Spacecraft News Fourteen New Deltas

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30130, 14 May 1963, Page 11

Spacecraft News Fourteen New Deltas

Telstar II was boosted into orbit last week in yet another flawless flight by a ThorDelta rocket. This versatile 3-stage launch vehicle has now attained a record of 17 successful launchings in a row—a record unmatched by any other multi-stage rockets in the United States and possibly the world. Delta was originally intended to be a interim launch vehicle and in 1959 only 12 were ordered. After a single initial failure it quickly proved its worth and a further 14 were ordered in 1981. These are the ones being fired at-present. With a tally of successes mounting steadily the National Aeronautics and Spacf Administration have decided that Delta is a space-age workhorse worth keeping, so they have ordered a further 14 vehicles from the prime contractor —the Douglas Aircraft Company—thus bning-

ing the total number of Deltas up to 40 since the programme began in 1959. . The Delta vehicle design has not been kept static. A continual re-evaluation has enabled improvements to be made with almost every firing. The use of a more powerful version of the Thor first stage and an extended second stage has resulted in a doubling of Delta’s payload capacity since the first Delta was launched three years ago. The latest batch of 14 Deltas will utilise some of the sixty Thor I.R-B-M.’s which are ait present being withdrawn from bases in Britian. Minus their nuclear warheads they will be refurbished and incorporated as first stage boosters for the new Deltas wihich will fire more communications and meteorological satellites into orbit. Call it the space-age version of the old “swords into ploughshares” story.