Labeled by some as the dawn of a new age in space flight, watching the unsuccessful launch
of SpaceX last Saturday and the successful launch yesterday acted as a reminder how
some aspects of rocketry have actually changed very little over the past 55 years.
Consider the late 1950's USAF documentary entitled "Atlas The ICBM" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9x0pgw4y2E
At 21:00 minutes in the documentary, the banter in the control room during the count
down has changed little.
Though success rates are much, much higher now than they were then, the launching
of rockets, by nature of their size and complexity, as we have witnessed, is still not
always failure free.
Even after the launch of the most sophisticated rockets today, workers and onlookers
still breath a sigh of relief, just as they did back in the days of Atlas.
And as we are reminded of at 14:58 in the documentary, the heavy involvement of
private enterprise working with government in the construction of rockets in the United
States is nothing new.
In the case of SpaceX, it has been
reported that Uncle Sam, by way of NASA, provided
US$381 million in seed money.
This 27 minute film also makes for an interesting historical document, particularly its
frank assessment of America's desperate need to catch up with Soviet rocket
development during this phase of the Cold War, through what is described was
because of "a lack of foresight".
At 25:50, the narration hypothesizes using the Atlas to help explore space for peaceful
purposes.
Indeed, some time after the documentary is made, on Feb 20th 1962, John Glenn
is put in orbit, his Mercury capsule propelled by an Atlas missile.
Marcia Dunn in the Sydney Morning Herald also has a story today on the launch of
SpaceX including a video here -
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci...523-1z3xh.html
Though the stakes were different, one can't help feel that today after the hiatus between
the last flight of the Shuttle and yesterday's launch of SpaceX, a collective sigh of relief
has come out of the U.S., just as Cold War planners breathed a sigh of relief with the
deployment of Atlas as a foil to the Soviets in the late 1950's.
Atlas missile documentary - comparisons and contrasts to SpaceX
