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Amateur rocketry was an especially popular hobby in the late 1950s and early 1960s following the launch of Sputnik, as described in Homer Hickam's 1998 memoir Rocket Boys. One of the first organizations set up in the US to engage in amateur rocketry was the Pacific Rocket Society established in California in the early 1950s.
Launch operations are supervised and controlled from several control rooms known as firing rooms. The controllers are in control of pre-launch checks, the booster and spacecraft. Once the rocket has cleared the launch tower (usually within the first 10–15 seconds), is when control is switched over to the mission's relative mission control center.
Before significant events, the flight director will "go around the room", polling each controller for a go/no go decision, a procedure also known as a launch status check. If all factors are good, each controller calls for a "go" but if there is a problem requiring a hold or an abort, the call is "no go".
The first stage was controlled primarily by heritage hardware from existing Space Shuttle systems. A new electronics box, the Ascent Thrust Vector Controller (ATVC), acted as a translation tool to communicate commands from the Atlas-based flight computer to the solid rocket booster's thrust vector control system. The ATVC was the only new ...
The Starship-Super Heavy launch system — consisting of the lower-stage Super Heavy booster and upper-stage Starship rocket — promises to be the largest, most powerful, and first-ever fully ...
For Space Shuttle missions, in the firing room at the Launch Control Center, the NASA Test Director (NTD) performed this check via a voice communications link with other NASA personnel. The NTD was the leader of the shuttle test team responsible for directing and integrating all flight crew, orbiter, external tank/solid rocket booster and ...
North Korea has successfully developed a new ballistic control system for a multiple rocket launcher along with controllable shells, state media KCNA reported on Monday. The Academy of Defence ...
In August 2022, Northrop Grumman announced that it had contracted Firefly Aerospace to build the Antares rocket's new 300-series' first stage, which is similar to Firefly's in-development MLV launch vehicle, and features the same composite structures as well as seven Miranda engines producing 7,200 kN (1,600,000 lbf) of thrust — substantially ...