Last Titan Rocket Launch

[TreeDoc]

I don't know if many are interested in this kind of stuff but it's cool to watch. Yesterday at 1104 hrs the last of the Titan Rockets was launched from Vandenberg AFB SLC-4E. As the crow flies the launch complex is about 25 nm due south of my house. I snapped a couple pics of the rocket, the first about 20 seconds into launch and the second about 3 minutes after launch just after the first stage separation. By then the rocket was well down range but you could see the separation and the falling boosters through the binocs. It's pretty cool. The rocket is invisible by the time we hear the sound.

This puppy had some spy satellite under the hood belonging to the NRO and I'm pretty confident it was put into a polar orbit hence the reason they shot if from the west coast. We see launches every couple a few months but they are generally classified so you don't know when they will happen. They pull the MX missles out of their silos back in Nebraska, Dakotas, etc, and send them out here to shoot to make sure they are fully functional and can hit their target when called upon. The MX's get shot at the Kwajalein Islands in the South Pacific were they drop their payload of Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRV's) some 4500 miles south. It takes them a whole 20 minutes to do that!

[TreeDoc]

Second Pic...from my front yard.

[Rocky Raab]

Thanks, TD!

I was fortunate enough to do the countdown commentary for two NON-classified Titan launches from Cape Canaveral back in the late 70s.

The last Titan from there went up almost 20 years ago, I'd guess. Most of the Titan launches were classified cargoes, but some were not. The two Voyager missions to fly past Jupiter were examples.

We didn't do commentary, or pre-announce the launch times for the classified ones but the media always learned when one was about to go. As the official USAF spokesman, I had to man the phone lines when the avalanche of phone calls would come in. One time, veteran news reporter Mary Bubb called the office just before a secret launch and asked what was going up tonight. I said that I didn't know what she was talking about, but that was just my "official" reply.

She badgered me a while, and wouldn't take a "no comment" answer, so I finally played the wiseass and said, "Mary, I give up. We're returning all the moon rocks."

She said, "WHAT!? Thanks!" and hung up.

I dreaded the next morning's headlines, not knowing if she'd really believe that nonsense and print it. I'll never know if she did file a Moon Rocks Launched story or not. If she did, some astute editor killed it - thank goodness.

[Aim to maim]

Back during something called the Cold War (younger members--look it up), Titan ICBM's helped keep us free. I find it somehow fitting that the last of its kind spent its final moments supporting the same noble cause. A far better fate than being chopped up and rendered into beer cans. Thanks TD and RR for an interesting thread.

[Critch]

I was stationed at Vandenberg in 1975, working on the MinuteMan III warheads. One nice foggy morning they launched a Titan IIIC, a Titan with strap-on solids boosters, it blew up, it was spectacular, many years later when Challenger blew up it looked terribly familiar. I saw many launches, but the Minutemaen were the most impressive, unbelievably fast out of the hole.

Even in 1975 we could hit a 100 foot circle at 6000 miles with a Minuteman III. The Peacekeeprs are even more accurate.

[Rocky Raab]

The actual accuracy potential of our missiles is (naturally) highly classified.

However, many years ago, I was at a classified international threats briefing and the presiding General asked the briefer about a particular target and what the accuracy numbers being quoted meant in more everyday terms.

The briefer said, "General if that target were a tractor-trailer truck and you told me to hit it with a 10-megaton nuke, I'd be asking you if you wanted to get the front or rear bumper."

[Critch]

www.usafnukes.com is an excellent website.

The pictures of the re-entry vehicles hitting, remember, these are filled with concrete, are especially impressive. There's a lot of energy in just concrete bombs.

I put a short paragraph and then a longer bio of my class in there as well.