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Yes, the Me-163 used a "Cold" reaction and the V-2 used hydrogen peroxide to drive the turbopump, an approach used by the earliest US developmental rocket and space boosters such as the Jupiter C, Viking, and Redstone and is still used by the 11A511U Soyuz booster that is a straight line development of the Soviet SS-6 ICBM. For the Germans their desperate lack of nickle alloys made such lower temperature reactions preferable where possible.Some of the German rockets appear to have been "cold".
I remember the rocket pack on display in the aero building at North Campus. I was a 65 BSAE OU graduate.A standard practice for testing older space launch rocket motors is to cold soak them in a refrigerator, followed by an X-ray. The cold would cause the propellant to attempt to draw away from the case and the idea was that if cracks were prone to form that treatment would induce them to occur.
"Nozzle Down Time" was an issue for many years because standing a rocket motor upright, with its nozzle down, would make the propellant tend to slump down into the center cavity. So motors were stored nozzle up and when they were mounted nozzle down that was a concern if they were older than 4 years or so. Eventually they developed ballistic missile motors that were capable of standing upright, nozzle down, for a decade or more.
One horrific mishap occurred with the first stage of a Peacekeeper ballistic missile in the Thiokol facility in Utah in the late 1980's . The large motor, 10 ft in diameter, was cast, nozzle opening pointed up. After the propellant had cured the next step was to withdraw the mandrel, the big plug that formed the center cavity of the motor. This was occurring with outside temperatures at well before freezing. As they withdrew the mandrel they realized they would have to lower it back down and start over. Know how when it is cold and with low humidity that you can make static electricity by rubbing a fabric like wool on plastic surfaces such as nylon? When they started withdrawing the mandrel the static electricty ignited the motor. The building was destroyed and everyone in it was killed.
Yes, the Germans used some JATO. An example is shown in the box top picture of the Ar234, which featured parachutes to enable recovery. They had one of those rocket packs on display at the University of Oklahoma. But the German JATO were liquid fueled and everyone else's rockets were no more than gunpowder packed into a tube. The GALCIT rockets represented a major leap forward in solid propellant technology.
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I was in OK 1974-1978. I took a couple of courses at OU and helped teach one on practical engineering.I remember the rocket pack on display in the aero building at North Campus. I was a 65 BSAE OU graduate.