Titan IV was a family of heavy-lift space launch vehicles developed by Martin Marietta and operated by the United States Air Force from 1989 to 2005. Launches were conducted from Space Launch Complex 40 and 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The Titan IV was the last of the Titan family of rockets, originally developed by the Glenn L. Martin Company in 1958. It was retired in 2005 due to their high cost of operation and concerns over its toxic hypergolic propellants, and replaced with the Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles under the EELV program. The final launch (B-30) from Cape Canaveral occurred on 29 April 2005, and the final launch from Vandenberg AFB occurred on 19 October 2005. Lockheed Martin Space Systems built the Titan IVs near Denver, Colorado, under contract to the US government.
Two Titan IV vehicles are on display, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio and the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.
Vehicle description The Titan IV was developed to provide assured capability to launch Space Shuttle–class payloads for the Air Force. The Titan IV could be launched with no third stage, the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), or the Centaur upper stage.
The Titan IV was made up of two large solid-fuel rocket boosters and a two-stage liquid-fueled core. The two storable liquid fuel core stages used Aerozine 50 fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. These propellants are hypergolic, igniting on contact, and are liquids at room temperature, so no tank insulation is needed. This allowed the launcher to be stored in a ready state for extended periods, but both propellants are extremely toxic.
The Titan IV could be launched from either coast: SLC-40 or 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station near Cocoa Beach, Florida and at SLC-4E, at Vandenberg Air Force Base launch sites 55 miles northwest of Santa Barbara California. Launches to polar orbits occurred from Vandenberg, with most other launches taking place at Cape Canaveral.
Titan IV-A Titan IV-A flew with steel-cased solid UA1207 rocket motors (SRMs) produced by Chemical Systems Division.
Titan IV-B The Titan IV-B evolved from the Titan III family and was similar to the Titan 34D.
While the launcher family had an extremely good reliability record in its first two decades, this changed in the 1980s with the loss of a Titan 34D in 1985 followed by the disastrous explosion of another in 1986 due to a SRM failure. Due to this, the Titan IV-B vehicle was intended to use the new composite-casing Upgraded Solid Rocket Motors. Due to development problems the first few Titan IV-B launches flew with the old-style UA1207 SRMs.
General characteristics Builder: Lockheed-Martin Astronautics Power Plant: Stage 0 consisted of two solid-rocket motors. Stage 1 used an LR87-AJ-11 liquid-propellant rocket engine. Stage 2 used the LR91-AJ-11 liquid-propellant engine. Optional upper stages included the Centaur and Inertial Upper Stage. Guidance System: A ring laser gyro guidance system manufactured by Honeywell. Thrust: Stage 0: Solid rocket motors provided 1.7 million pounds force (7.56 MN) per motor at liftoff. Stage 1: LR87-AJ-11 provided an average of 548,000 pounds force (2.44 MN) Stage 2: LR91-AJ-11 provided an average of 105,000 pounds force (467 kN). Optional Centaur (RL10A-3-3A) upper stage provided 33,100 pounds force (147 kN) and the Inertial Upper Stage provided up to 41,500 pounds force (185 kN). Length: Up to Lift Capability: Could carry up to into low Earth orbit up to into a geosynchronous orbit when launched from Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla.; and up to into a low Earth polar orbit when launched from Vandenberg AFB. into geosynchronous orbit: with Centaur upper stage with Inertial Upper Stage Payload fairing: Manufacturer: McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co Diameter: Length: 56, 66, 76, or 86 ft Mass: 11,000, 12,000, 13,000, or 14,000 lb Design: 3 sections, isogrid structure, Aluminum Maximum Takeoff Weight: Approximately 2.2 million pounds (1,000,000 kg) Cost: Approximately $250–350 million, depending on launch configuration. Date deployed: June 1989 Launch sites: Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., and Vandenberg AFB, Calif.
Upgrades Solid Rocket Motor Upgrade test stand In 1988–89, The Ralph M. Parsons Company designed and built a full-scale steel tower and deflector facility, which was used to test the Titan IV Solid Rocket Motor Upgrade (SRMU). The launch and the effect of the SRMU thrust force on the Titan IV vehicle were modeled. To evaluate the magnitude of the thrust force, the SRMU was connected to the steel tower through load measurement systems and launched in-place. It was the first full-scale test conducted to simulate the effects of the SRMU on the Titan IV vehicle.Chalhoub, Michel S., (1990) "Dynamic Analysis, Design, and Execution of a Full Scale SRMU Test Stand," Parsons Engineering Report No. 027-90
Proposed aluminum-lithium tanks In the early 1980s, General Dynamics developed a plan to assemble a lunar landing spacecraft in-orbit under the name Early Lunar Access. A Space Shuttle would lift a lunar lander into orbit and then a Titan IV rocket would launch with a modified Centaur G-Prime stage to rendezvous and dock. The plan required upgrading the Space Shuttle and Titan IV to use lighter aluminium-lithium alloy propellant tanks. The plan never came to fruition, but in the 1990s the Shuttle's External Tank was converted to aluminum-lithium tanks to rendezvous with the highly inclined orbit of the Russian Mir Space Station.
