 (U.S. Air Force) |
A Complete Range of Launch Activities
Joseph F. Wambolt and Jimmy F. Kephart
The Eastern and Western launch ranges have a long and illustrious history—with a few chapters written by Aerospace.
Since its founding in 1960, The Aerospace Corporation has maintained an important presence at both the eastern launch range at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and the western launch range at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Aerospace has provided on-site general systems engineering and mission assurance for essentially all the boosters, upper stages, and spacecraft launched since the beginning of the national space program. Each launch range offers specific advantages that reflect unique histories, locations, and development priorities. Similarly, the Aerospace teams at the east and west ranges have acquired the expertise and specialization needed to support these very different launch sites (see sidebar, Why Two Ranges?).
Eastern Range
Aerospace support at the Eastern Test Range began with Project Mercury in September 1960. The corporation's role soon expanded to include support of the Gemini program, which used a modified Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to launch two astronauts aboard a modified Mercury capsule (see "A Stellar Rendezvous"). With the successful completion of the Gemini program in 1966, the Titan launch vehicles became the Air Force's primary workhorses and the main focus of Aerospace support for the Eastern Range.
An early task for Aerospace was the development of the Titan Integrate-Transfer-Launch (ITL) system and its associated Titan family of launch vehicles, Titan IIIA, IIIC, and IIIE. The ITL system was designed to assemble, check, and integrate the major components of the Titan IIIC before the booster would be transferred to the pad for payload mating and launch operations. The ITL system was conceived by Aerospace, which at the time was responsible for general systems engineering and technical direction for the facility design, the ground-systems handling apparatus, the checkout procedures, and the launch equipment.
An aerial view of the Integrate-Transfer-Launch complex at Cape Canaveral. Aerospace was responsible for overseeing the installation and checkout of the Titan ground systems at the ITL complex. Systems engineers reviewed and approved all ground-systems test procedures that verified the capability of the handling and testing equipment. They played the same role in the verification of the flight-test procedures and participated in all testing operations. |
Aerospace participated in all ITL design reviews and oversaw the construction of the complex (which actually includes two launch areas, Launch Complex 40 and 41). Construction on the complex began in November 1962 on "islands" created using 5 million cubic meters of landfill dredged from the adjacent Banana River. A major contribution was to convince the Air Force to relocate the site from its planned location (just east of Cape Canaveral's south gate) to its present location because range safety concerns would force the closure of the south gate and road during hazardous operations and launches.
Aerospace also provided general systems integration and technical direction for the launch of the Titan IIIA vehicles from Launch Complex 20 and for development of the Titan IIIC launch vehicle. Titan IIIC was based on the Titan IIIA core vehicle; these IIIA flights were important for demonstrating that the liquid-propelled core stages were ready to be mated to the newly developed solid-rocket motors to form the Titan IIIC and for verifying the viability of the Transtage upper stage. Aerospace also supported the launch of several Defense Satellite Communication System satellites during this period, followed by a series of Defense Support Program launches.
A Shift to the Shuttle
As the decade came to a close, Aerospace continued to support development of the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) and to help transition the Air Force to the space shuttle. When the first IUS launched in October 1982, Aerospace had a team in place that had participated in the design reviews and early IUS testing (see "Evolution of the Inertial Upper Stage").
Shuttle launches took place at NASA's Kennedy Space Center; Aerospace established an office there, primarily to ensure a smooth transfer of technology from NASA to the Air Force, which was developing its own space-shuttle launch capability at Vandenberg. But although Aerospace assisted in the testing and evaluation of the shuttle based on Air Force requirements, the office at Kennedy was never directly involved in shuttle processing or launch operations.
Following the first shuttle flight in April 1981, NASA and the Air Force began phasing out expendable launch vehicles. The government encouraged private industry to build and operate expendable launch vehicles to deliver commercial payloads, such as communications satellites; the shuttle would serve as the primary launcher for government payloads. This policy quickly changed after the loss of the Challenger in early 1986, which was joined by the failures of two Titan IIIs, a Delta, and an Atlas/Centaur, all within a span of 18 months. These incidents required extensive failure investigations and costly corrective actions before flights could resume. They also showed that no one launch vehicle could provide the guaranteed access to space that the nation clearly needed.
Staging a Comeback
Shuttle operations for Air Force programs ceased after the Challenger failure. Within a year, Launch Complex 41 was refurbished and reactivated to accommodate the heavy-lift Titan IV with its solid-rocket motor upgrade.
