The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

small satellites into orbit for tasks such as surveillance. By
1989, the Iraqis were paying Bull and his company $5
million a year to redesign their field artillery, with the
promise of greater sums for Project Babylon—an
immense space cannon. The Iraqi space-launcher was to
have had a barrel 150 m long and been capable of firing
rocket-assisted projectiles the size of a phone booth into
orbit. However, it was never built, and Bull soon paid the
price for his dangerous liaisons. On March 22, 1990, he
was surprised at the door of his Brussels apartment and
2, 196
assassinated.
Bumper WAC
The world’s first two-stage liquid-propellant rocket: a 19m-long,
1.9-m-diameter marriage of the German V-2 (see
“V” weapons) and the liquid-propellant stage of the U.S.
Army’s WAC Corporal. The WAC Corporal remained
Bumper WAC The first launch of a Bumper WAC from Cape Canaveral on July 24, 1950. NASA
Bumper WAC 63
atop the nose of the V-2 for the first minute of flight.
Then the V-2 shut down, having provided a high-altitude
“bump” for the second stage. Eight Bumper WACs were
built. The first six were launched from the White Sands
Proving Ground starting on May 13, 1948, and the last
two from Cape Canaveral (the first flights from the
fledgling missile testing grounds). In 1949, the fifth flight
of a Bumper WAC reached an altitude of 390 km, a
record that stood until 1957. Although the missile was
tracked by radar for most of its flight, more than a year
passed before the smashed body section was located. The
program was officially concluded in July 1950.
The idea for the vehicle—capable of testing two-stage
technology, reaching higher altitudes than ever before,
and carrying out new upper atmosphere research—was
put forward in July 1946 by Holger Toftoy, then colonel,
chief of the Research and Development Division, Office
of the Chief of Ordnance. On June 20, 1947, the Bumper