Flying at last: An AJ26/NK-33 engine gets hoisted into place. (Aerojet)

There were celebrations all around at Wallops Island, Virginia, yesterday, as the new Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences launched successfully on its first test flight.

There may have been some applause in Russia, too. Antares uses Aerojet AJ26/NK-33 liquid kerosene rocket engines originally built for the Soviet Union’s canceled N-1 moon rocket in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After being warehoused for 20 years, the engines were purchased by American companies and modified. On Sunday they finally made it to space, powering the Antares first stage.

Antares is now scheduled to launch Orbital’s Cygnus cargo vehicle on its first trip to the International Space Station this summer.  Meanwhile, Russia is looking at using the NK-33 on future Soyuz rockets.

A replay of the Antares launch for those who missed it:

A SpaceX employee -- Mohawk Girl? -- watches the launch in Hawthorne, Calif. (Photo: SpaceX)

A Dragon supply ship is now en route to the International Space Station, after launching last night on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Docking of the vehicle is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

In the video below, at about the 1:30 mark, you can see  a problem develop with one of the engines, which immediately shuts down.Yet the rocket keeps going.

That’s the beauty of the Falcon design, which has 9 clustered engines. From our article on SpaceX that ran last January:

The choice of nine engines for the first stage was made with reliability in mind: From the moment of liftoff, Falcon 9 can suffer an engine shutdown and keep flying; after about 90 seconds, it can tolerate a second engine shutdown. Even if an engine explodes…the others will not be affected.

Update: SpaceX put out the following statement on Monday afternoon:

Approximately one minute and 19 seconds into last night’s launch, the Falcon 9 rocket detected an anomaly on one first stage engine. Initial data suggests that one of the rocket’s nine Merlin engines, Engine 1, lost pressure suddenly and an engine shutdown command was issued. We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it. Panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to protect the stage and other engines. Our review of flight data indicates that neither the rocket stage nor any of the other eight engines were negatively affected by this event….

Falcon 9 did exactly what it was designed to do. Like the Saturn V (which experienced engine loss on two flights) and modern airliners, Falcon 9 is designed to handle an engine out situation and still complete its mission. No other rocket currently flying has this ability.

It is worth noting that Falcon 9 shuts down two of its engines to limit acceleration to 5 g’s even on a fully nominal flight. The rocket could therefore have lost another engine and still completed its mission.

October 9 update: It also has become clear that, due to the first stage anomaly, the Falcon 9 sent a smaller secondary payload owned by Orbcomm into the wrong orbit. SpaceX wasn’t exactly forthcoming with this information, which trickled out on various space websites yesterday. As a private business, they’re not required to tell us anything, of course. But with all the uninformed criticism of “new space” ventures these days, companies like SpaceX might do themselves a favor by being open and upfront when something does go wrong. NASA always has been — and it’s one of the agency’s many strengths.

Founder and Chief Technology Officer Dave Masten said of the test, “I could not be happier.” As for Xombie’s next steps:

We are discussing going a bit faster and further downrange, but the real purpose of Xombie is to be useful as a testbed. Where we hope to go with this is enabling NASA, NASA contractors, and others to more effectively test their new technologies. Next for Xombie will be to fly similar trajectories but with new technologies to demonstrate that those technologies are ready for use in mission critical applications, such as landing on Mars.

JPL [one of Masten's clients for Xombie, among others] will be releasing their take on what they can do with Xombie in the near future and I don’t want to steal their thunder, so I won’t say much more along those lines.

Here’s another view of Xombie’s flight.

It's not just the river: Royal Navy Bomb Disposal team divers lift a World War II-era V-2 rocket from the seabed at Harwich, Essex, in 2012. The rocket was donated to the local sailing club, which had reported the rocket's location to the Essex Police. Photograph by Gaz Armes / MoD.

Watching the Royal Navy’s HMS Ocean squeak past the Thames barrier to provide security for the Olympic Games got us wondering. What lies beneath London’s  historic river?

