The first Titan/Centaur lifted off from Complex 41 at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station at 9:48 AM EDT. The Titan stages burned as programmed, but when the Centaur stage failed to ignite, the Range Safety Officer destroyed it. The new NASA rocket was launched on a proof of concept flight designed to prepare it for twin Viking launches to Mars in 1975 and other missions involving heavy payloads. The 160-foot-tall rocket combines the Air Force Titan III with the NASA high-energy Centaur final stage. The twin solid rocket boosters have a combined liftoff thrust of 2.4 million pounds. Aboard Titan/ Centaur on its proof of concept flight were a dynamic simulator of the Viking spacecraft and a small scientific satellite (SPHINX) designed to determine how high voltage solar cells, insulators, and conductors are affected by the charges particles in space. KSC's Unmanned Launch Operations Directorate conducted the launch. For more information about Titan and Centaur, please see Chapters 4 and 8, respectively, in Roger Launius and Dennis Jenkins' book To Reach the High Frontier published by The University Press of Kentucky in 2002.
