The Titan Rocket - From War Machine to Space Giant to Obsolescence

I was there for the Voyager 2 launch. It was a very sunny late Saturday morning. Being the weekend families of NASA workers and everybody else jammed the facility roads. Our tour bus got caught in the traffic jam, stopped 4 miles from the pad. Those solids burned so bright they looked like two suns, a stunning sight. Beautifully impressively spectacular! The sight of it is still frozen in my mind. Being an amateur astronomer it was especially meaningful to me. Now that it’s entered interstellar space and still phones home, I’m very happy to have experienced that historic moment. I went to Disney World the next day and by chance ended up in line s few people behind my toughest sister. The way the Titan Centaur launched was analogous to the Arianne 5. Great launch vehicle of the era. Voyager says it all. I had turned 26 a few weeks before Voyager left Earth. I’ll be 72 this summer.(😱). Long live both of us!

I worked for Martin 58 thru 64. At Prince street I built and tested ground support equipment for the Titan I and Titan II. I worked site activation at T1,T3, T4 and T6. I was a ground control field engineer on the Titan I and the electrical engineer on the propellant loading team for the Titan II. I've been in the hole with many fueled birds. Thanks for the memories.

It was James Burke (not Michael), host of the show Connections, where he timed the show's end sequence to the launch of the Titan rocket. Great moments in television.

A note about the Titan 1, many of the first stages that survived being scrapped became "Titan 2" rockets for museums. They would basically take two first stages and stack them, repaint them, and add a fake Gemini capsule to the top of it. For example, first stages SM-92 and SM-94 make the fake Titan 2 at the Cosmosphere in Kansas.

Fun fact, the movie "Star Trek: First Contact" filmed scenes at the Titan missle Museum in pima County Az.

Hey Scott - I manage what was the Titan Production facility, excited to share this video with the team! If you are ever in Denver look me up would love to have you come for a tour!

Thanks for mentioning the Clementine program in this video. I shared an office with one of the engineers at a small company that built infrared sensors for Clementine, and the whole company was very proud of being a part of the project. It was very gratifying to see the vehicle go to the Moon on such a short, ambitious development schedule and see there resulting imagery. My office mate was extremely relieved after the last part of the mission was cut short by a spacecraft failure and we learned that the problem was a bad ground command sequence.Our sensors that she had worked long hours on was not the reason the mission didn't quite finish!

Thanks Scott, my Dad worked his entire career at Martins and Martin Marrietta in their Quality Lab and was the director when he retired in 1990. Of course, he was involved in Gemini and made several trips to the Cape to solve issues with Titan II prior to launch. He was involved in 1000s of various NASA and Air Force space launches, satellites, and deep space probes. However, the two that he was most proud of, even above the Apollo Lunar landings, were the Voyagers. He was directly involved in building the nuclear power supplies for both crafts. At his funeral service, I was able to say, "his work has flown, 'where no man, has gone before.'" Thank you for listing the Voyagers as your personal favorites.

The Titan IVB was a fine looking and muscular rocket but beastly expensive. The Titan IVB launch was reported to cost $432 million in 1985 dollars. It is a very similar price for a space shuttle launch. With a LEO Payload 47,790 lb, Titan compared poorly to the Falcon 9 Block V with a payload to LEO 50,265 lb while SpaceX typically charging around $62 million of 2022 dollars. I would however have loved to seen the Titan launch both the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar and Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) as it was proposed.

i live in southern arizona and the titan II silo down here is one of my favorite museums. there's also a few silos around town that have been purchased and turned into residential properties. awesome rocket overall

I really want Scott to do a video series on all earth escaping space probes.

Plant to make the fuel for titan 2 was designed by 4 engineers, one of which was my dad.

Very Cool! In 1959 when my parents moved our family from Ohio to Tucson, Az when I was 7. I remember friends telling me that there were 'Rockets' in the area against 'The Russians' which were armed with 'ABombs'. I didn't know what ABombs were. These were Titan 2s. I remember a fuel or oxydizer leak in a Titan 2 silo, I think in the '80s, and you could see the color reddish brown. Now, as a Retired Mechanical Engr, here's a 'Fun Fact'; Electrical power plants in the US, at least, add something like 10% strength hydrazine in the water and steam to absorb any corrosive Oxygen dissolved in the water/steam. Hydrazine, even at such a low concentration, will literally 'suck' oxygen from the atmosphere, and cause a rag to burst into flame quite quickly. Hydrazine LOVES Oxygen, and I'm sure Loves Di-Nitrogen-Tetroxide EVEN MORE! :)

I remember the last Titan IV launch from Vandenberg. I lived in Lompoc then, and I stood on the front lawn and watched the launch while listening to my kitchen windows rattling from the sound of the exhaust.

It is absolutely nuts to me just how many rockets used the AJ10 engine. Apollo, Titan, Delta, and even Artemis all used (and continue to use) them.

Just saw the Titan at the Air Force Museum at Dayton. I was in awe standing next to it, had to be an amazing time to be an aerospace engineer during those years.

Probably already said: Not Michael Burk, but James Burk. Side note, Mr Burk was also the BBC reporter for the Apollo program.

The Titan IV is hands down the best looking rocket ever flown.

I worked on the Titan II SLV and Titan IVB. Magnificent rockets.They will always have a fond place in my heart.

My grandpa worked on the gas generators for the Titan IVB SRBs. He has told me that at the first Titan IVB launch, his boss said, "Don, you had better not mess this up." And that is how my grandpa sent something to Saturn.