Most of the Titan rockets were the Titan II ICBM and their civilian derivatives for NASA. The Titan II used LR-87-5 engines, a modified version of the LR-87, that relied on a hypergolic combination of nitrogen tetroxide and Aerozine 50 (a 50/50 mix of hydrazine and UDMH) for its oxidizer and fuel instead of the liquid oxygen and RP-1 combination used in the Titan I.
The first Titan II guidance system was built by AC Spark Plug. It used an IMU (inertial measurement unit, a gyroscopic sensor) made by AC Spark Plug derived from original designs from MIT Draper Labs. The missile guidance computer (MGC) was the IBM ASC-15. When spares for this system became hard to obtain, it was replaced by a more modern guidance system, the Delco Universal Space Guidance System (USGS). The USGS used a Carousel IV IMU and a Magic 352 computer.
The most famous use of the civilian Titan II was in the NASA Gemini program of manned space capsules in the mid-1960s. Twelve Titan IIs were used to launch two U.S. unmanned Gemini test launches and ten manned capsules with two-man crews. All of the launches were successes.
Also, in the late 1980s some of the deactivated Titan IIs were converted into space launch vehicles to be used for launching U.S. Government payloads. The final such vehicle launched a Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) weather satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on 18 October 2003.
Read more about this topic: Titan (rocket Family)
Famous quotes containing the word titan:
“I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one,—that my body might,—but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)