You might be surprised: A Zeppelin from a 1916 bombing run. Two Hawker Hurricanes lost in 1940. A Junkers Ju 88 shot down in 1941. The remainder of two Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses that collided mid-air in 1944.

And that’s not all. As historian Peter Ackroyd writes in Thames: The Biography, “It was estimated, at the end of [World War II], that approximately 15,000 high-explosive bombs, 350 parachute mines, 550 flying bombs and 240 rockets had fallen upon the Thames and dockland in the course of 1,400 raids. It may have been surmised that to destroy the Thames was, essentially, to destroy England; but the river, and the country, somehow survived.”

A German magnetic mine, dropped by parachute, recovered from the Thames Estuary in 1939. From ww2today.com.

The Zeppelin L-15 was one of five airships that raided the east and northeast coasts of England on April 1, 1916, killing 28 people and wounding 44. The L-15 was brought down at the mouth of the Thames: “the airship’s back had been broken by gunfire, her gondolas were riddled with shrapnel bullets,” reported the New York Times on April 2. “She came down like a sick bird, flopping at both ends as though they were wings,” said a sailor who watched the airship descend.

London, as seen from the Thames during the Battle of Britain. (NASM)

The Thames is just 215 miles long—by comparison, the Mississippi River meanders for almost 4,000 miles—and almost 100 aircraft were lost in the river during World War II alone. During the first few months of the war, more than 100 ships were sunk in the Thames Estuary, taken out by German magnetic mines.

It’s difficult to determine how much of this debris remains to be recovered. When approach channels were being dredged for  London Gateway (a deep-sea container port that will open in 2013), marine archaeologists noted,  “Although World War II took place only 70 years ago, records of the positions of aircraft lost at sea are often vague or incomplete.”

As recently as April, an unexploded 1,650-lb German mine was detonated in the Thames estuary, propelling water and ash nearly 400 feet into the air.

The 2012 Olympic Games will be protected by (among other things) Starstreak missiles. Here, during Exercise Olympic Guardian in May 2012, a soldier mans a surface-to-air missile. Detail of a photograph by Graeme Main; Crown Copyright.

While the world’s Olympic athletes prepare for combat in the sports arena, the British Army is preparing to handle more serious attacks, in part by placing missiles on London rooftops.

Fred Wigg Tower isn’t among London’s 20 tallest buildings. In fact, at just 17 stories, it’s barely 155 feet tall. (In contrast, London’s tallest, the Shard, is more than 1,000 feet.) But what the East London public housing project lacks in height, it makes up for with location, location, location: The building has one of the best vantage points across London’s Olympic Park.

The tower, which hosted a rooftop battery of missiles during a test deployment in early May, is one of six sites chosen to have rooftop surface-to-air missiles during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games; it’s the first time that missile batteries have been positioned inside London since World War II.

British Army Gunners set up a Rapier air defense system at Blackheath, London, during Exercise Olympic Guardian, May 2012. Photograph by Cpl. Dylan "Bob" Browne, RAF; Crown Copyright.

The tenants of Fred Wigg tower block went to court to stop the missiles being placed on their rooftop, arguing that the installation would make their building a target for terrorist attacks. (They lost their court case.) Says David Enright, the residents’ lawyer, in this video from July 10, “The clear implication is that the Ministry of Defence now has the power to militarize the private homes of any person in Britain, so long as they can demonstrate that there is, in their view, a matter of national security in play.”

Not everyone is dismayed by the thought of missiles dotting London’s landscape. The Telegraph reported that one Duncan Simpson posted video of himself at the controls of an anti-aircraft missile launcher on his Facebook page. “After a couple of points this evening the army kindly allowed my friend and I to have a play with their weapons of mass destruction up on Blackheath [south east London],” he wrote. The Rapier surface-to-air missile, with a range of five miles, is capable of shooting down a 747 passenger jet.

Orbital Science's airborne launch system, the Lockheed L-1101 "Stargazer" with a Pegasus rocket strapped underneath. Photo courtesy Orbital Science Corps.

Making it easier, cheaper, and quicker to get things into orbit is the hot ticket right now. In our latest issue we cover the ongoing efforts by the Operationally Responsive Space office, working out of Kirtland Air Base in New Mexico, to make quick-launch spacecraft. DARPA’s also in that game: last week they awarded Boeing a $4.5 million contract to study airborne satellite launch systems. DARPA’s website explains:

The goal of [the Airborne Launch Assist Space Access] ALASA is to develop a significantly less expensive approach for routinely launching small satellites, with a goal of at least threefold reduction in costs compared to current military and US commercial launch costs. Currently, small satellite payloads cost more than $30,000 per pound to launch, and must share a launcher with other satellites. ALASA seeks to launch satellites on the order of 100 pounds for less than $1M total, including range support costs, to orbits that are selected specifically for each 100 pound payload.

They also note other disadvantages of fixed launch sites, like weather delays and limitations on the types of orbits available. Of course, the idea for aircraft-based launches goes back to NASA’s X-planes in the 1950s. Today, Orbital Sciences Corp. sends satellites into space with its Pegasus rocket that launches from a Lockheed-1101 Tri-Star (NASA’s NuSTAR spacecraft is scheduled for a June 13 airborne launch). And Stratolaunch Systems, the collaboration of Scaled Composites, SpaceX, and Dynetics, is in the works to take payloads up “affordably and responsibly” (and if successful, “mark the dawn of a new era of space transportation,” if they do say so themselves).

With ALASA, which has been in the works since November 2011, DARPA is looking for something a bit lighter-duty for smaller satellites — the Pegasus/Tri-Star can carry up to 1,000 pounds, while the Stratolaunch will likely be rated for payloads upwards of 100,000 pounds. And somehow, they want this launch system designed so that it requires “no recurring maintenance or support, and no specific integration to prepare for launch.” A pick-it-up-and-go system, indeed. We’ll be interested to see what Boeing comes up with by the end of their 18-month contract.

The Falcon 9 launches Dragon to the space station on Tuesday.

Driving through the NASA Kennedy Space Center gate last Saturday for the first attempt at launching SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, I noted the light traffic compared to the bumper-to-bumper scenes of the past. “Man, this ain’t no shuttle launch,” I said to the guard at the gate. “What shuttle?” he answered. “I was laid off a year ago.”

He was smiling, but not kidding. At Cape Canaveral, many are still resentful about the end of the shuttle program, or the lack of something big enough to replace it. And there’s a bit of envy directed at the young upstarts from California.

Robert Pearlman of collectSPACE got it right with his photo of today’s Falcon launch and a shuttle mockup. We’re seeing a historic passing of the baton in the space business.

The giant shuttle launch pads and assembly buildings now sitting silent and empty at the Cape are a monument to human ingenuity, but their day is over. Whether SpaceX will ultimately succeed, technically or economically, remains to be seen. They may not even get through this week without a major setback. And the company payroll of 1,860 people wouldn’t make a dent in the shuttle workforce.

Still, the numbers should grow. Elon Musk certainly believes they will. He talks about helping to set up communities on Mars, which is more than NASA dares to discuss these days. Musk has been known to bad mouth the aerospace establishment, but the SpaceX founder is more tempered in his comments lately, and humbler too (which must be hard when you’re called the Chief Designer and are treated like a rock star). He’s quick to thank NASA for his company’s success, as well he should.  The young company and the middle-aged space agency are on this mission (space station resupply) together, and SpaceX benefits daily from NASA’s decades of operational experience, not to mention paying contracts.

SpaceX-bashers who complain that the company is not “truly commercial” raise an irrelevant point. Plenty of American businesses are subsidized or otherwise propped up by the government. And it’s not like taxpayers handed SpaceX a gift. For a modest (by NASA standards) technology investment of $381 million, the agency has incubated a business that everyone agrees is critical to operating the space station. Dragon cargo service will cost less than other options, and come online faster. What’s the down side?

