Cold-War Missile Launches Military Satellite 91
Velcroman1 writes "At 11:49 a.m. EDT, a Minotaur IV+ rocket — essentially a decommissioned Peacekeeper missile built decades ago during the Cold War — launched the TacSat-4 satellite into orbit. Most troops today carry PRC-117 radios for communication, devices that rely on UHF transmissions. They relay calls and data back to a base station that's brought in and fixed in place, either set up on a hillside locally or carried overhead in a nearby plane. The TacSat-4 (or tactical microsatellite) lets the hundreds of thousands of military handheld radios currently in use communicate directly with an antenna orbiting in the most convenient spot imaginable: all that space overhead. 'If you're a mobile force, that requires a mobile infrastructure, the best place to put that infrastructure is in space,' said Dr. Larry Schuette, director of innovation for the Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR)."
Besides... (Score:5, Informative)
... we've been doing this for years. Converting USAF ICBM's into non-warhead launch vehicles isn't exactly a new practice. We've been doing this since the late 50's. A lot of early NASA launches were on ex-USAF Atlas missiles. The earlier Minoaturs were based on decommissioned Minuteman II's. Now it's the Peacekeeper's turn. One day, Minuteman III's will be retired to launch duty too. It just makes sense to do so. I remember Barbara Streisand giving a speech back in the 80's, about how buying ICBMs was wasteful because "they'd never be used". Shows what she knew. We were sending up a lot of converted Titan missiles as launch platforms during that period. So I don't know why this is news. Using these converted missiles has been a standard (and economical) practice for a long, long time now.
Re:Is is so new? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, and basically ever since.
The Soviet workhorse Soyuz is still directly descended from the world's first ICBM, the R-7, and the Proton is derived from a 100Mt ICBM design (though it was never produced as such).
The US Titan and Atlas launchers initially served as ICBMs under the same names, and the Delta family is derived from the Thor, the first US ICBM.
And the Chinese Long March 1 is derived from the Dongfeng 4, China's first ICBM, while the Long March 2-4 are derived from the successor Dongfeng 5.
Basically, the only entities who don't use a modified ICBM are the ones who don't have any; those who have been in space several decades (US and Russia) have or are developing dedicated launchers, since the requirements really don't match precisely, but the old designs are still in wide use.