Thor Rocket - How A 'Temporary Solution' Became America's Most Popular Launch Vehicle

Thor was one of the US's first launch vehicles, it launched the first spacecraft for NASA and hundreds of Spy Satellites for the US Military. It would become the Delta, and also the most launched rocket in US history, but it started out as a humble ballistic missile which didn't even have the range to hit targets in the USSR without being stationed on its doorstep.

A lot of this history is thanks to the work of Ed Kyle, sadly his website no longer exists but the wayback machine has the all important Thor/Delta History

Some of the video used here has been remastered by RetroSpaceHD - check out their channel for more historic movies.

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[bryanwilson]

Finally, something else that comes up when I google “Thor Rocket” that isn’t related to a buff blonde man and a raccoon.

[MynMy]

Going a little further down the rabbit hole - Telstar 1, which was launched on a Thor Delta (DM-19), was killed by the Starfish test which itself was launched by a Thor. The God of Thunder giveth, the God of Thunder take the away…

[JAMoore-zzki]

For those curious about the

It's referring to all the ways you can die in a video game called The Long Dark, by a company called Hinterland Studios.

Hinterland also sells the t-shirt. (Or at least they did, pre-pandemic. No idea what their status is now.)

[WWeronko]

Any decision of the Thor IRBM should include is sister rocket the Jupiter IRBM. The sibling rivalry between the two developments for which was two nearly identical rockets was legendary. The Jupiter team, under the direction of Wernher von Braun built the better more reliable rocket initially. The Jupiter program was more successful due to far better testing and preparations. The Jupiter missiles were also used in a series of suborbital biological test flights. The Saturn I and Saturn IB rockets were manufactured by using a single Jupiter propellant tank, in combination with eight Redstone rocket propellant tanks clustered around it, to form a powerful first stage launch vehicle. It could be said Saturn I and IB were derivatives of the Jupiter program. The Jupiter MRBM was also modified by adding upper stages, in the form of clustered Sergeant-derived rockets, to create a space launch vehicle called Juno II. It launched Pioneer 3, Pioneer 4, Explorer 7, Explorer 8, and Explorer 11. One of the two rocket programs would have been canceled due to their near identical performance and Thor having the significant higher failure rate probably would have been the canceled program. However, after the Soviet launches of Sputnik 1–2 in late 1957, US Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson announced that both Thor and Jupiter would go into service as his final act before leaving office. This was both out of fear of Soviet capabilities and also to avoid political repercussions from the workplace layoffs that would result at either Douglas or Chrysler if one of the two missiles were canceled. All very interesting rocket history.

[samsonsoturian]

There is nothing more permanent than temporary situations.

[Fred_Bender]

My father worked for Chrysler aerospace from 1958 through the end of Skylab . He started with NACA working at Langley AFB .He assisted with development of grooved runways for jets .Every time I drive on grooved pavement I am reminded of his contribution.I still have his old Chrysler hard hat, Skylab Medal and NACA pin.

[robertburns]

Thanks Scott, for putting this together. I worked on the Block5d DMSP Weather satellite program in 79-81. We launched the Thor from SLC 10 West at Vandenberg AFB. I was the upper stage console operator. One of 25 blue suit enlisted launch crew members I the AF, I had 3 stripes! My all time favorite job!

[cliffwhite]

My father, Col. RW Walton (Ret), was the launch coordinator of the first all military crew to put a satellite in orbit (wx sat for Russian air space SAC). The sat was on a Thor our to Vandenberg on March 17, 1965. I was 15 yo and had no clue of that compliment as it was classified. I have a photo of the Thor on the launch pad.

[jamiewilliams]

Nice that you mentioned Telstar. We at Goonhilly are celebrating 60 years since that first transatlantic communications test via satellite, which we received with our aerial 1(GHY1).

[roderickreilly]

A friend of mine, the late Dick Morrison, helped develop that original Thor in record time. Morrison was one of America's post WWII rocket pioneers.

[Papershields]

A couple years ago I was working right next to Goddard and a snowstorm was about to hit so everything was closed and there was nobody around. I went and got a sub on my lunch break and snuck around back into the Rocket garden behind the visitor’s center and ate a meatball sub using their entire stacked Thor Delta as a parasol. Good times. Cool looking rocket. 10 out of 10 would trespass again.

[matthewmartin]

Even after watching Scott for nearly 10 years, starting with KSP tutorials; I still want to fire up the game and play. Especially when he does videos on early US rockets like these. Scott, I credit you with my ever growing knowledge of orbital mechanics. You taught me WTH hyper-golic fuel is. And, so much more. I could go on and on. I think I speak for a majority of your viewers when I say that I appreciate all you do to help educate people on really complicated stuff.

[rcketplumber]

After that nuke launch failure, Johnston island became the world's only open-cast plutonium mine.

[glhx]

Thanks for this episode ! I spent the last 8 years of my USAF career stationed at Vandenberg AFB, and was able to explore all of those old Thor launch sites shown in your video. A surprising amount of the old Thor (And Atlas) launch infrastructure was still present when I left the base back in the mid 2000's. Some of the launch sites were re-purposed for other programs.

I did not know about Ground Guidance being used, that is new to me, but, I do know Atlas used that system, or, at at least some of the old Atlas systems did.

[dewayneblue]

Such unique looks on those stub-nosed Thor-DM18As, as well as the long 'lance' on the Thor-Able 2s. Definitely icons of the early Space Age.

[Carstuff]

This is one of many reasons I love this channel, thank you as always for the content!

[bhaskararaka]

Nothing more permanent than a “temporary solution”

[Tool-Meister]

Love Scott’s accent. Makes him sounding like he’s saying “Exploder VI”. Might be more accurate that way!

[MIflyer]

I was the last USAF Thor Program Manager. The last launch was in 1980 and we shut the program down in 1981 because the final Thor payload, DMSP Block 5D-2, had gotten larger and heavier and moved on to converted Atlas E ICBMs. The mandatory use of the Shuttle meant that no one was designing payloads capable of being launched by Thor, and although I often heard the claim that, "There are payloads out there for Thor but you are just not looking for them hard enough!" that was not just true. You would have thought there were homeless people wandering the streets with spacecraft under their arms, people who would have been healthy, happy and productive if they could have just found a rocket.
When we shut the program down we had four intact LV-2D boosters, basically the last of the SM-75's brought back from England, and five SLV-2A boosters. We also had an LV-2D fuel tank engine section and an SLV-2H fuel tank and engine section; the LOX tanks from those boosters had been used in ground tests to determine the vulnerability of ballistic missiles to lasers. After the loss of the Shuttle Challenger in 1986 the latest built engines from two of the SLV-2A were used for Delta boosters and the turbine wheels were removed from all of the other Thor MB-3 Block I and Block III engines in order to enable new RS-27 engines to be built for Delta boosters. It had been so long since we had built new MB-3 or RS-27 engines that the company that made the turbine wheels had gone out of business.

[RCAvhstape]

7:28 that Lockheed ad for the Agena stage is classic. You could do a whole video about the Agena, which was a real workhorse for America in the early days of spaceflight.