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The Diamant launches

Diamant achieved orbiting at first try on 26 November 1965. The payload was a simple technological capsule christened Astérix. After this launch the three remaining rockets were used to orbit geodetic satellites (D1 program) between February 1966 and February 1967. All launches were carried out from the CIEES (Centre InterArmées d'Essais d'Engins Spéciaux, inter-army special vehicles test center) in Sahara which was closed in July 1967.

in sahara.....

The Diamant A first stage was a 10 m high, 1.4 m diameter Emeraude rocket, weighing 14.7 tons. Its LRBA Vexin engine with steerable-nozzle burned during 93 seconds and delivered 269 kN thrust at sea level (304 kN in vacuum). The second stage was Topaze: 4.7 m high, 80 cm in diameter, weighing 2.9 tons. It provided a mean thrust of 156 kN during 44 seconds. The P064 third stage was 2 m high and 65 cm diameter. It weighed 709 kg including 640 kg Isolane (thus its name). It burned for 45 seconds providing 27 to 53 kN thrust. With its fairing Diamant was 18.95 m high and weighed 18.4 tons.

pretty heavy duty...

source

maybe from one of theese?

Geez - you guys are too fast: I break away to do some research and come back to another dozen posts! Oh well, here it is anyway;

Some public, others maybe not; [apologies for any redundancies in the list];

For that time period (mid-sixties):

Heavy lift:

Soviet N-1 Heavy Lift vehicle: ~95 tons into low-earth orbit.

USAF; Lunex (experimental) Lunar One-off: ~ 67 tons to moon.

USA; SaturnV, of course: ~130 Ton payload.

Also (some dates approximate, payload weights not available on all):

Remember that HAARP used a 16-inch naval gun to loft projectiles to an incredible altitude of 112 miles, supposedly cancelled in 1967, though some speculate it just went completely sub-black as the Slingatron.

There’s some speculation that the USAF developed the “Blackstar syetem, designed to utilize a modified carrier-launched XB-70 supersonic bomber to reach orbital altitude. Details sketchy (payload capacity, etc.), though the program reached a crescendo in 1967.

USAF; October ’67: rocket-powered X-15-2A reaches 4,520mph. Maybe one experimental was carrying a ‘load’ to Sudan? Unknown payload capacity (not much – unless you sacrifice fuel/equipment).

USSR: supposedly, the secret samizdat underground press reported unusual “space vehicles” in the fall of 1967.

USSR: the Spiral 50-50 program peaked in 1967/1968 with some two-stage tests for manned orbital testing (and the typical spectacular Russian failures). Total Mass was ~125 tons.

US: Terrier-Sandhawk U.S. rocket, upper atmosphere geophysics. First launch in 1967.

US: LTTAT, Long-Tank Thrust Augmented Thor, fuel and oxygen tanks lengthened, Polar LEO 3000 lbs (1360 kg). Also known as DSV-2L. First launc1967/h 5/9.
USSR: Lots of Proton Booster activity in the 1967 time-frame. Big busts too.
US: TIMATION U.S. Navy, satellite, navigation. Time Navigation satellites, for navigation by the Navy. Followed the TRANSIT program and preceded the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS). TIMATION 3 was redesignated as NAVIGATION TECHNOLOGY SATELLITE (NTS-1). TIMATION 01, 1967 O35E, 1967/05/31, WTR, Thor Agena D, LEO.
Russia:TSELINA Russian satellite, Elint.First launch 1967/10/30.
Russia:: :TSIKLONRussian satellite, navigation. Launched at Plesetsk by a Kosmos into LEO. First launch 1967/05/15.
Russia: :TsyklonRussia/Ukraine, launch vehicle, LEO. (ЧИКЛОН, Cyclone), F-2 or SL-14 based upon the SS-9 Scarp ICBM. 3 Stage launch vehicle. Can be launched from Baikonur and Plesetsk. Built by NPO Yuzhnoye. Three names used, U.S. (e.g. SL-12), Sheldon Name (e.g. F-2), and USSR Name (e.g. Tsyklon). The Sheldon name designation is abbreviated for: F = F; 1 = single upper stage, 2 = additional small liquid third stage; r = reentry stage. .SL-11, ?, F-1-m. First launch 1967/10/27.
Could your object be an HEST stainless steel cylinder? It was used in 1967 to test soil samples from minuteman missile impact sites?


