Starship Asterisk*

The First Rocket Launch from Cape Canaveral

Explanation: A new chapter in space flight began this week in 1950 July with the launch of the first rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida: the Bumper V-2. Shown above, the Bumper V-2 was an ambitious two-stage rocket program that topped a V-2 missile base with a WAC Corporal rocket. The upper stage was able to reach then-record altitudes of almost 400 kilometers, higher than even Space Shuttles once flew. Launched under the direction of the General Electric Company, the Bumper V-2 was used primarily for testing rocket systems and for research on the upper atmosphere. Bumper V-2 rockets carried small payloads that allowed them to measure attributes including air temperature and cosmic ray impacts. Seven years later, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I and Sputnik II, the first satellites into Earth orbit. In response in 1958, the US created NASA.

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Sixty years later.....People are living at that altitude,
We konw of thousands of other worlds,
We're activly searching for other civilizations,
and planning is under way for living on other worlds.

All in my lifetime --- I was 3 at the time of the Bumper launch!!

Many might say it might be better to be planning to take far more care of this world we have now !!!

Those photographers surely were close to the launch!

My mother was born just before the Wright brothers flew, at Kitty Hawk, and she lived until men going to the moon was stale news.

To be picky, space shuttles did reach higher altitudes. During one of the Hubble servicing missions it got to 334 nautical miles = 618 km:
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/mis ... ights.html

Well its pretty obvious OH&S was not an issue in the 50's

I believe Von Braun had a role in this.

I did no know that there were rocks that big in all of Florida.

von Braun had to be in this image, right ?

ta152h0 wrote:von Braun had to be in this image, right ?

These are the photographers. The scientists were smarter. They're out of the picture, in a bunker.

Chris Peterson wrote:

ta152h0 wrote:von Braun had to be in this image, right ?

These are the photographers. The scientists were smarter. They're out of the picture, in a bunker.

In fact, the picture was likely taken from the protective(?) blockhouse (maybe by Werner von Braun himself ) :

http://www.spaceline.org/galleries/bump ... 7.jpg.html The view angle appears virtually identical as the APOD picture. Since the APOD foreground structure appears entrenched in a hole, maybe this was the blockhouse? It doesn't appear to have the characteristics of a blast-bunker though.

blissfully unaware

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuCRVx9CYRw

Is the WAC Corporal the same rocket used today to study the auroras ?

Nice German rocket.

I'm curious about the "V-2" used in this and other US launches. Are these rockets built in the US from German designs? Were they built (or their building overseen) by former German engineers? Or were some of them actually captured German rockets brought to the US (possibly reassembled after being transported in disassembled form)?

both. captured and copied. and so was the " Loon "