The Air Force successfully launched a Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile at 18:09 Greenwich Time. This suborbital flight, the first full-scale test of the vehicle to also be Project Gemini’s booster, from Launch Complex 16, flew five thousand miles out over the Atlantic Ocean and reached an apogee of about eight hundred miles. This vehicle was serial number N-2.
Launch Complex 16 has since its inauguration on December 12, 1959, been used for six launches of the Titan I, three of them successful.
North American awarded a $225,000 subcontract to the Radioplane Division of Northrop Corporation today, as part of North American’s contract to design and develop emergency parachute recovery systems and test vehicles for the Paraglider Development Program.
McDonnell contracted with Vidya, Inc, of Palo Alto, California, today to test new ablation materials for the Gemini heat shields.
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My attempted caption and comment didn’t appear here for some reason. That photograph is from the final Titan II launch, in October 2003. I ran across it earlier tonight and it is a delightful picture so I wanted to include it, anachronistic as it may be.
However, I’ve lost the source information; I got it two computers ago, after all. If someone has proper credits I would greatly appreciate knowing who should be credited.
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I posted a query about the source of this photograph to the Usenet newsgroup sci.space.history, and poster Snidely there was able to find the picture on Spaceflight Now’s article (by Justin Ray) about the launch. That article credits the picture to Pat Corkery/Lockheed Martin. I find the article and credit quite believable, and thank Snidely for the information.
The article also has another picture of the final Titan II launch that is no less fantastic.
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