 2 min., its second-stage engine ignites spontaneously when the fuels are turned on and come in contact with each other. At first, the combustion gases go out through ports in the missile's sides; then explosive bolts detach the burned-out booster, and the second stage soars upward alone, a wide "rooster tail" of vapor streaming out of its engine. Says an Air Force official: "There's no delay between second stage separation and ignition. You don't coast."

Because of its greater thrust and the lack of heavy valves and thick walls, Titan II will have a payload estimated at three tons, which will enable it to carry a warhead of at least ten megatons energy--the biggest that can yet be carried by any U.S. missile. As a tool in the space race, it is already superior to the often undependable Atlas; with the addition of strap-on boosters, it will probably be a main missile to boost the U.S. farther into space with such sophisticated efforts as Project Gemini. But experienced bird watchers--on the scene or via TV--will miss one spectacular sight when the Titan II begins to do its work: almost no flame will come out of its tail. When the hypergolic fuels combine, they burn with great heat, but they do not release the white-hot carbon particles that give lox-kerosene flame its dazzling brilliance.

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