Wac Corporal

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The fifth WAC Corporal round with project director Frank Malina.
The fifth WAC Corporal round with project director Frank Malina.

The WAC Corporal was the first sounding rocket developed in the United States.[1] Begun as a spinoff of the Corporal program, the WAC was a "little sister" to the larger Corporal. It was designed and built jointly by the Douglas Aircraft Company and the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory.[2] In a NASA oral history group interview, William Hayward Pickering indicated the WAC "was named after the Women's Army Corps".[3] In the same group interview, Dick Jones suggested it might have been an acronym for "Without Attitude Control" (the rocket lacked a guidance system and relied on three fins for stability).

The WAC Corporal was a liquid-fuel rocket, with fuming nitric acid and aniline used as oxidizers and furfuryl alcohol as fuel. For the first few seconds of launch, the Wac used a cluster of solid fuel Tiny Tim engines.

The first WAC Corporal dummy round was launched on September 16, 1945 from White Sands Missile Range near Las Cruces, New Mexico. After a White Sands V-2 rocket had reached 69 miles on May 10,[1] a White Sands WAC Corporal reached 80 km (49 mi) on May 22, 1946 -- the first U.S.-designed rocket to reach the edge of space (under the U.S. definition of space at the time). On February 24, 1949, a Bumper WAC Corporal at White Sands accelerated to 5150 mph to became the first flight of more than five times the speed of sound.[4]

A few WAC Corporals survive in museums, including one at the National Air and Space Museum and another in the visitors' center of White Sands Missile Range.


[edit] Specifications

[edit] Overall dimensions

  • Diameter: 1 ft (0.30 m)
  • Total length: 24 ft (7.34 m)

[edit] Tiny Tim booster

  • Loaded weight: 759.2 lb (344.3 kg)
  • Propellant weight: 148.7 lb (67.4 kg)
  • Thrust: 50,000 lbf (220,000 N])
  • Duration: 0.6 s
  • Impulse: 30,000 lbf·s (130,000 N·s)

[edit] Wac Corporal sustainer

  • Empty weight: 296.7 lb (134.6 kg)
  • Loaded weight: 690.7 lb (313.3 kg)
  • Thrust: 1,500 lbf (6,700 N)
  • Duration: 47 s
  • Impulse: 67,000 lbf·s (300,000 N·s)

[edit] References

  1. ^ NASA Sounding Rockets, 1958-1968: A Historical Summary, Ch. 2. NASA (1971).
  2. ^ WAC Corporal Missile. Boeing.
  3. ^ Bumper 8 - 50th Anniversary of the First Launch on Cape Canaveral - Group Oral History. NASA.
  4. ^ Canan, James W (November 2007), “A brief history of hypersonics”, Aerospace America: p30 
  • Alway, Peter, Rockets of the World, Third Edition. Saturn Press: Ann Arbor, 1999.

[edit] External links

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