Do not think that everything connected with curses has its origins in ancient times, and cursed places arose at least during the dark Middle Ages. Sometimes the most modern technologies do not save from witchcraft and destructive spells.
The Western Proving Ground is considered the second largest and most important spaceport in the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, 250 km from Los Angeles and covers an area of about 400 km2. The test site includes: the Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Point Mugu and Point Arguello test ranges and the internal range - only eleven launch complexes with twenty starting positions. Over the years of their operation, several hundred rockets have been launched into space from the Western test site. From all launch sites - except for one. The unlucky SLC-6 complex, which is organizationally part of the Vandenberg airbase, was renamed by the locals to Slick Six, which roughly translates to "slippery six".
The first space launch from the Western Test Site was made in 1959: the Discovery 1 spacecraft was launched. Over the years, the range expanded, and in 1966 it was decided there to prepare a launch pad for a new powerful launch vehicle "Titan-3M". It was intended to launch the military orbital laboratory MOL (Manned Orbiting Laboratory) into orbit. At that time, the concept of paired orbital stations became popular in the United States. One station, a large one, was planned for scientific purposes; the second, small, - for solving military tasks, primarily of an intelligence nature. The MOL was designed on the basis of the Gemini two-seater spacecraft with an attached living block the size of a trailer. The first launch was scheduled for late 1968, and construction of the launch site was accelerated.
The land plots closest to the construction site were bought by the government. The previous owners willingly parted with them: the land in these places is barren, and who wants to live next to the rumbling launch site? By March 12, 1966, all formalities were settled, and bulldozers began to clear the construction site. In the course of excavation, the machines uncovered the ancient burial of the Chumash Indians. This small tribe has long lived in southern California, hunting, fishing and gathering, but with the arrival of the white man, it gradually began to die out from epidemics. By the mid-1960s, the Indians had already lost their native language, but continued to adhere to their beliefs. And so the white man's soulless technique uncovered an ancient cemetery. Powerful buckets threw human bones bleached by time to the surface. As soon as the Indians became aware of this, they literally bombarded the government with demands to stop construction. Chumash argued that one should not disturb the peace of the dead and desecrate sacred places. But the Aboriginal arguments for the government sounded unconvincing, and work continued. Then an enraged elder of the Chumash tribe put a curse on SLC-6 and all projects associated with it.
At first, at the airbase they only laughed at this: it is not appropriate for modern people in the space age to take such superstition seriously. It turned out that the jokes were inappropriate. The construction of the launch complex itself was completed by mid-1969, but the design of the MOL module, for the sake of which, in fact, everything was started, was delayed. The first launch of a small military orbital station was first postponed until 1972, and then President Richard Nixon canceled this ambitious program altogether. The need for MOL clearly disappeared, because much cheaper automatic spy satellites, which were constantly being improved, were quite successfully coping with reconnaissance tasks. The launch complex, on which more than one billion dollars was spent, was mothballed.
In 1984, the ill-fated project received a rebirth. Now they decided to convert SLC-6 into a launch pad for reusable spacecraft. The place seemed ideal, because it is surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the sea is on the fourth. Curious citizens and cunning spies could only see the launch site for a few moments while driving along the nearby railroad.
It soon became clear that it was impossible to assemble the shuttle outdoors, and the buildings existing since the 1960s were not suitable for this purpose. Therefore, a movable tower with a height of 76 m was built, for which almost 80 million dollars were spent instead of the 40 originally planned. But the trouble was just beginning. It was found that due to the constant fog, there is a high risk of ice formation on the outer fuel tank of the ship. To avoid this, the specialists designed a unit with two turbojet engines, which provide a stream of warm air through a diffuser above the tank. However, having spent 13 million dollars, the inventors unexpectedly announced that they were not sure of the efficiency of the installation and that it would not completely solve the problem …
The problems grew like a snowball. Construction progress reports contain stories of sabotage, workers 'drug and alcohol use, and sixteen-hour welders' workday. It got to the point that the FBI got interested in the construction progress. The investigation revealed a mass of shocking facts: over 8,000 defective welds were found on the SLC-6, many pipelines were cut or split, and important valves were clogged with construction debris. The gas ducts were incorrectly designed to remove liquid hydrogen flowing from the propulsion engines in the event of a cancellation of the start, and the attachment of the shuttles to the launch barrel turned out to be too rigid. As a result, the specialists estimated the probability of an accident of a reusable spacecraft launched from launch complex No. 6 at 20%. President Ronald Reagan and the leadership of the Air Force continued to insist on the need to complete the reconstruction of the SLC-6, but the deal ended with the complex, which has already reached $ 8 billion, was again mothballed.
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But this long-term construction will not forever rust under the sunny California sky! In 1994 the complex was rented by the well-known company Lockheed, which planned to use it to launch a new family of Athena launch vehicles. On August 15, 1995, a small LLV-1 rocket with a commercial communications satellite soared up from Launch Complex 6. At some point it seemed that the curse of the Chumash elder had lost its power. The launch was successful, but in the fourth minute of the flight, the rocket began to abruptly change course until it headed back to the California coast. The flight control service had no choice but to blow it up over the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
An investigation into the causes of the accident led to improvements in the design of the carrier. The customer for the new launch from Slick Six was NASA. On August 22, 1997, a Lockheed rocket successfully launched an agency-designed Lewis satellite into orbit, but only four days passed and the satellite lost control. It began to tumble chaotically, quickly depleted its battery resources and, despite persistent attempts to regain control, burned up in the atmosphere over the South Atlantic Ocean at the end of September.
In 1965, Mary Ee, the last speaker of the Chumash language, died. Now they are trying to restore this language according to the information collected in the last century by the American linguist John Harrington.
After two years of inactivity of the complex, the newly-formed large aerospace giant "Lockheed Martin" again tried to overcome the curse of the Indians. History has largely repeated itself. On April 27, 1999, the Athena-2 launch vehicle, it would seem, had already launched a commercial satellite into orbit, which was designed to photograph the Earth's surface with high resolution, when suddenly telemetry information ceased to flow from it, and the ground tracking station in Alaska and could not find the satellite. The conclusions of the commission, investigating the reasons for the next fiasco of ultramodern technology in front of ancient superstitions, boiled down to the fact that the head fairing probably did not separate from the upper stage and the satellite was never able to reach orbit.
Since 2000, SLC-6 has been taken over by another aerospace giant, Boeing. The new tenants set out to re-equip the launch complex for the launch of the powerful Delta-4 launch vehicles. But, apparently, they did not achieve much success in their endeavors. In any case, Boeing prefers to send its newest X-37 spacecraft on its highly secret orbital flights from the SLC-41 launch pad of the Cape Canaveral air base. He only lands on the runway of Vandenberg AFB after completing the flight.
From the book: "The Cursed Places of the Planet." Yuri Podolsky