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About 60 pioneers in the airspace of Vandenberg Air Base returned Friday to the base launch complex to mark the six decades of a missile flight. The Douglas Aircraft Co. former employee group played a key role in launching the first Vandenberg rockets and missiles.
Since 1998, Dick Parker, a 12-year-old employee of Douglas Aircraft, who will become McDonnell Douglas before merging with Boeing, has remained active by holding regular meetings for his former colleagues. But Friday's meeting, Parker's seventh place at the helm, will probably be the last.
On September 15, almost 60 years after the launch of the first Thor missile, the precursor of the Delta rocket family, the latest Delta II rocket will be flying over Lompoc with NASA's ICESat-2 satellite. 2) Perched at its end.
"Delta has continued through the years … as grandson of the original [Thor] vehicle, "said Parker, who worked at Vandenberg at the height of the Thor missile program." I did not know that [the Delta vehicles] would last as long. "
Built by Douglas in 1958 and rebuilt again in 1963, the aerospace activity of Space Launch Complex-10 ended in 1980 with the launch of a Thor booster. Six years later, the US National Park Service designated the site as a national historic site – the only site at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
"This site is the zero or the DNA thread with regards to Vandenberg's legacy," said Jay Pritchard, director of the Vandenberg Space and Technology Center. Composed of a bunker and two launch platforms, the site and its facilities have undergone extensive restoration and preservation in order to maintain the history of the first missile programs of the base. According to Pritchard, Launch Complex 10 is the only complete and fully restored launch facility for Thor missiles around the world.
The first launch of Vandenberg Air Base, shown in the Lompoc Record of 18 December 1958, was a Thor missile. The Thor became the Delta rocket, whose last flight is scheduled for September 15.
"I consider it's an honor to welcome the people who created this story," he said, adding that it was "a logical choice" to bring the band back to the handling and examination of the original material.
"They came from a time when they did not have the current technology," Pritchard said. "They were solution-oriented people – it's a lesson we could all take to heart."
Joe Cirone, a 50-year-old Douglas resident, and John Melatti, a 50-year-old Douglas employee, chatted next to the nose cone that clung to a three-ring black binder covering the nuclear payload of A Thor missile. The third engineer assigned to the program, Cirone and his team, were tasked with installing and testing the tactical launch equipment for the missile.
The work done by his team has been instrumental in the program's overseas deployment. With an effective range of 1,750 miles, 60 missiles built during the life of the program were deployed at 20 sites in the UK as a means of nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union.
Photo of the December 18, 1958 edition of the Lompoc record shows that Vandenberg's AFB is preparing for a rocket launch.
"The guys who worked on this pad have proven themselves," he said. "They did not realize, I do not think, but they were the precursors who kept the world away from the cold war."
A graduate of Cal Poly, Darrell Cummings joined the Thor program in 1961 before traveling to Cape Canaveral, Florida, to manage the launch operations of Space Launch Complex 17 at the base.
"All my life has been around that," recalled Cummings, examining a restored booster exposed on the site. "It's the people, that's what made the program, they spent a lot of time – we worked hard, worked long hours and went through hard times, but we all survived and that's what we did. is good that we are here. "
Mathew Burciaga covers education in Santa Maria and the surrounding area for the newspapers of Lee's Central Coast. Follow him on Twitter @math_burciaga
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