If space travel has a future as a large-scale enterprise, companies like SpaceX are now creating it. Not all the people who worked on the shuttle will get a chance to work on the New Thing, which is a shame, because they did good work. But their teenage children might.

From the 2011 Team America Rocketry Challenge

These kids yawn at your typical roof egg-dropping challenge. Tomorrow, 100 teams will compete in the Team America Rocketry Challenge. The teams are made of three to ten middle and high school students, who have already bested hundreds of other teams from around the country to make it to the D.C.-area competition, where they’ll send handmade rockets into the sky for top-notch prizes.

The Challenge started in 2002 as a celebration of the centennial of aviation, but the response and support was so big, it’s continued annually ever since. The kids register in the fall and spend all year with a teacher-supervisor and a mentor from the National Association of Rocketry to learn the math and physics required to blast up to the required altitude (this year it’s 800 feet), while carrying two raw eggs safely up and back down to Earth.

The top ten teams split $60,000 in cash and scholarships, and are given opportunities with NASA’s Student Launch Initiative and trips to international air shows with member companies from the Challenge’s sponsor, the Aerospace Industries Association.

If you’re in the D.C. area, you can head over to see the teams compete tomorrow during an event that’s part celebration of science, engineering, and nerdery (people have been known to dress up in costume), and part introduction to the competitive world of the aerospace industry. The “Final Flyoff” happens in the Great Meadow at 5089 Old Tavern Road, The Plains, Virginia, just about an hour drive from Washington, D.C. Bring a picnic and watch the launches throughout the day, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. In between, wander around the exhibition area that will feature aerospace company displays, mini-rocket demos and contests, and college representative to talk about their science and engineering majors. Then see the Rocketry Challenge winners, and very likely the future leaders of the aerospace industry, crowned at 5 p.m.

The Saturn V rocket was moved outside the Vehicle Assembly Building for the U.S. Bicentennial celebrations. Photo: NASA / Kennedy Space Center

When the Apollo program ended in 1972, one lonely Saturn V was left at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The never-was Apollo 18 rocket was dismantled into stages, then reassembled in front of the Vehicle Assembly Building in 1975 as part of the U.S. Bicentennial celebrations the following year. And there it continued to sit for two decades, rotting in the Florida humidity. In 1996, the Smithsonian teamed up with NASA to restore the Saturn V and give it a new home, protected from the elements, with a full educational experience for Kennedy Space Center visitors.

But this wasn’t as simple as it was with the newly built rocket in the 70s. “The Saturn rocket was pocked with gaping tears, rusted rivets, frayed wire, and fungi and other plant growths,” writes Andrew R. Thomas and Paul N. Thomarios in their new book, The Final Journey of the Saturn V. And Thomarios would know: he’s the president of The Apostolos Group, the team that was hired to do the rocket restoration.

Thomarios shares his firsthand knowledge of the grueling process to clean, repair, and move the five-stage vehicle into its new museum-quality building. It’s depressing to read the state the Saturn V had been left in for so long:

The rocket parts were covered with mildew, chewing gum, bird feces, and other items that defied description, but stuck to the rocket’s exterior. The gunk was so think that Nick Bolea, a long time Thomarios employee, decided to get on his employer’s good side by using a power-washer to write “Thomarios” in five-foot-high letters… [The employees] stopped work one day because a mysterious purple runoff was oozing out of the rocket. A hazardous material team was summoned to investigate. After some analysis, the team discovered the material wasn’t dangerous after all, but was fruit juice from berries birds had stored in the rocket’s interior.

And that’s not including the difficulties in working with the rocket itself, even without the grimy handprint of Mother Nature: the asbestos in the heat panels, the detailed documentation required by the Smithsonian, the rigorous safety standards implemented by a post-Challenger NASA.

