 Magnificent men in their flying machines. They go up to the up-up, they go down to the up-down. They encounter all the ladies and steal the scene. Well, they're up to the up-up, and they're down to the up-down. Up, down, lying around, looking on the roof and defying the ground. They're all rightfully tingles. Magnificent men in their flying machines. They can fly upside down with their feet in the air. This is the Air Force's largest aeroballistic range, located at AFSC's Arnold Engineering Development Center. The launcher can use interchangeable barrels to fire projectiles down the 1,000-foot range at speeds up to 13,000 miles per hour. This blast chamber contains the test environment. An explosive charge forces a piston to compress hydrogen gas rupturing a diaphragm behind the test article. The expanding gas drives the test article through the test section on four guide rails. A new feature is a 500-foot recovery compression tube outside the range, which stops the article without damage. At the launcher section, a test projectile is readied for firing. The material to be tested is mounted on the tip of the carrier. The tube on which the test article is mounted contains the diaphragm. The launcher section is the breach of a modified 18-inch naval rifle. This lead-weighted polyethylene piston weighs from 100 to 150 pounds. Driven by a charge of standard gunpowder, the piston compresses the hydrogen gas. The combined weight of the piston and the charge of standard gunpowder determines the speed of the projectile through the blast chamber's test section. Inside the range, air pressure can be varied to simulate altitude from sea level to more than 300,000 feet. The photographs are made with a 20 billionths of a second burst of laser light as the projectile passes through rain, dust clouds, or other environments. Before the addition of the recovery compression tube, projectiles were photographed in free flight. Ultra slow-motion films such as this record events in the test section. The range can be operated with or without the guide rails. With the recovery feature, engineers now have the photos and the projectile intact for post-test examination. After a test, a guide rail is removed and the projectile recovered. The mechanical problems of stopping a projectile intact are something like stopping a small car going 60 miles per hour in an eighth of an inch without scratching the paint. Some projectiles have been launched up to three times in the first test program sponsored by AFSC's Space and Missile Systems Organization. This test range is a valuable tool in ballistic missile research. Safe delivery of munitions by modern military aircraft is a potential problem area. As speeds increase in the next generation of aircraft, there is a greater need for free flight tests of both aircraft and munitions. At AFSC's Arnold Engineering Development Center, the four-foot transonic wind tunnel is one of our nation's most specialized facilities for studying these new aircraft and the munitions they deliver. Wind tunnel studies reduce both cost and risk in weapon system development. During its first ten years of operation, the four-foot transonic wind tunnel was used to study hundreds of aircraft payload combinations in model form. Information gathered answers questions such as, how will the aircraft behave with various combinations of stores or payloads? When released, how will both payload and aircraft react? A computerized system senses the forces involved to predict the payload's path after release. The computer processes the data gathered and controls the support system. It can present selected data on a display in the control room as engineers observe the test on closed circuit TV. Studies in the four-foot transonic wind tunnel have saved many millions of dollars, 14 million in the A7 program alone. As the cost of new weapon systems increases, the savings to the taxpayers of our nation could be greater in the next decade than in the last. The basic pea shooter consists of a launch tube and a pea, or projectile. The projectile is loaded and fired by compressed gas, in this case a puff of air. Essentially, the same technology was used in support of the MX missile program. Here at the Navy's surface launch test complex operated by Westinghouse Marine Division. This test used a gas generator to eject a concrete and steel dummy missile from a tube tilted to 45 degrees. The purpose was to study gas generator ejection dynamics, analytical methods and assumptions, and other phenomena. The data gathered will be used in connection with the MX trench basing concept. The scale model MX test vehicle is 26 feet long and weighs 36,000 pounds. 18 support pads cast of polyurethane support the missile in the tube. A launch seal made of castable urethane as proposed for the MX missile prevents gas blowing by the test vehicle. The gas generator made by a fire call has the same case enclosure used in the advanced development program for the MX launch tube or canister. The propellant also is the same as that proposed for the MX canister. Both the test vehicle and launch tube were instrumented to obtain the desired data. In preparation for loading a compressor band was used to flatten the launch seal for loading. As the test vehicle was lowered a measurement of launch seal and pad friction was taken. The donut shaped recovery buoy used only for the test was the last to go in. About an hour before launch the two gas generators were installed and initiators and firing cables connected. The launcher tube was then tilted to 45 degrees. One of the proposed launch angles for the MX and the countdown began for ejection from the tube and water recovery. In this slow motion film the vehicle is emerging from the tube about 20 times slower than real time. In real time it looked like this. The test was conducted by AFSC's space and missile systems organization. During its 10 minutes in the water all instrumentation compartments remained watertight. All nine pads on the down rain side were damaged upon impact with the water. There was no pad damage however from the launcher tube or from the hot gas. There was minor abrasion of the launch seals and some minor gas leakage. Early test results revealed performance as expected. Vehicle exit speed was about 80 feet per second and the rate of pitch about 7 degrees. A second gas generator test has since completed the first phase of the MX T-shooter test program. Another step in development of the next generation of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles.