U.S. Space-Launch Vehicle Technology: Viking to Space Shuttle

Glossary of Terms, Acronyms, and Abbreviations

Glossary of Terms, Acronyms, and Abbreviations The definitions of terms below are intended primarily for the general reader. As such, they are deliberately couched in simple, lay language and will not satisfy the rigor that the scientific and engineering communities expect. Unfortunately, many more precise definitions are not comprehensible to nontechnical audiences. These definitions thus constitute a compromise between exactness and comprehensibility. The technical community will probably find this glossary useful mostly for the spelling out of acronyms and abbreviations that may be unfamiliar or forgotten. AAS – American Astronautical Society ABL – Allegany Ballistics Laboratory ablation – The vaporizing of a substance to dissipate or carry away heat— used for nose cones of reentry bodies, combustion chambers, and nozzles or nozzle throats where heating was intense ABMA – Army Ballistic Missile Agency AC – Atlas-Centaur accelerometer – An instrument for measuring acceleration ADDJUST – Automatic Determination and Dissemination of Just Updated Steering Terms AFB – Air Force Base AFBMD – See BMD AFHRA – Air Force Historical Research Agency AFMDC – Air Force Missile Development Center AFRSI – Advanced flexible reusable surface insulation, one type of insulation on the shuttle orbiters AFSC – Air Force Systems Command AFSWC – Air Force Special Weapons Center Glossary 394 AGC – Aerojet General Corporation AIAA – American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics AJ – Aerojet AMC – Air Materiel Command; Army Missile Command ANNA – Army, Navy, NASA, Air Force apogee – The farthest point from Earth’s center of a satellite orbiting Earth ARDC – Air Research and Development Command, a precursor of Air Force Systems Command ARPA – Advanced Research Projects Agency ATS – Applications Technology Satellites attitude – The position of a rocket or spacecraft in relation to its axes and an external data point such as the horizon or a star axial – Circling around a cylinder or other elongated body in a direction essentially perpendicular to the length of that body. baffle – A device to prevent sloshing in liquid-propellant tanks or combustion instability in liquid-propellant combustion chambers Bell Labs – Bell Telephone Laboratories BMD – [Air Force] Ballistic Missile Division (formerly WDD) booster – A somewhat ambiguous term applied to any kind of rocket that adds to or provides lift. Most specifically, it refers to (1) strap-on or other rocket motors or engines, especially solid, that augment lift capability during launch and the early part of flight. More generally, it can mean (2) an entire launch vehicle, (3) the first stage of a multistage launch vehicle, or even (4) a rocket that lifts a satellite from one orbit to a higher one, as in “Agena booster,” which refers to an Agena upper stage used in this way. BSD – [Air Force] Ballistics Systems Division, one of two divisions that split from BMD on April 1, 1961 CAIB – Columbia Accident Investigation Board Caltech – California Institute of Technology castable – Of a fluid including a binder, oxidizer, and fuel, able to be poured into a case and cured into a solid propellant cavitation – The formation of bubbles in the “plumbing” of a liquid-propellant rocket engine, interfering with the flow of propellants or other liquids CFD – Computational fluid dynamics CIGTF – Central Inertial Guidance Test Facility, at AFMDC combustion instability – Oscillations in an operating combustion chamber (whether liquid- or solid-propellant) that can be so great as to destroy the engine or motor composite – A type of solid propellant consisting of separate particles of Glossary 395 oxidizer, possibly a separate fuel, and other substances dispersed in an elastic matrix that serves as a binder and also a fuel control – To provide commands to rocket or missile actuators that will cause the vehicle to follow a desired trajectory, usually with provision for feedback to a guidance-and-control system; as a noun, the provision of such commands Convair – Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation CPIA – Chemical Propulsion Information Agency cryogenic – Extremely cold CSD – Chemical Systems Division (of United Technologies Corporation) CSM – [Apollo] Command and Service Module, which actually consisted of separate command and service modules CTPB – Carboxy-terminated polybutadiene, a solid-propellant binder that was used somewhat sparingly because of its high cost compared with PBAN cut-and-try engineering – Cutting or constructing parts and trying them out to fix undiagnosed or at least unpredicted problems; if they worked, the fabricator still might not understand fully the nature of the underlying problem, but their success or failure added to the engineering data base for future design; in this book, roughly synonymous with “trial-and-error ” and “empirical” delta guidance – A system of guidance in which a rocket...