PROJECT REACH

Charles DeVore

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	A new altitude record for an American-bult, single-stage rocket was set on May 11, 1950, when the Navy’s Viking rocket was fired in the mid-Pacific from the deck of the USS NORTON SOUND, a seaplane tender converted by the Navy into an experimental guided-missile ship. Seventy-four seconds after it rose from the ship, the 5-ton rocket, propelled by its liquid oxygen and alcohol powered engine, had reached a height of 26 miles, with a velocity of 3,500 mph. Then, its fuel exhausted, it coasted to an estimated altitude of 106.4 miles, higher than the previous record for American missiles of 78 miles set by a smaller rocket, the Navy’s Aerobee, and a close second to the 114 miles reached by the bulkier German V-2 in 1946.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 2, Number 8
Pages:	275 - 281
Cite this article:	DeVore, Charles, "PROJECT REACH", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 2, No. 8, 1950, pp. 275-281.
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