Scout A

The 20th century has been filled with prolific rockets, most commonly famous for their size, payload to orbit or unique design choices. The Scout fulfilled none of them, yet it was still one of those rockets that defined spaceflight of the era.

For only 4 million 1980's US dollars, you could hire an entire rocket to launch 100kg of payload to whatever orbit you requested. This uniquely small cost among small-lift launch vehicles is the reason why the Scout has launched over a 100 times, carrying American, British, Italian, German and Japanese payloads. The reason for this popularity is partly because it only used solid fuel, and therefore, was very easy to use - solid propellants required no special handling, no substantial launch equipment was needed were some of the benefits of this design. It was uniquely suited for low-tech spaceports, like the Wallops Flight Facility (VA), Western Launch and Test Range (CA), and even from a drilling rig, off the shore of Kenya.

Transit satellites probably constituted the majority of payloads of the Scout. These early navigation satellites were too small to warrant a launch on Titans, Atlases or Deltas, yet required orbits, too specific to go on rideshare missions with other payloads.

The Scout gave birth to an entire class of rockets, the smallsat launch vehicles, that are still launched often even today. It is only fair to commemorate its existence on the anniversary of the DSAP-1 F1 launch.