FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1423.PDF
FLIGHT International, 15 August 1963 APART from the USA and USSR, only France has embarked L upon a major national space programme. The French programme is not only substantial in size and scope, and additional to considerable commitments in this field in associ ation with ELDO,* ESRO and the USA, but it is completely self- supporting. France is ensuring her independence of all other nations, even in launching sites and launch vehicles. The first space booster developed in France was Veronique. This was a single-stage device stemming largely from the pioneer German V-2 and corresponding roughly in technique with the American Viking family or the British Black Knight, although on a smaller scale. Design and development of Veronique was the first major task undertaken by the LRBA. The work began in 1949, suffered a financially imposed hiatus from 1954 to 1959 and finally resulted in a well-developed vehicle. An unusual design feature was the adoption of stabilization during the first few seconds of flight by four wires pulled out from reels on the launcher by arms fixed to the cruciform control fins. After using various types of liquid propellant, LRBA decided to adopt a rather unusual combination: white fuming nitric acid and turpentine. Feed in Veronique was provided by pressurization of the propellant tanks, by means of a solid-charge gas generator, rather than by the more complex use of a turbopump. Veronique has proved very useful as a vehicle for lifting payloads above the atmosphere. Early versions had a thrust of 8,8201b and length of 19ft 8|in, and could lift a 2201b payload to an altitude of just over 37 miles. The main production batches were lm longer, at 23ft, and could take the same payload to a height of 124 miles. A total of 49 had been fired by June of this year, all at Colomb-Bechar/Hammaguir, the launch sites in southern Algeria at about 30°S latitude. Several of the payloads have included small animals, both these and instrument packages being recovered by parachute. In the latter part of the last decade French development of rocket vehicles blossomed forth a succession of new names, most of which have become familiar as the result of a successful pro gramme of hardware. Several of these rockets were evolved by ONERA, and others by Sud-Aviation. These, and later rockets by SNECMA, Matra and others, now comprise the most complete range of rocket vehicles available of which details are known, apart from those of the USA. Bigger things required a new management structure, and this became SEREB. Under the aegis of this organization were planned a series of military missiles, details of which may not yet be dis closed, and a series of large rocket vehicles for space research. The space rockets have been named after precious stones. Basic data for this Pierres Precieuses family are grouped in the table on page 243. It will be seen that to some extent the French have adopted the building-block concept and employed rocket stages singly and in groups in order to obtain the greatest variety of vehicles with the maximum standardization of com ponents. Nevertheless, the development of any reliable hardware of such character is at once a protracted and a costly undertaking. It is not the purpose of this article to moralize on French reasons, politics and philosophy, but to describe—for the first time in such detail—the precious-stone launch vehicles themselves. Diamant (Diamond) is the largest and most important gem at present planned for de Gaulle's astronautical crown. It has three stages, all of which figure in lesser launch vehicles. Apart from this group of rockets, SEREB have already taken to a high degree of development a motor which does not figure in Diamant at all. On its own this motor is known as Agate. Agate was the first of the precious stones, and its development began in 1958 under the leadership of Sud-Aviation. It is designed around a single SDP solid-propellant charge, fired through a single fixed SEPR nozzle. The case, by Nord-Aviation, is wrapped and welded steel sheet, and the ballistic flight is stabilized by four trapezoidal-section tail fins. There is no guidance or auto pilot, and the trajectory is varied by altering the inclination of the launcher arm. By June 1963, SEREB had achieved ten successful free flights with this vehicle from ten launch attempts. Following a period of static test firings, four Agates were launched at Hammaguir with "provisional propulsion," followed by six "definitive vehicles" in 1962-3. In addition Sud have recently launched two more, in a programme involving four firings of the Aigle rocket and an * Organizations mentioned in this article are listed on page 246. C
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