[edit on 11/29/2007 by Outrageo]

perhaps, some of this is what you need.. if not, at least you got a bit more info

The Europa rocket was an early expendable launch system of the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO), which was the precursor to the European Space Agency and its Ariane family of launchers. The programme was initiated by the UK and the first launch occurred in August 1967.

en.wikipedia.org...

nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov...

1967 Aug 8 - - 16:04 GMT. Nation: USSR. Launch Site: Baikonur . Launch Vehicle: R-36-O.

* Cosmos 171 Payload: Cosmos 171 [FOBS #7]. Mass: 5,000 kg. Class: Military. Type: FOBS. Spacecraft: FOBS. Perigee: 138 km. Apogee: 177 km. Inclination: 49.6 deg. Period: 87.6 min. COSPAR: 1967-077A.

Fractional Orbital Bombardment system test. Investigation of the upper atmosphere and outer space

www.friends-partners.org...
www.friends-partners.org...

Aug. 67

Aug. 1......... Lunar Orbiter 5
Aug. 7......... Discoverer 114
Aug. 8......... Kosmos 171
Aug. 9......... Kosmos 172
Aug. 16 ...... Titan-Samos
Aug. 23 ...... P3518/Dapp 3419
Aug. 24 ...... Kosmos 173
Aug. 31 ...... Kosmos 174

You guys are fast this is far as I got.

Well, at least our team knew exactly the right forum to ask the questions in to get the quickest and most detailed answers.

It makes a job for them easier when they have a "go to" home team like this to send to for reliable data.

S&E rocks!

It seems the paper said it fell in the Sudan on August 3 1967.

It seems the only thing we had going up in early August was The Lunar Orbiter 5 on Aug. 1 and the payload was Lunar orbiter E which was 857 lb. The paper says the object that crashed in the Sudan was 3 ton and made of soft metal like light aluminum. Well now it could have been anything we or the Soviet Union put up but I don't think we had anything nor did they that had this soft metal so hmmmmmmm

Sounds ufoish to me., you know that Roswell crap angain.

edit to add: It says,the object was cubed shaped weighing 3 ton it was made up of smaller cubes held together by a very durable material.

After reading that I think we must have gotten it because it sure does sound similiar to what we put around Spirit and Opportunity when it hit Mars doesn't it?

[edit on 29-11-2007 by observe50]

What gets me is the "cubes". I just can't think of a logical reason we or the Russians would put such things up in the first place. And really, even something as soft as aluminum would bend and crush if it weighed a half ton and fell off of a truck.

Besides, the article mentioned that it was hard to cut. So whatever it was may have looked like aluminum, but I doubt that is what it was.

I have heard better explanations than this already in the thread, but the first thing that came to my mind when I heard a cubic pack of metal blocks was killer satellites, like a lower-tech "brilliant pebbles".

If you weren't incredibly sophisticated technologically and you were looking for a way to take down things like missiles, putting big packs of shot into orbit that you could disperse at a high speed in the path of a missile might make it onto your list of ideas.

reply to post by The Vagabond


I can see how that idea would appeal to someone in 1967. I don't see the value to cubes over spheres, unless it was a matter of how many you could pack into a certain volume of space.

Still, if they were to be deployed in the atmosphere to destroy a missile, as a sort of kinetic defense weapon, I would thing cubes a bad choice due to the flight characteristics of a square.

One factor to consider is that of passive camaflauge or a shell game as it were. What if the cubes in question were designed to relect radar energy back and give off false readings? A decoy as it were. The opfor would not know what target to hit? Lots of anti satelite research going on in that era.

www.fas.org...

Stands to reason that countermeasures would be considered

If one cares to check that particular area of the Sudan (El Fashir aka Al Fashir) there was some mining and a small war going on about then. Still is. Sudan does mine some zinc and magnesium and aluminium. Zinc ingots are often quite small... so is pure mag. I am looking for some local smelter info from about that date. All are "soft" metals. I'm not aware that they are shipped in "silk-like" fabric or "fall from the sky" though... most low value ingots will have no smelter stamp.

Weren't brilliant pebbles made of something "not soft"? Like tungsten? I DO like the notion of "other" as opposed to human origins for this... there were photos and samples taken. I wrote two Sudanese news agencies that are considered "sort of not under government control" to see if some local perspective can be added to the effort.

The Corona declassified photos of the area show the USA as being in orbit over the general vicinty at the time. I imagine their opposites would too. I like Outrageo's idea on Blackstar. Surely there are "undocumented" launches by the Bears and Eagles too...

