Editing Convair (section)

=== Jet Age, Cold War, and Space Age ===
In March 1953, all of the Convair company was bought by the [[General Dynamics|General Dynamics Corporation]], a conglomerate of military and high-technology companies, and it became officially the '''Convair Division''' within General Dynamics.<ref name=cent>{{cite web|url=http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Aerospace/generaldynamics/Aero35.htm|title=General Dynamics Corporation|publisher=U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission|access-date=2006-03-31|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081112045623/http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Aerospace/generaldynamics/Aero35.htm|archive-date=2008-11-12}}</ref>

After the beginning of the [[Jet Age]]{{cn|date=July 2022|reason=linked article only mentions civil airliners}} of military fighters and bombers, Convair was a pioneer of the delta-winged aircraft design, along with the French [[Dassault Aviation|Dassault]] aircraft company, which designed and built the [[Dassault Mirage|Mirage fighter plane]]s.

One of Convair's most famous products was the ten-engined [[Convair B-36]] strategic bomber, burning four [[turbojets]] and turning six pusher propellers driven by [[Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major]] radial piston engines. The [[Convair B-36 Peacemaker|Convair B-36]] was the largest landbased piston engined bomber in the world. The [[Atlas missile]], the [[Convair F-102 Delta Dagger|F-102 Delta Dagger]] and [[Convair F-106 Delta Dart|F-106 Delta Dart]] delta-winged interceptors, and the delta-winged [[Convair B-58 Hustler|B-58 Hustler]] supersonic intercontinental nuclear bomber were all Convair products. For a period of time in the 1960s, Convair manufactured its own line of jet commercial airliners, the [[Convair 880]] and [[Convair 990 Coronado]], but this did not turn out to be profitable. However, Convair found that it was profitable to be an aviation subcontractor and manufacture large subsections of airliners — such as fuselages — for the larger airliner companies, [[McDonnell Douglas]], [[Boeing]], and [[Lockheed Corporation|Lockheed]]. 

In the 1950s, Convair shifted money and effort to its missile and rocket projects, producing the [[RIM-2 Terrier|Terrier missile]] ship-launched surface-to-air system for the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] during the 1960s and 1970s. Convair's [[Atlas (rocket family)|Atlas rocket]], originally proposed in 1945 with a unique pressurized cylinder airframe, was revived in the 1950s as an [[ICBM]] for the [[United States Air Force|U.S. Air Force]] using [[V-2]] technology motors in response to the [[Soviet]] missile threat.<ref> see [[Karel Bossart]]</ref>  It was first launched in 1957 but its use as an ICBM was soon replaced in 1962 by the room-temperature liquid-fueled [[LGM-25C Titan II|Titan II missile]], and later by the solid-fueled [[LGM-30 Minuteman|Minuteman missile]]. The Atlas rocket transitioned into a civilian launch vehicle and was used for the first orbital crewed U.S. space flights during [[Project Mercury]] in 1962 and 1963.

The [[Atlas (rocket family)|Atlas rocket]] became a very reliable booster for launching of satellites and continued to evolve, remaining in use into the 21st century, when combined with the [[Centaur (rocket)|Centaur]] upper stage to form the [[Atlas-Centaur]] [[launch vehicle]] for launching geosynchronous [[communication satellite]]s and [[space probe]]s. The Centaur rocket was also designed, developed, and produced by Convair, and it was the first widely used outer space rocket to use the all-[[cryogenic]] fuel-oxidizer combination of [[liquid hydrogen]] and [[liquid oxygen]]. The use of this liquid hydrogen – liquid oxygen combination in the Centaur was an important direct precursor to the use of the same fuel-oxidizer combination in the Saturn [[S-II]] second stage and the Saturn [[S-IVB]] third stage of the gigantic [[Saturn V]] Moon rocket of the [[Apollo program]]. The S-IVB had earlier also been used as the second stage of the smaller [[Saturn IB]] rocket, such as the one used to launch [[Apollo 7]]. The Centaur upper stage was first designed and developed for launching the [[Surveyor program|Surveyor]] lunar landers, beginning in 1966, to augment the [[Delta-v|delta-V]] of the Atlas rockets and give them enough payload capability to deliver the required mass of the Surveyors to the [[Moon]].

More than 100 Convair-produced Atlas-Centaur rockets (including those with their successor designations) were used to successfully launch over 100 satellites, and among their many other outer-space missions, they launched the [[Pioneer 10]] and [[Pioneer 11]] space probes, the first two to be launched on trajectories that carried them out of the [[Solar System]].

In addition to aircraft, missiles, and space vehicles, Convair developed the large [[Charactron]] vacuum tubes, a form of [[cathode-ray tube]] (CRT) computer display with a shaped mask to form characters,<ref>{{cite web|title=Charactron Tube|publisher=Computing at Chilton, of Atlas Computer Laboratory, Chilton, Oxfordshire|date=2006-08-05|url=http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/technology/sc4020/p002.htm|access-date=2006-10-22|archive-date=18 June 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120618112821/http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/technology/sc4020/p002.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> and to give an example of a minor product, the [[CORDIC]] algorithms, which is widely used today to calculate [[trigonometric function]]s in [[calculator]]s, [[field-programmable gate array]]s, and other small electronic systems.