ICBMs were never designed to be highly reliable, because to do so would have dramatically increased their costs (many hundreds of them were built), and it wasn’t necessary for their mission. They were designed to be launched in massive numbers, and if a few out of a hundred didn’t make it through, that was all right, because they were often redundant in their targeting (that is, more than one missile would be aimed at a key target). Some estimates at the time of the reliability of the Titan II was only 80% or so (that is, one in five would not deliver its payload to the designated target), based on the fact that eight of its initial thirty-three test launches were failures. The early manned spaceflights were performed on modified versions of them (specifically, the Redstone and Atlas for Mercury and Titan II for Gemini). But what was good enough for a weapon as part of a fusillade of dozens or hundreds wasn’t perceived to be for a single flight carrying a human, particularly with recent memories of nationally televised ignominious failures of rockets on the launch pad. Thus was born the pernicious (and now obsolete) concept of “man rating,” which confuses the space industry and obfuscates policy down to this very day.
That’s a shame — he was only 82, which isn’t that old these days. No word of the cause of death. I’d heard that he’d been doing well since his recent heart surgery, so either there were later complications, or he just happened to succumb to something else.
The irony, of course, as it notes in the bio, is that he never wanted to be an icon, and generally shunned the publicity. In any event, ad astra, and resquiescat in pace.
…of the secular watermelons, with their green, anti-human religion. Some of them may be very nice people, but they’re the opposite of Linus Van Pelt: they like people — it’s humanity they can’t stand.