This largely untold story seems like a fascinating focus for a book. It’s too bad The Final Journey only really gets to it in the last chapter, and not in the kind of detail you’d expect for, you know, a book. The first hundred pages of the 120-page book are a brief summary of the space program, from President Kennedy’s 1961 moon speech through Apollo — presumably to explain to the reader why this massive restoration was embarked on, though it seems unnecessary for anyone who would pick up a book with “Saturn V” in the title. There are 24 pages of color photos, many provided by Thomarios and not seen elsewhere, from the restoration, which are worth seeing. A space program follower won’t get much more from it, unfortunately, but The Final Journey would be a nice read for the young burgeoning space fan.

trois...deux...un

Europe has a brand new rocket.

The small (30-meter tall) Vega launcher, designed to lift economy-sized payloads weighing between 300 and 2,500 kilograms, made its debut early this morning from the spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

That gives Europe three options to meet all your rocketry needs: the Ariane 5 for large satellites, the Russian-built Soyuz for medium payloads, and now the Vega. Among the jazzier payloads it will carry is the IXV experimental re-entry vehicle for returning payloads from orbit, which is scheduled to fly in 2014.

Here’s a nice time-lapse video of the Vega’s three solid-fuel stages and a fourth, restartable upper stage being assembled in Kourou:

Apollo 11

Where were you on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first walked on the moon? What were you doing on October 4, 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik? Do you remember April 12, 1981, when the space shuttle Columbia made its first flight?

In 2008, the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival included the program “NASA: Fifty Years and Beyond,” and as part of that program, visitors were encouraged to document (written on note cards and recorded on tape) their memories of America’s space program.  A few of the festival-goer’s memories appear below.

As the 50^th anniversary year of human spaceflight draws to a close, we ask you to remember your own space milestones. After you read the remembrances here, leave a comment to tell us where you were, what you saw, and how you felt.

I had just learned to drive my husband’s stick shift car. He worked in the simulation lab with astronauts. I was stopped in front of their building to pick up my husband. As he got into the car, he said, “There’s Neil.” I said, “Neil who?” He said, “Armstrong! Who else?” At that point I went limp, the clutch jumped, the car lurched forward, and Neil just missed being hit.

I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. I remember Werner von Braun was our most famous citizen. Huntsville was very sleepy until Sputnik was launched. All of a sudden, Huntsville became a hotbed of activity, all centered on the space program. Within three years, the U.S. had an active space program. Many of the engines for spacecraft were built in Huntsville. Huntsville calls itself “The Space Capital of the Universe” now. In 1950, it was known as “the Watercress Capital of the U.S.” Things change!

In 1957 Sputnik went up and the talk was that U.S. students had to catch up academically. I was 10 years old—the next day was the first time we ever had homework in school.

I was in second grade when the entire student body of Norfeld Elementary reported to the auditorium to watch a not-very-big portable black-and-white TV for a Mercury capsule splashdown in the Atlantic. We were all worried that it could miss and veer back into space forever. (It went OK.)

When I was in elementary school, a man came to the school and sang songs about Black Holes. Needless to say, I was terrified.

I’ve been fascinated by space exploration for my entire life. My family tells me that my first word was “moon.” Now I work as a NASA contractor, on a mission to the Moon (LRO). I’m grateful to be standing on the shoulders of giants, the men and women before and beside me that helped NASA and all space agencies achieve what they have. And we’re only at the beginning of the adventure.

A few days later, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space retiree Art Jesensky wrote to us, “I have enclosed some photos and a story I wrote about the day the last HEXAGON satellite was launched. The pictures (click on the images below to see them larger) were taken by an oil company employee just offshore on an exploration platform.”

Here’s Jesensky’s account:

In April 1986, the space community and media were still reeling from the loss of the space shuttle Challenger and its seven-member crew just three months earlier, so it’s not surprising that the failed spy satellite launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on April 18 received little notice. Secrecy prevented public announcements of such launches, and information on mission success or failure was never revealed.

April 18 dawned over California’s central coast bright and beautiful—unlike many summer days when the marine fog layer rolled in off the Pacific in early afternoon, hung around all night, and didn’t burn off until noon the next day.

Space Launch Complex 4 (SLC-4) is about a mile from the Pacific Ocean, an ideal location for launching satellites to the south for injection into polar orbit. Known formally as Point Arguello, it is commonly referred to as South Vandenberg. SLC-4 was originally built to launch Atlas/Agenas for the GAMBIT reconnaissance satellites but was modified in the 1960s for Titan boosters. The west pad launched Titan/Agenas and the GAMBIT; the East pad launched the larger heavy-lift Titan 34D and HEXAGON recon satellites.

Lockheed built both the Agenas and HEXAGONs. As a Lockheed engineer for 25 years, I worked at SLC-4 or SLC-3, just a few miles east, testing, servicing, and launching these payloads. That day, I was huddled with about 100 other Air Force, booster, and satellite contractor personnel in the launch operations building (LOB) preparing to launch the 20^th and last HEXAGON (the first of which was launched in 1971). The countdown had started the previous day and was progressing smoothly. In the final hours the complex had been cleared of all nonessential personnel, and blast doors to both the outside and the cable tunnels leading to each pad were closed and sealed. The LOB is a mere 500 yards from the pad, but was built of concrete reinforced with steel. Air conditioning systems were switched to recirculate mode and final satellite and booster checks completed. In the final minutes, range clearance was granted, all flight systems switched to internal power, and final “go”s received from contractors and the Air Force. The Titan entered automatic launch sequence. At zero, the Titan engines started, then the solid rocket motors ignited. Liftoff! Umbilicals out! As the launch vehicle clears the service tower, everyone in the control room stands up as if to see better at an athletic event. At 500 yards away, you see it, hear it, and feel it.

Less than 10 seconds after liftoff, at an altitude of 700 feet, a massive fireball blossomed. We heard what can only be described as bombs bursting. The solid rocket motors’ propellant used a rubber compound as a binder, and as they broke up, fiery chunks, some the size of Volkswagens, rained down on the complex.

The power sub-station to the complex was wiped out—we were left blind and in the dark. Communication lines were also severed, so we lost touch with the outside world. There was only quiet talking, listening and waiting. There was much apprehension on the outside about our safety. After a couple of hours someone made contact via two-way radio, but it wasn’t until four hours later that firefighters were able to gain access to the complex and open the doors to the LOB.

The scene resembled a moonscape. The fires had mostly burned themselves out except for the smoldering brush. A layer of fine gray ash covered everything. The service towers on both pads were badly burned, damaging cabling, piping, and lighting. Anything that could melt, did. The two engineering buildings on the complex were unusable.

It was determined that a burn through a seal on the side of one of the solid rocket motors caused the accident, similar to what happened to the shuttle Challenger. After over a year of repair and rehab, at a cost of over $100,000,000, the complex was finally reactivated. In 1991, as I was getting ready to retire, Lockheed and Martin were in the midst of a merger. The east pad was undergoing another major modification to fly the even larger Titan 4, and as part of that modification, all final launch operations were to be controlled from a remote location. No longer would anyone be within miles of the complex at launch.

SLC-4E went on to launch Titan 4s until 2005 when the complex was deactivated.

The Soyuz ST-B awaiting its October 20 launch from the European Spaceport in French Guiana. Credit: ESA - S. Corvaja, 2011

This Thursday morning (Update: Launch was postponed to Friday due to a fueling problem) when a Soyuz rocket lifts off from French Guiana, it will mark a couple of important milestones: the first Soyuz to launch outside of Russia or Kazakhstan in the rocket’s 44-year history, and the first step in assembling Europe’s new Galileo satellite navigation system.

