This Sprint missile rendering and following text is from the Digital Space Art Gallery by Terry Sunday web page.
In the 1970’s, the Martin Marietta Corporation (now Lockheed Martin) in Orlando, Florida, built what
is still today one of the most incredible guided missiles ever to fly. The Sprint was a part of the
only anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system that the United States ever deployed. Complementing the
long-range Spartan interceptor, which was intended to destroy incoming nuclear warheads before they
re-entered the atmosphere, Sprint was a short-range screamer with literally split-second reactions.
It could intercept any warheads that got past Spartan when they were only seconds from their targets.
Ejected from an underground silo by a hot gas generator, the two-stage Sprint accelerated so fast
that it would pass a .50-calibre bullet, if fired at the same time, within a second. Atmospheric
friction made the outside skin of the second stage hotter than the inside of the rocket motor. It was
protected by a thick ablative layer that actually boiled away, carrying the heat with it. Sprint was
tested successfully many times at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico and at the Kwajalein Missile
Range in the Pacific. It was beyond-state-of-the-art technology for its day.
This image shows Sprint in its silo. The missile sits on the eject piston, which in turn rests on a
ring of springs to cushion the missile from ground shocks. When the gas generator under the piston
fires, the piston shoots up the launch tube (stopping when it hits the piston arrestors at the tube
mouth) and the Sprint continues out of the cell, literally blasting through the frangible fiberglass,
foam and rubber domed cell closure. Tan “wedges” at the missile’s midsection near the second stage
fins guide it out the tube. The cutaway shroud near the top of the missile is the “foam sock,” an
insulating blanket around the guidance section and warhead that keeps the components at operating
temperature at all times.
Updated: 4-21-2008
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