Type identification The IV-A (40nA) used boosters with steel casings, the IV-B (40nB) used boosters with composite casings (the SRMU).
Type 401 used a Centaur 3rd stage, type 402 used an IUS 3rd stage. The other 3 types (without 3rd stages) were 403, 404, and 405:
Type 403 featured no upper stage, for lower-mass payloads to higher orbits from Vandenberg. Type 404 featured no upper stage, for heavier payloads to low orbits, from Vandenberg. Type 405 featured no upper stage, for lower-mass payloads to higher-orbit from Cape Canaveral.
History
The Titan rocket family was established in October 1955 when the Air Force awarded the Glenn L. Martin Company (later Martin-Marietta, now part of Lockheed Martin) a contract to build an intercontinental ballistic missile (SM-68). The resulting Titan I was the nation's first two-stage ICBM and complemented the Atlas ICBM as the second underground, vertically stored, silo-based ICBM. Both stages of the Titan I used liquid oxygen and RP-1 as propellants.
A subsequent version of the Titan family, the Titan II, was a two-stage evolution of the Titan I, but was much more powerful and used different propellants. Designated as LGM-25C, the Titan II was the largest missile developed for the USAF at that time. The Titan II had newly developed engines which used Aerozine 50 and nitrogen tetroxide as fuel and oxidizer in a self-igniting, hypergolic propellant combination, allowing the Titan II to be stored underground ready to launch. Titan II was the first Titan vehicle to be used as a space launcher.
Development of the space launch only Titan III began in 1964, resulting in the Titan IIIA, eventually followed by the Titan IV-A and IV-B.
CELV By the mid-1980s the United States government worried that the Space Shuttle, designed to launch all American payloads and replace all unmanned rockets, would not be reliable enough for military and classified missions. In 1984 Under Secretary of the Air Force and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Pete Aldridge decided to purchase Complementary Expendable Launch Vehicles (CELV) for ten NRO payloads; the name came from the government's expectation that the rockets would "complement" the shuttle. Later renamed Titan IV,Day, Dwayne A. "The spooks and the turkey" The Space Review, 20 November 2006. the rocket would only carry three military payloads paired with Centaur stages and fly exclusively from LC-41 at Cape Canaveral. However, the Challenger accident in 1986 caused a renewed dependence on expendable launch systems, with the Titan IV program significantly expanded. At the time of its introduction, the Titan IV was the largest and most capable expendable launch vehicle used by the USAF.
The post-Challenger program added Titan IV versions with the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) or no upper stages, increased the number of flights, and converted LC-40 at the Cape for Titan IV launches. As of 1991, almost forty total Titan IV launches were scheduled and a new, improved SRM (solid rocket motor) casing using lightweight composite materials was introduced.
Program cost In 1990, the Titan IV Selected Acquisition Report estimated the total cost for the acquisition of 65 Titan IV vehicles over a period of 16 years to US$18.3 billion (inflation-adjusted US$ billion in ).
Cassini–Huygens launch In October 1997, a Titan IV-B rocket launched Cassini–Huygens, a pair of probes sent to Saturn. It was the only use of a Titan IV for a non-Department of Defense launch. Huygens landed on Titan on January 14, 2005. Cassini remained in orbit around Saturn. The Cassini Mission ended on September 15, 2017, when the spacecraft was sent into Saturn's atmosphere to burn up.
Retirement While an improvement over the shuttle, the Titan IV was expensive and unreliable. By the 1990s, there were also growing safety concerns over its toxic propellants. The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program resulted in the development of the Atlas V, Delta IV, and Delta IV Heavy launch vehicles, which replaced Titan IV and a number of other legacy launch systems. The new EELVs eliminated the use of hypergolic propellants, reduced costs, and were much more versatile than the legacy vehicles.
Surviving examples In 2014, the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, began a project to restore a Titan IV-B rocket. This effort was successful, with the display opening June 8, 2016. The only other surviving Titan IV components are at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver, Colorado which has two Titan Stage 1 engines, one Titan Stage 2 engine, and the interstage ‘skirt’ on outdoor display; and at the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, including the core stages and parts of the solid rocket motor assembly.
Launch history