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Originally Posted by MarkB.
Awesome!
At White Sands, the three fin towers were at Launch Complex 35 and launched Aerobee 150 and 170 and Black Brant VB. Two towers, both torn down in the mid-80s.
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There was also a 3-fin Aerobee tower (now long gone) at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. In addition to launching Aerobees, Marshall Cartledge (one of the USAF Eglin AFB sounding rocket personnel) told me that the Eglin AFB Aerobee tower also launched a few three-finned Iris sounding rockets (they were just like the three-finned HYDRA-Iris sustainers but with the Atlantic Research Corporation seven-motor clustered finless boosters instead of the three-finned, triple-Sparrow motor HYDRA-Iris boosters). This tower had three "braking loops" that extended upward and outward above the normal launch rails. The fly-away rail-riding "shoes" on the sub-caliber Iris rockets (which were narrower than Aerobees) separated from the rockets as they exited the tower and traveled up and then down the "braking loops" until they bumped to a stop at the top of the tower.
An enclosed 3-fin Aerobee tower (which looked a lot like the 4-fin towers at White Sands and Wallops) was also built at the Churchill Rocket Range near Hudson Bay in Canada. The upper portion of the tower that protruded out of the launcher building was also enclosed at first, but the panels on the tower were later removed. This tower also launched single-stage and multi-stage Black Brant sounding rockets. It may still exist, but I don't know.
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Originally Posted by MarkB.
The four fin tower was at LC 36 and launched Black Brant VC. Google Image seems to indicate that the tower here still exists. I could not find a record of any Aerobee launches of any type from this site.
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A few Aerobee 350 rounds were launched there, including the final Aerobee 350 in 1984, which carried an ultraviolet astronomy payload. This LC35 tower (like the 4-fin Aerobee tower at Wallops) also launched the solid propellant 15" diameter Astrobee F sounding rocket (Aerojet's intended "drop-in replacement" for the 15" diameter liquid propellant Aerobees, which used Aerobee payload modules and launch shoes). The wider and more powerful Black Brant V eventually beat the Astrobee F in this sector of the sounding rocket market.
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Originally Posted by MarkB.
Early Aerobees were launched from LC33, the same site as the V-2 and WACs. This is now a National Historic Site.
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Was this the tower with "wider-stance" symmetrical support legs that appears in early Aerobee launch photographs, or was that the Holloman Air Force Base Aerobee tower (which was also a 3-fin tower)? The two 3-fin towers at White Sands' Launch Complex 35 had "narrower-stance" support legs and looked like the tetrahedron formed by each tower's legs was narrower on one "face."
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Originally Posted by MarkB.
The records show at least 12 Aerobee 350 launches from White Sands through 1982 but do not say from which LC
I used astronautix and the WSMR sites as sources.
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I'm pretty sure they were all launched from the 4-fin tower at LC35. The Aerobee 350 was bigger (22" in diameter as opposed to 15" for all other Aerobee versions) and heavier than other Aerobees (but it used the same Nike booster as the Aerobee 170/A and 200/A), which would have made an Aerobee 350 launch from a shorter, single-rail launcher "interesting" (in the Chinese curse way), especially on windy days... :-)
11-10-2010, 12:14 AM
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