When the Air Force returned to the management of the military expendable launch vehicle programs, Aerospace already had a cadre of experienced personnel at Cape Canaveral who had participated in the Atlas ballistic missile development and Mercury-Atlas, Gemini-Titan, and Agena space launches as well as Atlas facility construction and other pad conversions.
This staff was later augmented by experienced Atlas engineers from Vandenberg. The Atlas/Centaur facility conversion was completed in 1991, and the first military launch took place the same year. The Aerospace Atlas team provided general systems engineering and integration support for military launch operations and third-party oversight of commercial launch vehicle processing. Many of these contributions were indeed significant. For example, following Centaur propulsion failures on two commercial Atlas vehicles, Aerospace determined that the problem could have been caused by a leaking cool-down check valve that allowed the ingestion of wet air into the Centaur's turbo pumps during the boost phase. This theory was verified by an Atlas investigation team, and no similar Centaur failures occurred after the proposed fix was implemented.
As for the Delta launch vehicle, the Aerospace staff at Cape Canaveral gained invaluable experience observing the fledgling commercial Delta program, which prepared them for the accelerated GPS launches in the early 1990s. The GPS satellites were originally intended to fly on the space shuttle, so Aerospace had a large task in ensuring that the transition to the Delta II could support the mission.
Continued Evolution
After a period of contraction, the aerospace industry appeared to pick up in the mid-1990s, and more defense contractors sought to expand their presence in the potentially lucrative but risky commercial launch market. These contractors pressed for more autonomy, and in response, the Department of Defense (DOD) began to shift its procurement strategy, granting greater control and greater responsibility to primary contractors. The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) was one result of this priority shift. The idea was to acquire launch services (rather than hardware) on a vehicle owned and operated by the contractor.
Aerospace involvement was expected to be minimal. Congressional funding cuts in the 1990s had reduced the Aerospace workforce by 30 percent. Following the failure of a Titan IVA in 1998, the Air Force recognized that a modest level of support would be beneficial. Staffing levels at the Eastern Range were raised slightly in 2000 and have continued to grow each year since then.
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 More than 90 kilograms of explosives were used to bring down the 90-meter mobile service tower and 60-meter umbilical tower at Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 41. The towers have been replaced by a new launch infrastructure to support the Atlas V family of evolved expendable launch vehicles. |
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As in the heritage programs, Aerospace quickly earned trust and confidence as a "value-added" EELV contributor. Aerospace has been clearly recognized in the successful program milestones to date, including the launch of the first EELV, Atlas V, from Cape Canaveral in August 2002. The second EELV, the Delta IV, was launched from the Eastern Range in November 2002.
Western Range
Aerospace engineers were first assigned to the Western Test Range in support of the classified orbital Discoverer missions now known as the Corona program, which launched the world's first photo reconnaissance satellites for the U.S. government. Support for this program began even before Aerospace established a permanent physical presence at the range.
An Aerospace office at Vandenberg was officially opened in 1962 to provide on-site monitoring and support to several emerging programs, most notably the Nike-Zeus antiballistic missile system and the Satellite and Missile Observation System. Aerospace was primarily focused on an extensive series of Atlas flight tests in support of the Advanced Ballistic Re-entry Systems (ABRES) program, which achieved its first Atlas launch in November 1964 (see "Ballistic Missiles and Reentry Systems: The Critical Years"). These tests typically involved launching long-range missiles over the Pacific toward the Kwajalein Atoll to test not only the long-range capabilities of the U.S. nuclear arsenal but the antimissile systems stationed for testing at Kwajalein.
Aerospace participated in 81 ABRES launches and 52 space launches using refurbished Atlas ICBMs during a 30-year period. These space launches typically occurred at Space Launch Complex 3 (SLC-3), which was built for the Air Force in the early 1960s to launch Atlas D/Agena and subsequently modified to launch the Thor; Atlas E, F, and H; and Atlas II family of boosters.
The Birth of SLC-6
Aerospace personnel additionally began to provide operational planning and activation support to the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), a near-Earth space station that would let military astronauts conduct experiments and reconnaissance for up to 30 days. Construction of Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) began at Vandenberg in March 1966 to prepare for the initial launch. Aerospace served as the general systems engineer and technical director for MOL, and as such, played a key role in conceiving, designing, and developing the project. Following construction of SLC-6, a plan was proposed to launch seven laboratories from Vandenberg on modified human-flight-rated Titan IIIM boosters. Five launches—including one with an onboard crew—were planned to begin in December 1969. As a result of technical problems, schedule delays, changing national priorities, and the cost of fighting the Vietnam War, the program was canceled in June 1969. With its cancellation, the nearly completed SLC-6 lay unused for almost 10 years.
