Somebody could write a great history of the vehicle up to the mid-1960s and then there would be some guesswork.īack around 2000 I tried to convince a USAF history office to sponsor a monograph history of the Agena, but they were uninterested. So we don't have good information on things like the life extension that was developed for later GAMBIT-3 missions, or the Ascent Agena, or possible geosynchronous operations. Also, the Agena history gets murky after 1967. I believe that the Agena C never saw flight and was really only an interim design because they settled on further modifications that became the Agena D. General Schriever rejected that proposal.Ĭaveat: I'm writing this from memory, so I may have some of the details wrong. I don't know what the purpose of that was, but it probably would have improved performance and maintainability. The guy even had a couple of photos of the mockup modified Agena, which mainly moved around some of the primary components. I published an article by somebody who was involved in that in a special issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. There was also a proposal for making additional improvements to the baseline Agena. That continued forever, although I suspect that it diminished over time as Agena was used less. This was not simply an add-on (something that could be plugged in/bolted on to an existing Agena), but a factory change. For instance, a heavier payload might require adding structure to the Agena so that it could handle the stress. it turned out that almost every mission wanted/needed unique mods not just in terms of add-ons to the vehicle, but changes to the basic vehicle. But although I suspect that they are still on the NRO website, they have moved around their menus so much that it is difficult to find things.) USAF found that Agena models were proliferating by the early 1960s, so they decided upon a "Standard Agena" which had mostly fixed capabilities, and could be modified for specific missions. (At one point NRO had an entire Agena section, consisting of about 700 declassified Agena documents dating from 1958-1967. You can find this issue in the piles of Agena documents that have been declassified. The term "standardization" is a loaded one. It was a pretty fun excercise, I initially wrote it "because Big Gemini" but then the Agena stole its thunder and become the story main character. This makes logistics simpler and cheaper through standardization. Whichever country gets it hands on the Agena, gain access to the US station. In this alt-history the Agena flies on all three aforementioned boosters - Atlas, Thor, Titan - but also on all seven Saturn IB left by the end of Apollo (209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216 - the incomplete ones are completed)īy ricochet the Agena becomes the station main logistic vehicle, also flying on Ariane, Diamant, the Japanese Thor (that become Thorad and not Deltas) and finally, Europa leftover Blue Streaks. And the Agena as an automated space tug (think FGB, but smaller) for automated docking of the modules to the core. Big Gemini as crew vehicle, Titan III-M to launch it. modular Skylab: NAR S-II + MDD S-IVB modules, 33 ft and 22 ft in diameter. In place of the Shuttle NASA gets a more balanced "manned spaceflight package" I wrote once an alternate history where the Shuttle gets cancelled by Nixon OMB and PSAC late 1971.įletcher resigns in anger and George Low gets the job. STS was supposed to be the ultimate standardization, but the Air Force began to develop Titan 4 even before the Challenger failure.Ĭompeting mission requirements continue to defy launch vehicle standardization even to the present day, with NSSL's Medium and Heavy requirements, NASA's crew and cargo launch needs, and commercial satellite goals a prime example. Meanwhile, NASA's Atlas-Centaur wasn't ready.Īfter the initial "interim" efforts, the Air Force strove to attain standardization with Titan 3B/3C/3D, but then NASA created its own custom adaptation with Titan 3E/Centaur. Delta wasn't adequate for the Gemini missions for a variety of reasons, so Atlas-Agena was used. NASA tagged along, using Agena for some missions, but the Agency developed Thor-Delta for East Coast launches and Thor-Agena only flew from the West Coast. Each improvement added time on orbit and more miles of film. Titan 3B-Agena was developed for the follow-on Gambit-3, replacing Atlas-Agena. Thor-Agena evolved into the more capable TAT-Agena and finally Thorad-Agena.Ītlas-Agena was the obvious next step, ultimately for Gambit. Thor was ready before Atlas, so Thor-Agena was selected for Corona. I think that part of it was timing, and the biggest drivers were the massive photo spysat programs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |