260" SRM - as an ICBM

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Yellow Palace

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Whilst looking for information on studies for 156" solid rockets applied to ICBMs, I came across this presentation on ATK's large motors. Buried in there is the notion of an ICBM using a 260" solid rocket motor for the first stage of an ICBM - no mention of what the second stage is, other than that it's solid. What really stands out is the throw weight of 110,000 pounds to 8,000 miles. :eek:
 

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RLBH - Great find I am hugely interested in US heavy ICBM programs - solid propellant - (Titan II was liquid of course) and why none were ever built let alone deployed. I have been looking for anything on the WS-120A and what configuration it might have been in but much of the information says, to paraphrase, no specific configurations were ever studied it was just going to be a "large solid fueled heavy ICBM carrying up to 20 RV's".

Please continue your search.
 
As far as 'sensible' heavy ICBMs are concerned, the only information I've found so far is the following:
Developed under a separate Golden Arrow investigation for a new hardened and dispersed missile, ICBM-X had a massive 156-inch diameter (Minuteman I was sixty-six inches at its widest), an unspecified number of stages, a CEP of .16 to .20 nautical miles, thixotropic propellants, a gross weight of 1,100,000 pounds, and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs). Given a payload capacity of 24,000 pounds, this meant that it could have carried twenty or more MIRVs, a staggering number. Aerospace believed that it could not provide accurate cost figures for the superhardened ICBM-X weapon system, but construction efforts alone qualified the proposal as monumental architecture and made other options look relatively cheap
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This is from a dissertation 'Echoes that Never Were: American Mobile Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, 1956-1983' by Steven Pomeroy and referenced in there to a document seemingly held at the Air Force Historical Research Agency, 'ICBM-X Missile System 156, Solid Propellant Configuration Thixotropic Propellant Configuration, December 16, 1964' from the Golden Arrow Technical Panel Systems Descriptions, Volume II.
 
RLBH said:
As far as 'sensible' heavy ICBMs are concerned, the only information I've found so far is the following:
Developed under a separate Golden Arrow investigation for a new hardened and dispersed missile, ICBM-X had a massive 156-inch diameter (Minuteman I was sixty-six inches at its widest), an unspecified number of stages, a CEP of .16 to .20 nautical miles, thixotropic propellants, a gross weight of 1,100,000 pounds, and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs). Given a payload capacity of 24,000 pounds, this meant that it could have carried twenty or more MIRVs, a staggering number. Aerospace believed that it could not provide accurate cost figures for the superhardened ICBM-X weapon system, but construction efforts alone qualified the proposal as monumental architecture and made other options look relatively cheap
Click to expand...
This is from a dissertation 'Echoes that Never Were: American Mobile Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, 1956-1983' by Steven Pomeroy and referenced in there to a document seemingly held at the Air Force Historical Research Agency, 'ICBM-X Missile System 156, Solid Propellant Configuration Thixotropic Propellant Configuration, December 16, 1964' from the Golden Arrow Technical Panel Systems Descriptions, Volume II.
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Do you have any of the papers mentioned?
 
I recall a plan for something called TABAS - "Total Air Base Attack System" - which required an ICBM with a conventional warhead of this sort of size, witha lot of kinetic penetrators to mess up runways etc.

I wonder why they never built it?
 
Wembley said:
I recall a plan for something called TABAS - "Total Air Base Attack System" - which required an ICBM with a conventional warhead of this sort of size, witha lot of kinetic penetrators to mess up runways etc.

I wonder why they never built it?
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1: ICBMs are expensive
2: Because if you launch an ICBM, other people will see it and get twitchy. You might want to go muss up some dirt-world airport; some other power might decide it's a prelude to an all-out nuclear strike. Shazam! You just started World War V. Or WWIV, depending on your timeframe...
 
Another thing about TABAS; It's booster actually would have been a Saturn rocket (which apparently gained it the Army nickname of 'Incredible Hulk'). By the way, the 25-tonne kinetic energy penetrator payload was intended of being capable of taking out an entire airbase in one go.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Another thing about TABAS; It's booster actually would have been a Saturn rocket (which apparently gained it the Army nickname of 'Incredible Hulk'). By the way, the 25-tonne kinetic energy penetrator payload was intended of being capable of taking out an entire airbase in one go.
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Are we talking a Saturn I, Ib or V or one of the derivatives such as the Saturn V INT-20 (S-Ic + S-IVb)?
 
Graham1973 said:
Are we talking a Saturn I, Ib or V or one of the derivatives such as the Saturn V INT-20 (S-Ic + S-IVb)?
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It was implied to be a Saturn V derivative but I haven't been able to dig up anything more so far.
 
Yellow Palace said:
As far as 'sensible' heavy ICBMs are concerned, the only information I've found so far is the following:
Developed under a separate Golden Arrow investigation for a new hardened and dispersed missile, ICBM-X had a massive 156-inch diameter (Minuteman I was sixty-six inches at its widest), an unspecified number of stages, a CEP of .16 to .20 nautical miles, thixotropic propellants, a gross weight of 1,100,000 pounds, and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs). Given a payload capacity of 24,000 pounds, this meant that it could have carried twenty or more MIRVs, a staggering number. Aerospace believed that it could not provide accurate cost figures for the superhardened ICBM-X weapon system, but construction efforts alone qualified the proposal as monumental architecture and made other options look relatively cheap
Click to expand...
This is from a dissertation 'Echoes that Never Were: American Mobile Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, 1956-1983' by Steven Pomeroy and referenced in there to a document seemingly held at the Air Force Historical Research Agency, 'ICBM-X Missile System 156, Solid Propellant Configuration Thixotropic Propellant Configuration, December 16, 1964' from the Golden Arrow Technical Panel Systems Descriptions, Volume II.
Click to expand...

Based on what little information is available, it seems the 156-inch diameter ICBM-X would have been the slightly larger solid-fuel equivalent of Russia's R-36M / SS-18 Satan:
R-36M Family.PNG
SOURCE: Zak, A. (n.d.). R-36M Family. Russian Space Web. Retrieved from https://www.russianspaceweb.com/r36m_family.html

I assume that in addition to an unspecified number and yield of MIRVs, the ICBM-X could have been large enough to carry either a single 9-Mt W53 or 25-Mt W41 warhead.

In addition, I assume that the larger 260-inch diameter ICBM could have been large enough to carry a single 50-Mt to 100-Mt "Tsar Bomba" type warhead as was originally proposed in ICBM versions of the UR-500 and N-1 launch vehicles.
 
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Graham1973 said:
Are we talking a Saturn I, Ib or V or one of the derivatives such as the Saturn V INT-20 (S-Ic + S-IVb)?
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I suspect it would have used for a first-stage either the S-I Block I or S-I Block II (Minus the tail fins).
 
A monster ICBM might be capable of asteroid intercept---flying a powerful depressed trajectory and doing the energy dumping spiral that helps dodge ABMs to boot.

A handful for asteroids only..
 
Christopher Wang said:
I assume that in addition to an unspecified number and yield of MIRVs, the ICBM-X could have been large enough to carry either a single 9-Mt W53 or 25-Mt W41 warhead.
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Titan II, with a much lower throw weight, carried a W53, and was theoretically capable of carrying a W41 had that ever been developed, though to a reduced range.
 
publiusr said:
A monster ICBM might be capable of asteroid intercept---flying a powerful depressed trajectory and doing the energy dumping spiral that helps dodge ABMs to boot.

A handful for asteroids only..
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23,000lbs to escape velocity. You could throw a large number of really big nukes at an asteroid that way...

For example, probably 3x W41 warheads, since as warheads they wouldn't need parachutes or any laydown protective structure/crumple zone. Or 4x W53 warheads. In terms of energy, you want the W41s.
 
Scott Kenny said:
23,000lbs to escape velocity. You could throw a large number of really big nukes at an asteroid that way...

For example, probably 3x W41 warheads, since as warheads they wouldn't need parachutes or any laydown protective structure/crumple zone. Or 4x W53 warheads. In terms of energy, you want the W41s.
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You would need a spacecraft to carry the warheads to asteroid. The usual bus would not work, it is not designed for months/week travel in space.

Frankly, in terms of asteroid defense, a Falcon-9 fleet looks much more promising.
 
Aerojet had build a lot of infrastructures at the tip of Florida, for the 260-inch beast. They even dug a pit for testing there. I wonder whether they could have expended that into a few silos ?
The other practical place might have been Sacramento: very close from the production line.
 
Dilandu said:
They are more complex
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Not much more complex.

Dilandu said:
harder to get a large number of quick launches in a rush.
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I'm sure that Elon musk has plans for that given his publicly expressed concerns about an asteroid strike. Using the Falcon Heavy gives flexibility with either higher total delta-V for the same payload as a Falcon 9 or the same delta-V as a Falcon 9 but with a significantly heavier payload.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I dunno, you need the decoys and other penetration aids to get past the defenses these days. And possibly multiple warheads, too, for when someone intercepts one or two warheads.
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Minuteman andTrident have them and they are not "super heavy".
But why bother with an ICBM? There are other ways to deliver warheads.
 
NMaude said:
I'm sure that Elon musk has plans for that given his publicly expressed concerns about an asteroid strike. Using the Falcon Heavy gives flexibility with either higher total delta-V for the same payload as a Falcon 9 or the same delta-V as a Falcon 9 but with a significantly heavier payload.
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There is only one pad that can handle FH at this time. Maybe a second one at Vandenberg in a year or two.
Starship and warheads with integral stages is the answer. Multiple launch sites and quick turnaround.
 
Byeman said:
Meaningless if it doesn't have a spacecraft.
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You do know that a bus has RCS systems to allow the RBAs to separate and point at the right direction, right?

Not a lot of delta-V reserves inside so you'd be worried about getting the whole bus pretty precisely aimed at the Escape Burn.
 
Scott Kenny said:
You do know that a bus has RCS systems to allow the RBAs to separate and point at the right direction, right?

Not a lot of delta-V reserves inside so you'd be worried about getting the whole bus pretty precisely aimed at the Escape Burn.
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That is why I made my statement. Need more than standard ICBM bus.
 
I think there may be some confusion about what an asteroid diverting mission would entail.

It is not going to be a situation where you lob a missile at the asteroid minutes to hours before impact. (That would just convert a single rock into a giant shotgun blast.) At minimum, those warheads are going to be in transit for days, and quite possibly weeks or more. Hence the need for an actual spacecraft with the sort of navigation and steering systems used in space probes, not missile RVs.
 
Wow. I had no idea that my post would not only revive this thread which has been inactive for over 10 years, but would also turn it into a debate about killing asteroids.

Anyways, information about Thiokol's 260-inch ICBM could be found in US Bomber Projects #17 by Scott Lowther. I have been debating whether or not to purchase and download this book.
 
Christopher Wang said:
If I buy and download the book, am I allowed to upload pictures onto Secret Projects Forum? I'm not talking about uploading the entire book, just a page or two with information that could interest others.
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As with any other publication that is currently commercially available, the rule of thumb is that a *small* image can be posted, not a high-rez one.
 

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