The French first built this launch facility near Kourou in 1964. The European Space Agency started funding the spaceport when the agency was created in 1974, and now uses the prime location — just five degrees north of the equator — for launching geostationary satellites. In 2003, the spaceport began construction of a launch site for the newest model of the Russian vehicle, a version of the Soyuz-2 called the Soyuz ST. Construction was completed in 2008 and, though not planned at this time, the pad can be adapted for human-rated Soyuz launchers, of the kind used to send cosmonauts and astronauts to the space station.

The three-stage Soyuz ST-B was lifted into vertical position on the launchpad last Friday, while the Arianespace team — which runs launch operations in French Guiana — went through full dress rehearsals to prepare for the launch tomorrow. You can see a slideshow of the launch preparations here.

The vehicle carries two Galileo In-Orbit Validation satellites, the first in Europe’s planned navigation system. These two testbed satellites will eventually be joined by about 30 fully operational spacecraft; the ESA and the European Union hope the system will be fully functional by 2014. Galileo is built to be even more accurate than the U.S. GPS (Global Positioning System), and will be freely available to civilians, giving European nations their own independent system.

You can watch the launch online at Arianespace’s good-looking new website that went live earlier this week.

Did you want to send that regular or express? Delivering mail by Regulus cruise missile. Courtesy National Postal Museum.

Quick: What’s the strangest way to deliver mail that you can think of? By mule? On foot? By ship? By airplane? How about by missile? That’s right. More than one person thought delivering packages by rocket was an excellent idea.

Our neighbor, the National Postal Museum, notes that Austria and Germany were the first countries to try sending mail by rocket. The British Postal Museum & Archive—possibly not wanting to be left out—says that German inventor Gerhard Zucker launched his rocket mail in England in 1934. “The rocket, loaded with 4,800 letters, was launched from Scarp Island to Hushinish Point, on the Isle of Harris…. However, instead of shooting up and over the Sound of Scarp, there was a flash, a dull explosion and a cloud of smoke. The scorched letters fell like confetti onto the beach.”

A "rocketgram" from Sikkim, dated March 23, 1935. From the collection of Mohamed Nasr, from philatel2.com.

In 1935, Stephen Hector Taylor-Smith of Sikkim (a British Protectorate in the  Himalayas between Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan) decided to deliver the mail using rockets from the Oriental Fireworks Company of Calcutta. (His lifelong interest in rocketry started with the airborne transportation of lizards over the St. Patrick’s School swimming pool.) In the name of science, Taylor-Smith fired a rooster and hen (named Adam and Eve) across the Damoodar River on June 29, 1935.

The Postal Museum is careful to note that “rocket enthusiasts” (not the Post Office Department) sent mail hurtling from Texas to Mexico (about 4,000 feet) in 1936.

But things really took off in 1958, when a U.S. naval officer casually tossed a letter into a Regulus II missile to be fired from the USS Greyback. The United States’ “first official missile mail” flight took place 52 years ago this month, when Postmaster Summerfield decided to cram 3,000 letters into a guided Regulus 1 missile from the submarine USS Barbero. (The missile was sent from the submarine to the Naval Auxiliary Air Station at Mayport, Florida.)

Summerfield was an enthusiastic fellow who believed that “Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles.”

Regulus mail box. Courtesy National Postal Museum.

Not everyone felt the love. As the Postal Museum’s Web site notes, Summerfield’s successor, J. Edward Day, terminated the program. “We are not using ICBM’s to carry mail,” he stated. “Our predecessors in the Department actually shot some mail up in a missile here in Florida a few years ago. But the press releases about this incident moved much faster than the missile mail. I understand that the letters took eight days to get to their destination.”

Twice in the last two years I’ve made the long drive from my home in ex-urban Washington D.C., hoping to finally see an orbital launch from this quaint and historic launch site on Virginia’s eastern shore.

Twice I’ve come away empty-handed.

It happened for the second time Tuesday night, when the launch team at Wallops had to scrub the planned liftoff of a Minotaur rocket with the Defense Department ORS-1 satellite onboard, due to rainy weather. I couldn’t stay another day, so I missed last night’s launch, which went off (of course) without a hitch:

That should have been me cheering.