Although the MOL program was gone, overall launch vehicle activity at the Western Range continued at a busy pace. About 30 to 40 launches were completed each year—including launches of development versions of the Minuteman ballistic missile and Titan II ICBM as well as space launchers such as Thor/Agena, Titan/Agena, Titan IIID, Atlas/Agena, and Scout. Aerospace launch operations support concentrated on Atlas E and F and Titan IIIB and IIID space missions.
In January 1979, the Air Force approved a six-year plan to transform SLC-6 into a space-shuttle launch facility and assigned Aerospace the role of general systems engineering and integration. Preparation for the shuttle would require substantially more than just refurbishing and modifying the SLC-6 site. Additional infrastructure would be needed, on both the south and north sides of the base. Aerospace provided technical direction for development and testing of the ice-suppression system, sound-suppression system, hydrogen-disposal system, power plant, and wastewater treatment plant (see "The Air Force Space Shuttle Program: A Brief History"). The Air Force relocated its Shuttle Activation Task Force from Los Angeles to Vandenberg in 1981; Aerospace established a shuttle office there as well, and onsite Aerospace personnel became directly involved in every aspect of the project.
After major construction had been completed and systems installed, the space shuttle Enterprise was brought to Vandenberg and erected to perform form, fit, and function tests. This system-test unit—which was transported atop a jumbo jet and never actually flew in space—marked the culmination of years of hard work by Aerospace, Air Force, and contractor personnel. Its successful test runs paved the way for a fully operational Air Force space shuttle.
In October 1985, after an expenditure of about $4 billion, SLC-6 and the associated shuttle infrastructure achieved initial launch capability, and a first launch was scheduled for 1986; however, following the loss of the Challenger, SLC-6 was again abandoned. Enterprise would be the only shuttle that SLC-6 would ever see.
Resurrecting the Titan
The Air Force refocused its attention on the Titan 34D. The catastrophic failure of a Titan 34D shortly after liftoff from SLC-4E starkly illustrated the risks of adding solid rockets to launch vehicles. Following this incident, Aerospace recommended that the launch control center be moved to a safe distance more than 25 kilometers away.
On the East Coast, Launch Complex 41 was being readied to receive the Titan IV, and DOD saw the need for a similar capability at Vandenberg to handle large and heavy payloads. Aerospace was asked to assist in the construction, activation, and launch of the Titan IV vehicles.
The Air Force determined that modifications to the Titan III launchpad at SLC-4E would be the cheapest and fastest way to get the Titan IV up and running. To speed up the process, it was decided that Titan III systems and equipment would be reused whenever possible. This turned out to be a bad decision.
Aerial view of a Delta II rocket prior to liftoff at Space Launch Complex 2 in Vandenberg. The Delta II medium-lift launch vehicle is used to launch Global Positioning System satellites as well as civil and commercial payloads into low-Earth, polar, geosynchronous transfer, and geosynchronous orbits. |
The first significant challenge involved the reuse of the mobile service tower and the supporting foundation. The old mobile service tower could not be enlarged to accommodate the Titan IV. This late revelation caused the Air Force to reevaluate its management approach; it increased Aerospace support and formed "Design Tiger Teams" staffed with Aerospace and contractor personnel. Aerospace was present at all critical design decision points and provided both technical and operational inputs to the Air Force. The contractor submitted the facility design criteria and payload requirement document in September 1986. Aerospace participated in all upgrades and delineated important lessons learned from similar facility modification projects.
According to a new offsite modular construction plan, the mobile service tower would be built in sections at a facility in Oregon, shipped by barge to Vandenberg, transported to SLC-4E, and erected using jacking towers. At the same time, SLC-4E would be modified to receive the mobile service tower modules. The steel umbilical tower would be erected, foundation work completed, and the underground utilities and cabling installed. Aerospace participated in the daily and weekly planning of these activities and supported development of the ground support equipment design, which proceeded in parallel with the launch complex modification.
