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'Titan' was a family of U.S. expendable rockets used between 1959 and 2005. A total of 368 rockets of this family were launched.

Contents

Titan I

Missile Wings

Titan II

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM)

Space launch vehicles

Titan III

Titan IV

Rocket fuel

Current status of Titans

Specifications

Notes

External links

Related content

Titan I

The 'Titan I' was the first version of the Titan family of rockets. It began as a backup ICBM project in case the Atlas was delayed. It was a two-stage rocket powered by RP-1 and LOX. The Titan I and Atlas ICBMs using RP-1/LOX fuel did not have a quick launch sequence. They took about 30 minutes to fuel up and fire.

Missile Wings

★ 44th Strategic Missile Wing, Ellsworth AFB, Rapid City, SD

★ 451st SMW (formerly 703rd) Lowry AFB, Denver, CO (closed)

★ 381st SMW McConnell AFB, Wichita, KS

★ (unkn wing), Little Rock, AR.

Titan II

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM)

Most Titan rockets were derivatives of the 'Titan II' ICBM. The Titan II ICBM had one W-53 warhead with a 9 megaton yield, making it the most powerful ICBM on-standby in the US nuclear arsenal. All of the ICBM Titan II missile sites have been decommissioned since 1987 but the Titan Missile Museum south of Tucson, Arizona has preserved one silo.

Space launch vehicles

The Titan II was a hypergolicly-fueled two-stage ICBM that was used by the U.S. Air Force from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s. In the late 80s some of the deactivated Titan IIs were converted into space launch vehicles to be used launching U.S. Government payloads. The final such vehicle launched a DMSP weather satellite from Vandenberg AFB on October 18, 2003 [1]. Titan IIs were also used to launch two U.S. unmanned Gemini and ten manned Gemini capsules in the mid 1960s.

Titan III

The 'Titan III' was a modified Titan II with optional solid rocket boosters. It was developed by the U.S. Air Force as a heavy-lift satellite launcher to be used mainly to launch U.S. Military payloads such as DSP early-warning, intelligence (spy), and defense communications satellites. One variant, the Titan IIIE, was also used to launch some NASA scientific probes such as the Voyagers to the outer planets and the Viking landers to Mars using the Centaur upperstage.
The 'Titan IIIB',its variants(23B, 24B, 33B, and 34B) were Titan III cores with an Agena D upper stage. This combination was used to launch the KH-8 GAMBIT series of spy satellites. They were all launched from Vandenberg AFB, CA, into polar orbits. The payload was about 7,500 lb (3,000 kg).

Titan IV

The 'Titan IV' is a stretched Titan III with non-optional solid rocket boosters. It could be launched either with the Centaur upper stage, with the IUS (Inertial Upper Stage) or without any upper stage. It was almost exclusively used to launch U.S. Military payloads, though it was also used to launch NASA's Cassini probe to Saturn in 1997. Titan IV was the most powerful unmanned rocket in the United States, and was extremely expensive to operate. By the time the Titan IV was operational the requirements of the Department of Defence for a heavy booster had declined due to improvements in the longevity of military satellites. As a result when including the cost of ground operations and facilities for the Titan IV at Vandenburg the unit cost was very high.

Rocket fuel

Liquid oxygen is dangerous to use in an enclosed space, such as a missile silo, and cannot be stored for long periods in the booster oxidizer tank. Several Atlas and Titan I rockets exploded and destroyed their silos. The Martin Company was able to improve the design with the Titan II. The RP-1/LOX combination was replaced by a room-temperature fuel whose oxidizer did not require cryogenic storage. The same first stage rocket engines were used with some modifications. The diameter of the second stage was increased to match the first stage. The Titan II's hypergolic fuel ignites on contact, and is highly toxic and corrosive. There were several accidents in Titan II silos resulting in loss of life. In August 1965, 53 construction workers were killed when hydraulic fluid used in the Titan II, caught fire in a missile silo northwest of Searcy, Arkansas. The liquid fuel missiles were prone to developing leaks of their toxic propellants. Nine airmen were killed at a site outside Rock, Ks in the late 1970s when a siloed missile leaked propellant. Later, another site, at Potwin, KS, leaked fuel and was closed but there were no fatalities. In September 1980, at another Arkansas Titan II silo near Damascus a technician dropped a wrench which broke the skin of the missile. Leaking rocket fuel ignited and blew the 8,000 lb nuclear warhead out of the silo; it landed several hundred feet away.^[2] This marked the beginning of the end for the Titan II as an ICBM. The 54 Titan II's were replaced in the U.S. arsenal by 50 MX Peacekeeper solid fuel missiles in late 1980s. 54 Titan IIs were fielded along with some 1000 Minutemen from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s. Most of the decommissioned Titan II ICMBs were refurbished and used for space launch vehicles, with a perfect launch success record.

Current status of Titans

As of 2006, the Titan family of rockets are obsolete. The high cost of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, along with the special care that was needed due to their toxicity, proved too much compared to the higher-performance liquid hydrogen or RP-1-fueled vehicles. The current owners of the Titan line (Lockheed-Martin) decided to extend their Atlas family of rockets instead of the more expensive Titans, along with joint ventures to sell launches on the Russian Proton and the new Boeing-built Delta IV class of medium and heavy-lift launch vehicles. The second-to-last Titan launched successfully from Cape Canaveral on April 29, 2005. The final Titan launched successfully from Vandenberg on October 19, 2005, carrying a secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. There are approximately twenty Titan IIs at AMARC in Tucson, Arizona set to be scrapped.

Specifications

:''For the specifications, please see the articles on each variant.''

Notes

1. Titan 1 Chronology
2. "Light on the Road to Damascus" ''Time'' magazine, September 29, 1980 accessed September 12, 2006

External links

★ Video of a Titan II missile launch

★ Photo of the last Titan launch, at the APOD archive. See also [2]

★ Titan missiles & variations

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