Country of Origin: United States of America
Dimensions:
Other: 2ft 7in. high x 7 1/2in. in diameter at base (78.74 x 19.05cm)
Materials:
Ablative materials, aluminum
Plexiglass and wood case
This is a cutaway of a flown nose cone that NASA's Langley Research Center used in the 1960s in one of its flight tests of various ablative (heat-shielding) materials. The four-stage Pacemaker vehicle launched it from Wallops Island. The nose cones generally flew to altitudes no greater than 100,000 feet and were recovered from the ocean downrange for analysis. The ablative material in the tip and forward section consists of phenolic nylon and foamed quartz, elastometric ablator, and teflon foam on top of cork in the cylindrical section. The manufacturer is not known. The Langley Research Center transferred the nose cone to the Museum in 1979.
Transferred from NASA, Langley Research Center.