Much fun!

Vic



[edit on 29-11-2007 by V Kaminski]

I believe it was the US. On August the 26th the first of the Saturn V rockets rolled out to Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy space center. At that time the Saturn V had a max LEO payload of 118,000kg, and a Earth to lunar max of 47,000kg. Here are a few documents to prove that.

from a NASA history Doc.
history.nasa.gov...


Also from NASA facts online.
www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov...
The Saturn V is at the botom of the page.

And from wiki.
en.wikipedia.org...

Capacity
Payload to LEO 118,000 kg
Payload to
Lunar orbit 47,000 kg.

[edit on 29-11-2007 by Osyris]

reply to post by V Kaminski


As a kenetic kill vehicle, that would seem to make sense. I've looked around but could find no mention of the intended material. Aluminum does seem like a very counter-intuitive choice. On the other hand, I'm not an engineer- maybe 2 pounds of aluminum would do the trick, or perhaps there was some reason why a lower density was useful. I couldn't even give a guess worth reading on that.

I also suppose it is possible that choice of metal was dictated by a desired reaction with rocket propellant, but I'm only guessing wildly and I'm not so sure that BP could account for everything in this situation anyway.

reply to post by Crakeur


Based on the following, I will make a logical guess and say "Russia".

To get an idea of how great that progress is, consider that in 1957 the USSR's Sputnik 1 weighed only 83.6 kilograms, and on July 16, 1969, the U.S.'s Saturn V, the largest and most powerful operational rocket ever built, lofted Apollo 11, with a mass of 43,811 kilograms, to lunar orbit during the moon-landing mission. Today, the U.S. Space Transportation System routinely launches the shuttle orbiter, weighing more than 110,000 kilograms, to low Earth orbit. The orbiter flies like a spacecraft and lands like a glider.

www.aero.org...

No other launcher played so many roles in the Russian space program as did the UR-500 rocket, known today as Proton. Conceived at the dawn of space race as a "super-size" ICBM, the UR-500 became a major player in the race to the Moon in the mid-1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, the four-stage version of the launch vehicle launched Soviet planetary probes toward the Moon, Mars and Venus and allowed the Soviet Union to place satellites into geostationary orbit. At the same time, three-stage Protons launched all Soviet space stations, as well as heavy transport ships and modules to expand and resupply them in space. In the 1990s, the Proton became a workhorse of Russia's commercial launch business.

www.russianspaceweb.com...

Here's some more "discovery processing":

"Helicopter crash" with highly unusual circumstances, Sudan, August 1967.

This whole Arab launching hostilities with Israel via Sudan in August '67 keeps cropping up - even in conspiracy threads. Probably no connection - but who says the Israelis didn't lob some kind of metal cannister across the pond? Seems there was lots of activity in Sudan during August '67...

Of course, the Liberty incident (Israel hits US warship) was happening as the Sudan anomaly was being reported. Here's a weird "secret" pdf on "Cryptographic Holdings" aboard the USS liberty, 17 Aug 1967.

A search of CIA docs during the period 03 to 17 August 1967 yields mostly Vietnam-related stuff, but the archives of other agencies may be more fruitful - checking now.

You may have heard about the Shag Harbor UFO crash in 1967. Maybe the Sudan object and this Shaggadellic craft were rendezvousing?

Here's a NASA report about the flight characteristics of a space physics experiment regarding a sounding device - on the exact same day as the Sudan crash: 03 August 1967.

Most of you know that NASA was experimenting with a "controlled crash" methodology in the mid-60's as one way of exploring the moon. So were the Russians. Could the Sudan object be the result of some such "flight test" of a controlled impact mission?

The Soyuz 7K-S Program by the Russians was in full throttle in August of 1967, and their gangly modules (or a payload dummy) may have, ahem, experienced orbit degradation...

The US Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter programs were buzzing in summer and fall of 1967 as well. It's possible we haven't been made aware of every little mishap that occurred during this time - remember both the US and the Russians were fiercely competitive and protective of their programs during this time.

p.s. to NGC: the metal could have been an Aluminum alloy (hybridized with hardeners) or Titanium, much tougher, harder, and fatigue-resistant than aluminum...

I`m having fun with this !

I love hard to find answer quizzes Thanks Crakeur !

