Little Joe was a booster rocket used in the United States space flight program, as well as the name of a subprogram within Project Mercury comprising test flights using that booster.
When NASA went shopping for a booster to use in the Mercury program they found that the Atlas rockets would cost approximately $2.5 million each and that even the Redstone would cost about $1 million per launching. The managers of the Mercury program recognized from ...
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Little Joe was a booster rocket used in the United States space flight program, as well as the name of a subprogram within Project Mercury comprising test flights using that booster.
When NASA went shopping for a booster to use in the Mercury program they found that the Atlas rockets would cost approximately $2.5 million each and that even the Redstone would cost about $1 million per launching. The managers of the Mercury program recognized from the start that the numerous early test flights would have to be accomplished by a far less expensive booster system. As it turned out, the Little Joe rocket NASA designed, cost about $200,000 each.
In January 1958 Max Faget and Paul Purser had worked out in considerable detail on paper how to cluster four of the solid-fuel Sergeant rockets, in standard use at the Wallops Flight Facility, to boost a manned nose cone above the stratosphere. Faget's short-lived "High Ride" proposal had suffered from comparisons with "Project Adam" at that time,...
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