<BGSOUND SRC="vafb/20000817%20Titan%20IVB%20b.wav">

(Download a higher resolution picture by clicking on any picture below.)

A Titan IV carrying an undisclosed Department of Defence payload was launched at 10:04 A. M. on Friday December 20, 1996 from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The launch complex is engulfed in the exhaust  from the Titan. Photographer: Brian Lockett.

Having ascended through most of the atmosphere,  the Titan heads south toward polar orbit.  Photographer: Brian Lockett.

Book about missiles and rockets available from

The Missile and Space Race by Alan J. Levine. Here is a history of the development of military missiles and space travel from World War II to the American visits to the Moon in 1969-1972. It stresses the relationship between the early stages of space exploration and the arms race, and that a dual path led to space flight. One was the development of unmanned long-range war rockets, the other, less often noted, was the rocket-powered research plane. The first path led through the intercontinental ballistic missile to the first artificial satellites and space capsule; the latter, more uniquely American, through the X-series and Skyrocket rocket planes to the X-15, and ultimately to the Space Shuttle. The early part of the book focuses on the Soviet-American race to develop the ICBM in the 1950s, and the first satellites, with particular attention paid to the events and reactions that followed the flight of Sputnik I in 1957 and the subsequent missile gap era.

Link to the home page of the  30th Space Wing

Call the Vandenberg Air Force Base Launch Hotline at (805) 606-1857 for current launch schedule information.

Link to the NASA rocket launch manifest

For national and international space coverage visit SPACE.com

Brian Webb's Rawhide Space Page provides launch schedule and ham radio information.

Send a message to Brian.

Go to home page of the Goleta Air and Space Museum.