Rocketry Planet

"A summary of performance data is given for the first five Project Mercury Little Joe flights. Some of these data are compared with calculated performance characteristics and are shown to be in good agreement. Curves showing calculated maximum performance characteristics for the Little Joe launch vehicle are presented over a wide range of take-off weights, launch angles, and staging times as an aid in the prediction of perfomance parameters of the Little Joe Launch vehicle when used in future projects.

"Declassified by authority of NASA, Classification Change Notices No. 113 Dated 6/28/67"

This document, "Technical Memorandum: Performance Characteristics of the Little Joe Launch Vehicle," written by by Ronald Kolenkiewicz and John C. O'Loughlin, is a performance summary of the Little Joe launch vehicle from 1962, and contains good scale information.

The once classified document has been captured and converted to Adobe PDF format to share with the readers. 74 pages in length, the article is 10,442K in size. To view the article, click here. You will need Adobe Reader to view the article. If you do not have Adobe Reader, a copy may be downloaded for free from the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/.

This segment of From The Archive was made possible by Manuel Mejia, Jr., whose content contribution made it possible for Rocketry Planet to share this document with you. Part of the challenge we face in the hobby is the archival and preservation of these old sources of information useful to our hobby. Adobe PDF format makes a great medium for the collection and storage of these types of documents because of its portability and cross-platform approach.

If you have something you'd like to share with the readers, send email to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it  with details on the document you have to share. Previous submissions have consisted of submitting magazines or documents in whole, which were be returned upon completion of the scanning process. While this approach is still acceptable, the preference is toward user-generated submissions scanned by the users themselves.