This effort involved the design of the command and control interfaces between the Titan IV vehicle and the ground support systems, including the propellant, pneumatics, electrical power, environmental controls, and control software. The Titan Flight Readiness Plan, developed by Aerospace, was the first readiness plan for space launch vehicles without an onboard crew. It was patterned after the successful Mercury and Gemini Pilot Safety Programs and specified both continuous and milestone requirements for Titan launch vehicle processing. It became the governing document for Titan processing and was subsequently adopted for other space programs as well.
The development of the Titan IV launch capability at Vandenberg included several other major infrastructure improvements beyond the SLC-4E modification. Major upgrades and specialized command and control equipment were added to the remote launch control center to monitor the prelaunch processing and launch activities. Aerospace provided support to the Air Force for all facilities during these critical developments (see sidebar, Range Safety Hazard Analysis). Initial launch capability for the Titan IV at SLC-4E was declared in October 1990.
Facility Upgrades
Also in 1990, SLC-6 got a new assignment, and Aerospace again assisted the conversion plans. This time, the pad would be used for a Titan IV booster with a Centaur upper stage. Development of the so-called Titan/Centaur Launch Complex at SLC-6 progressed through concept evaluation and preliminary design; however, the Air Force terminated construction in early 1991, citing insufficient launch requirements to justify the expense.
In 1992, the Air Force decided to upgrade SLC-3E from an Atlas I to an Atlas II site to provide medium-lift launch capability for surveillance, communications, and exploratory satellites. Affected by the end of the Cold War and increased commercial launch services competition, the Air Force implemented a partnering program for management and concurrent engineering. This included increased government participation early in the process of generating requirements; incorporation of lessons learned during the construction and modification of SLC-4 and Launch Complexes 40 and 36 at Cape Canaveral; and active government involvement in the design, construction testing, activation, acceptance, and contract closeout activities. Aerospace played a significant role in this effort by providing systems engineering support. The new acquisition methodology required close collaboration between the government and contractor, with Aerospace providing programmatic and technical assistance. Cross-functional product development teams (the precursor to modern integrated process teams) were established to develop the SLC-3E ground support systems during the design phase.
In the course of modifications, contractor crews dismantled and removed an existing 64-meter mobile service tower and umbilical mast, built a new tower and mast on top of a launch services building, and modified the services building itself. Other tasks included installation of a heating/ventilating/air-conditioning system and various physical security facilities, as well as expansion of the complex's fuel storage and loading systems. The resulting SLC-3E provides unprecedented launch and satellite vehicle access and processing capabilities, with a protected working environment for its crew. Initial operating capability was achieved in September 1997, and the first Atlas IIAS left the pad in December 1999, carrying NASA's 4850-kilogram, $1.3 billion Earth Observing System satellite. The second Atlas IIAS success followed in September 2001, with the launch of a classified NRO payload. Operations of Atlas II facilities at SLC-3 are scheduled for closeout in 2003. Another NRO mission is scheduled for mid-2003; the fate of the facility after that launch has not yet been determined.
In 1994, the Air Force leased out SLC-6 to a contractor interested in testing a new small launch vehicle. The first launch attempt in August 1995 failed to place its payload into orbit, but did accomplish the first successful launch from SLC-6 after nearly 30 years and several major program efforts. Following three successful launches, the program was moved to the Kodiak Launch Site in Alaska.
Soon thereafter, SLC-6 was again leased out, this time for the Delta IV EELV program. Transformation of the complex began in 2000. In addition to modifications to the launch site, a new horizontal integration facility was built as well as a new operations control center within the existing remote launch control center on the north side of the base. Aerospace participated in all design reviews and provided the Air Force acquisition office with detailed insight into activation activities. With this effort, the Aerospace field site engineers at Vandenberg—like their counterparts at Cape Canaveral—are transitioning to the era of EELV and plan to support the first West Coast EELV Delta IV launch in 2003.
Conclusion
During the course of 50 years, the two test ranges have conducted more than 4000 major launches—including 123 at Vandenberg in one year alone. As the early period of intensive research and development wound down, the ranges continued to serve the nation's ballistic missile development program and expanded their roles in civilian and commercial space. Over the years, the two ranges have hosted every major launch vehicle program in the history of the U.S. space program. Aerospace provided technical support for more than 1100 launches during its 40 years at the ranges, including Thor, Atlas, Delta, and Titan launches; all U.S. passenger spaceflights; and launches of the Scout, Pegasus, and Taurus rockets.
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