USAF Titan IIIC rocket liftoff and staging footage from early missions (around 1966). Liftoff presented at approximate real time. Staging footage is in slow motion, but corrected for fish eye distortion. #USAF #TitanIIIC
The Titan IIIC was just one beast of a rocket.. In addition designed to launch the MOL, NASA was looking into the feasibility of using the Titan IIIC to launch a Centaur upper stage equipped with an Agena-style Gemini docking collar in which a separately launched Gemini would dock with it. After docking the Centaur would power the Gemini/Centaur on a lunar fly-by mission. In case of delays to Apollo, NASA may have resorted to this scenario in order to complete a lunar mission by the end of the 1960"s.
"Hey, what if we take the Titan II and strap some large solid boosters to the side of it?" And thus, a beautiful, but sorely underutilized design was born.
It was more than just attaching a pair of solid-rocket booster on the side of a Titan II core, for Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) had to make modifications necessary for the Titan IIIC to handle both the heavier second stage (it had enlarged fuel and oxidizer tanks) and the Transtage upper stage (which like the Titan core, used the same hypergolic Aerozine 50/N2O4 as fuel and oxidizer, but used two of Aerojet's AJ-10 engines similar to that used Space Shuttle - the Apollo CSM and the derived Orion CEV/European SM only used one; the Titan IIIE used for the Helios, Viking, and Voyager probes, had the two-engine cryogenic (LH2/LOX) Centaur upper stage and solid-fueled Star 37E "kick motor").
The USAF Integrate-Transfer-Launch (ITL) complex (LC-40 and LC-41) were built for the Titan IIIC launch vehicle. In 1960s, X-20 and Manned Orbiting Lab (MOL) planned to use, but were both cancelled.
Thankyou for posting this clip, I don't know if its the film equipment used, sound recordings or the era in general as in the dawn and early steps of Spaceflight, but there's a certain timeless magic in watching your channel.
@@RetroSpaceHD Hahaha yeah did realise that one :) Hard to define exactly what the factor is as its a mixture of different qualities and attitude to getting results, along with the people. Where as today with the obvious advances and computer tech, we seem to of lost something along the way somehow. Great channel though.
Loaded with pressurized hydrazine that where injected into the SRMs to create certain impulses in the combustion and thus controlling the vehicle’s trajectory since the SRMs (unlike the SRMU that were used on the Titan IVB configuration) couldn’t swivel its nozzle hydraulically.
