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1 Viking and Vanguard, 1945–1959 Although only a sounding rocket, the Navy’s Viking made direct contributions to launch vehicle technology. It was also the starting point for America ’s second launch vehicle, Vanguard. Often regarded as a failure, Vanguard did launch more than one satellite. Together with Viking, it pioneered use of gimbals for steering. In addition, its upper stages contributed significantly to the evolution of launch vehicle technology, since they were converted for use with the Thor-Delta series of space boosters. Additionally, a variant of its third stage was modified for use in the Scout program. This stage of Vanguard (in one of its two versions) pioneered the use of fiberglass cases and itself contributed to upper-stage technology for military missiles.1 Viking The Viking rocket contributed to the Vanguard first stage as well as to the Vanguard guidance system. Milton W. Rosen, who was responsible for the development and firing of the Viking rockets, went on to become technical director of Project Vanguard and then director of launch vehicles and propulsion in the Office of Manned Space Flight Programs for NASA. His work developing Viking and his experiences with it prepared him for his responsibilities with Vanguard and beyond. Finally, Viking came early enough in the history of American rocketry that it illustrates a good deal about the evolution of the technologies used on launch vehicles. For all of these reasons , the history of Viking and Rosen’s involvement with it deserve a place in this history. They constitute an early case study of technology transfer and the process of rocket development.2 After receiving his B.S. degree in electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1937 and working briefly for Westinghouse and other firms, Rosen found employment at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Viking and Vanguard, 1945–1959 11 1940. NRL was an interesting institution set up on July 2, 1923, “to conduct programs in the physical sciences and related fields directed toward new and improved materials, equipment, technology, and systems for the Navy.” It was a place where researchers could create areas of research “that were at once technologically important and scientifically interesting.” Rosen was later to do this after World War II, a conflict that convinced the Navy its “scientists needed to be concerned with predicting, even defining, and solving problems of the next war rather than the last one.” Meanwhile, during World War II at NRL, Rosen worked under Ernst H. Krause on guidance systems for missiles. At the end of the war, the group under Krause began to plan its future, and Rosen, who had been reading G. Edward Pendray’s proposal to use rockets for exploration of the upper atmosphere , suggested that Krause’s group do just that. Krause supported the idea, and at the end of 1945 the Rocket-Sonde Research Branch came into existence.3 Rosen’s background was in electronics, but if the group were to develop the sounding rocket he had proposed, it needed an expert in rocketry. Since the field was in diapers in the United States, it seemed unlikely that Krause would be able to recruit someone with that experience, so he asked Rosen to learn the field. Rosen knew that since he had proposed the idea of a rocket, Krause would not let him off the hook easily. He decided to agree but pose a condition he thought his boss could not meet: permitting him to spend a year at an organization with the most knowledge in the United States about rocketry, JPL. To his surprise, Krause agreed. This conversation took place in November 1945. Rosen, Krause, and another colleague traveled to JPL in March 1946, and the lab agreed to add Rosen to its staff. Meanwhile, Rosen and his colleague C. H. Smith read “the JPL handbook, which was the primer of rocketry of that time.” Rosen and Smith began to plan their own rockets when they learned of the captured V-2s and the plans to fire them at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, a place they had never heard of.4 Krause became the first chair of the V-2 Upper Atmosphere Research Panel and thus was involved in the research with the German rockets at White Sands. But for Rosen the immediate effect of this project was to relieve the pressure to produce an upper atmosphere research rocket until the V-2 firings were completed. On the other hand, Krause recognized that...

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