So far I found this :

-->August 1, 1967 � Launch of Lunar Orbiter-5; photo reconnaissance of Moon. (USA)

-->Aug 4, 1967 Europa 1

third stage mockup Woomera .The programme was initiated by the UK and the first launch occurred in August 1967.

--->Title : HONEST JOHN MISSILE NO. 2683, ROUND NO. 555 APL (21 AUGUST 1967) AND HONEST JOHN MISSILE NO. 2736, ROUND NO. 556 APL (21 AUGUST 1967). Descriptive Note : Meteorological data rept.

--->100%
Igniter performance in solid-propellant rocket motors.

ADAMS, D. M. /THIOKOL CHEMICAL CORP., ENGINEERING RESEARCH SECTION, HUNTSVILLE, ALA./.
JOURNAL OF SPACECRAFT AND ROCKETS 1967
0022-4650 vol.4 no.8 (1024-1029)

--->Measurements of the solar X-ray spectrum between 3 Å and 15 Å are reported. They were made with two slitless Bragg crystal spectrometers flown on a Sun-pointed Skylark rocket on 8 August, 1967.

That`s it ! Good luck to you and Springer in Roswell in finding precious metals or artifacts ( 1947 fiber optics, circuit boards, nuclear anti gravity propulsion systems, anything we use today that was reversed engineered) that may for once ßring truth to this world of lies and wrong belief system.

Love you Guys !

Grind

Just for "blue sky" noodlin' fun (don't hold me to the math but correct as neeeded - LOL)... at nominal room temp Al is 2.67 grams per cc, 3 tons is 2721554 grams... volume in Al 10193086.14cc or 359 cubic feet, for the heck of it call it a cube at a tick over 7 foot on a side. Launchable for sure, orbital? Why not. It "could" be a controlled impact test. The telegram bothers me... I'm not sure why.

Not small. Not large. 3 tons. Let's assume just for fun that it arrived by falling from orbit as opposed to a sub-orbital hop... it would have had considerable energy falling from 400,000 or so feet and without a heat shield other than the "silk-like" fabric. I would think we'd be talking about a crater and a blob of significant size as might be created by a seven foot cube. I'd have thought such "segments" as the 2" x 1" ingots might have fractured on impact even contained in a fabric bag.

I can see an advantage of lower density materials in anti-sat weapons but not in Earth-terminal devices - hit ANYTHING much in space and your reliability goes away. Lighter alloys would allow more volume of "strike material".

Perhaps it was "landed"? The "silk-like" fabric doesn't seem to fit. Fabrics are used in space travel for thermal insulation. This is one weird story... love it.

Vic

[edit on 29-11-2007 by V Kaminski]

no time to check all post sorry
www.asme.org...
It launched the 120-ton Skylab into earth orbit on May 14, 1973.


[edit on 29-11-2007 by moonking]

The U.S.A. had the Saturn 1B that could put 33,700lb. into low earth orbit. The total mass was 1,300,220 lbs.

reply to post by Crakeur


The following web site claims it was cube shaped. There are no cube shaped satellites.

www.ufoarea.com...

1966
PROJECT AQUARIUS begun. The project was funded by CIA funds (non-appropriated). The project assumed full responsibility for investigation and intelligence of UFOs and/or IACs, after December 1969 when PROJECTS GRUDGE and BLUE BOOK were closed. The purpose of PROJECT AQUARIUS was to collect all scientific, technological, medical and intelligence information from UFO and IAC sightings and contacts with Alien Life Forms. These orderly files of collected information have been used to advance the United States Air Force Space Program (not NASA).

The following information is relevant to the time frame.

1967
The Air Force commissions the University of Colorado to study the UFO phenomenon. Headed by Dr. Edward Condon, the project becomes known as The Condon Study. A Man In Black, Mr. Dixsun, allegedly visits Professor Condon and offers to help him contact the space people.
A classic of mystery of Bermuda Triangle. The ship Witchcraft at the harbor entrance vanished within 19 minutes between her call to the Coast Guard and their arrival on scene.

Dr Felix Zigel, of the Moscow Aviation Institute, says publicly, "We appeal to all viewers to send us details of any observations of strange flying craft. This is a serious challenge to Science, and we need the help of all Soviet citizens."

www.phils.com.au...

According to this website, there were other UFO crashes that year. They also show a different date.

UFO Crashes

1967 USA, Florida, Avon Park AFB
1967 USA, Missouri, Southwest, January
1967 Sudan, August 17
1967 Canada, Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia, October 6

www.bibleufo.com...