The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of Pasadena,California,United States.
JATO is a type of assisted take-off for helping overloaded aircraft into the air by providing additional thrust in the form of small rockets. The term JATO is used interchangeably with the term RATO,for rocket-assisted take-off.
This article gives a concise timeline of rocket and missile technology.
John Whiteside Parsons was an American rocket engineer,chemist,and Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech),Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He invented the first rocket engine to use a castable,composite rocket propellant,and pioneered the advancement of both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets.
Redstone Arsenal (RSA) is a United States Army post and a census-designated place (CDP) adjacent to Huntsville in Madison County,Alabama,United States and is part of the Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area. The Arsenal is a garrison for various tenants across the Department of Defense,Department of Justice,and NASA. RSA has benefited from decisions by the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission. The Redstone Arsenal CDP had a residential population of 837 as of the 2020 census. The base contains a government and contractor workforce that averages 36,000 to 40,000 personnel daily.
Theodore von Kármán was a Hungarian-American mathematician,aerospace engineer,and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics. He was responsible for many key advances in aerodynamics,notably on supersonic and hypersonic airflow characterization. He is regarded as an outstanding aerodynamic theoretician of the 20th century.
Rocketdyne was an American rocket engine design and production company headquartered in Canoga Park,in the western San Fernando Valley of suburban Los Angeles,in southern California.
Qian Xuesen,or Hsue-Shen Tsien,was a Chinese mathematician,cyberneticist,aerospace engineer,and physicist who made significant contributions to the field of aerodynamics and established engineering cybernetics. Recruited from MIT,he joined Theodore von Kármán's group at Caltech.
The MGM-29 Sergeant was an American short-range,solid fuel,surface-to-surface missile developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The missiles were built by Sperry Utah Company. The Sergeant was the third and last in a series of JPL rockets for the US Army whose names correspond to the progression in Army enlisted ranks,starting with Private and Corporal.
The WAC Corporal was the first sounding rocket developed in the United States and the first vehicle to achieve hypersonic speeds. It was an offshoot of the Corporal program,that was started by a partnership between the United States Army Ordnance Corps and the California Institute of Technology in June 1944 with the ultimate goal of developing a military ballistic missile.
The Aggregat series was a set of ballistic missile designs developed in 1933–1945 by a research program of Nazi Germany's Armed Forces (Wehrmacht). Its greatest success was the A4,more commonly known as the V-2.
The MGM-5 Corporal missile was a nuclear-armed tactical surface-to-surface missile. It was the first guided weapon authorized by the United States to carry a nuclear warhead. A guided tactical ballistic missile,the Corporal could deliver either a nuclear fission,high-explosive,fragmentation or chemical warhead up to a range of 75 nautical miles (139 km).
Louis Gerhardus Dunn (1908-1979) was a South African-born engineer who played a key role in the development of early American missiles and launch vehicles.
The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program and the preceding Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project worked to develop a nuclear propulsion system for aircraft. The United States Army Air Forces initiated Project NEPA on May 28,1946. NEPA operated until May 1951,when the project was transferred to the joint Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)/USAF ANP. The USAF pursued two different systems for nuclear-powered jet engines,the Direct Air Cycle concept,which was developed by General Electric,and Indirect Air Cycle,which was assigned to Pratt &Whitney. The program was intended to develop and test the Convair X-6,but was canceled in 1961 before that aircraft was built. The total cost of the program from 1946 to 1961 was about $1 billion.
Frank Joseph Malina was an American aeronautical engineer and painter,especially known for becoming both a pioneer in the art world and the realm of scientific engineering.
The Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT),was a research institute created in 1926,at first specializing in aeronautics research. In 1930,Hungarian scientist Theodore von Kármán accepted the directorship of the lab and emigrated to the United States. Under his leadership,work on rockets began there in 1936. GALCIT was the first—and from 1936 to 1940 the only—university-based rocket research center. Based on GALCIT's JATO project at the time,the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was established under a contract with the United States Army in November 1943.
Project Hermes was a missile research program run by the Ordnance Corps of the United States Army from November 15,1944,to December 31,1954,in response to Germany's rocket attacks in Europe during World War II. The program was to determine the missile needs of army field forces. A research and development partnership between the Ordnance Corps and General Electric started November 20,1944 and resulted in the "development of long-range missiles that could be used against both ground targets and high-altitude aircraft."
The MGR-3 Little John was a free flight artillery rocket system designed and put into service by the U.S. Army during the 1950s and 1960s.
The Creative Research On Weapons or Crow program was an experimental missile project developed by the United States Navy's Naval Air Missile Test Center during the late 1950s. Intended to evaluate the solid-fueled integral rocket/ramjet (SFIRR) method of propulsion as well as solid-fueled ramjet engines,flight tests were conducted during the early 1960s with mixed success.
The ORDCIT program to develop a ballistic missile called Corporal was a progressive one. The original design was called XF30L20,000 which envisioned a 30 in (760 mm) diameter liquid fueled missile with a 20,000 lbf (89 kN) thrust engine and was ventured in the summer of 1944. The WAC Corporal sounding rocket was developed in 1945,providing experience with liquid fueled ballistic rocketry. The second phase gave experience with a redesigned and refined rocket and engine the following year. What was learned was applied to the Corporal program.
