United States Air Force Titan III Standard Space Launch System Information Handbook

Rare aerospace engineering / rocket science / space flight book. Project Gemini Titan family rocket booster space-launch vehicles Air Force technical operations manual (pre-NASA). Scarce space race era 1960s historical collector’s volume. Part of the exhibition-quality object collection.

“United States Air Force (USAF) Titan III Standard Space Launch System (SSLS) Information Handbook,” Third Edition, c.1965. Issued by Executive Management, Space Systems Division, Air Force Systems Command. Prepared by Martin Company (Colorado, Florida), supersedes the second edition, issued June 1965.

Major contractors :: Martin Company, Aerojet General Corporation, AC Electronics, United Technology Center, The Ralph M. Parsons Company, Aerospace Corporation. 

Blue flexible stitched vinyl locking six-ring binder. Includes schematics, photographs, and artists renderings. Unpaginated, 103 hand-typed pages, plus 34 figures. No table of contents. Tabs are as follows:

A Vital Statistics 
B Titan III Concept 
C Titan Family 
D Airborne Systems 
E Testing & Shipping
F Launch Facility 
G Military-Industry Team 
H Countdown & Flt. Sequence
(No Section I, as issued)
J Flight Plans
K Payloads
L Flight Record 
M Index 

General wear and soiling to the vinyl binder. Partial separation of title page. Ring indentations impressed on pages. Some dampstaining. A few broken stitches, adhesive residue on front cover.

Titans were expendable rockets with optional solid rocket boosters. The family enjoyed 368 launches, including all the crewed Project Gemini flights (which ultimately led to the moon landing), and payload missions such as reconnaissance satellites (such as nuclear-test-ban monitoring satellites), and scientific probes. A unique collector opportunity.