COOLING OF I.C.B.M.

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28445, 27 November 1957, Page 12

COOLING OF I.C.B.M.

New Form Of Ceramics (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 24. The newspaper, “Soviet Aviation,” said today that Russia solved a major problem of the inter-continental ballistic missile —the tremendous heat it generates in flight—by using “sweating walls’’ and a new form of ceramics, the American Associated Press reported from Moscow. The missile’s combustion chamber and the jet nozzle were protected from high temperatures by porous walls through which liquid was forced under pressure. This liquid evaporated and cooled the walls. The new form of ceramics was called metallo-ceramics.

The newspaper said that it was silicons such as clay, and 10 to 20 per cent, cobalt powder heated to very high temperatures. The article, by Major V. Parfenov', of the Soviet Engineering Corps, was based on materials used in ballistic rockets. It said that metallo-ceramics were used in the body of the rocket as well as in the lining of the rocket’s jet nozzle. The American Associated Press report said that the reference to the materials being used in the body of the rocket would indicate that this was the Soviet’s solution to the problem of bringing a rocket back from space into the earth’s atmosphere.

Without special materials, the tremendous speed of the missile would cause it to burn up like a meteor in the friction caused by the resistance of the atmosphere. On November 7, President Eisenhower said the United States had solved the re-entry problem. He showed the television audience the nose cone of a rocket he said was fired hundreds of miles into space.

The materials used in the United States nose cone were not described. But Major-General John Medaris, commander of the Army's ballistic missile agency, said that the cone contained a "virgin material.”