Engineering:Transtage
Transtage, given the United States Air Force designation SSB-10A, was an American upper stage used on Titan III rockets, developed by Martin Marietta and Aerojet.
History
Transtage was developed in anticipation of a requirement to launch military payloads to geostationary orbit; a contract for development of the stage was issued on 20 August 1962.[1] Transtage used a pressure-fed two-chamber configuration, using Aerozine 50 fuel and nitrogen tetroxide as oxidizer; the thrust chambers were gimbaled for steering and each produced 8,000 lbf (36 kN) of thrust.[2] The design specification required up to three restarts during the first six hours of a mission.[3]
Forty-seven Titan III launches are known to have used Transtage upper stages;[4] of those, three are known to have suffered launch failures.[5] The first launch, boosted by a Titan IIIA, occurred on 1 September 1964;[6] the Transtage failed to pressurize, resulting in premature engine cutoff, and a failure to reach orbit.[5] The second launch, on 10 December, was successful, and all ensuing launches used the Titan IIIC launch vehicle. The last launch of a Transtage was on 4 September 1989, boosted by a Titan 34D rocket.[5]
See also
References
- ↑ Foradori, Paolo; Giampiero Giacomello; Alessandro Pascolini (2017). Arms Control and Disarmament: 50 Years of Experience in Nuclear Education. London: Palgrage Macmillan. pp. 56–57. ISBN 978-3-319-62258-3.
- ↑ "Titan Transtage". 2016-12-28. http://astronautix.com/t/titantranstage.html.
- ↑ Hunley, J.D. (2007). The Development of Propulsion Technology for U.S. Space-Launch Vehicles, 1926-1991. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press. pp. 168. ISBN 978-1-58544-588-2.
- ↑ "Transtage". https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_stage/transtage.htm.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Heyman, Jos (17 March 2003). "Martin Marietta SSB-10 Transtage". Directory of U.S. Military Rockets and Missilesm Appendix 3: Space Vehicles. Designation-Systems. http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app3/b-10.html. Retrieved 2017-12-17.
- ↑ "Transtage 1, 2, 5". http://www.astronautix.com/t/transtage125.html.
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