Higher & Higher: Rockets for High-Altitude Nuclear Testing*

From its beginnings, Sandia National Laboratories provided support for nuclear testing – atmospheric in the early years and underground through 1992, when U.S. nuclear testing stopped. Its central responsibilities included arming and fuzing of the test devices, packaging of payloads, and instrumentation and data gathering. By the mid-1950s, as the U.S. designed and executed high-altitude nuclear tests, engineers in the Lab’s aerodynamics group expressed an interest in designing rockets to support data collection more fully. This was a completely new capability within Sandia’s mission assignment, but it received management support and funding. The resulting suite of rockets both satisfied the internal program’s interests and carried telemetry for the subsequent high-altitude nuclear shots.

This paper will detail the deliberate growth of a new capability in designing and testing sounding rockets in support of high-altitude nuclear testing at Sandia in the 1950-1963 time period.