GENERAL DYNAMICS: THE ATLAS
The launch vehicle for Mariner was an Atlas D booster with an Agena B second stage. Historically, Atlas can be traced to October, 1954, when the former Convair Corporation (later acquired by General Dynamics) was invited to submit proposals for research and development of four missile systems, including a 5,000-mile intercontinental weapon.
In January, 1946, Convair assigned K. J. Bossart to begin a study of two proposed types of 5,000-mile missiles: one jet powered at subsonic speeds, with wings for aerodynamic control; the other a supersonic, ballistic (wingless and bullet-like), rocket-powered missile capable of operating outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
Photo courtesy of General Dynamics/Astro Atlas missiles in assembly facility at General Dynamics/Astronautics plant.
This was the beginning of Project MX-774, lineal ancestor of Atlas. After captive testing at San Diego in 1947, three of the experimental missiles were test-launched at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. The first flight failed at 6,200 feet after a premature engine burnout.
In 1947, the Air Force shelved the MX-774 project. However, this brief program had proved the feasibility of three concepts later used in Atlas: swiveling engines for directional control; lightweight, pressurized airframe structures; and separable nose cones.
The Korean War stimulated the ICBM concept and, in 1951, a new MX-1593 contract was awarded to Convair to study ballistic and glide rockets. By September, 1951, Convair was proposing a ballistic missile that would incorporate some of the features of the MX-774 design. A plan for an accelerated program was presented to the Air Force in 1953. After a year of study, a full go-ahead for the project, now called Atlas, was given in January, 1955.
The unit handling the Atlas program was set up as Convair Astronautics, with J. R. Dempsey as president, on March 1, 1957.
The first Atlas test flight, in June of 1957, ended in destruction of the missile when it went out of control. Following another abortive attempt, the first fully successful flight of an Atlas missile was made from Cape Canaveral on December 17, 1957.
The Atlas program was in full swing by 1958, when 14 test missions were flown. The entire missile was orbited in December, 1958, as Project Score. It carried the voice of President Eisenhower as a Christmas message to the world. The Atlas missile system was accepted for field operations by the Air Force in 1958.
Also in 1958, an Atlas achieved a new distance record, flying more than 9,000 miles down the Atlantic Missile Range, where it landed in the Indian Ocean, off the South African coast.
Atlas has been modified for use by NASA as a space vehicle booster. Known as the Atlas D, it has launched lunar probes, communications and scientific Earth satellites, and manned space vehicles.