> Wasn't there a missile system called "Sprint" (that had some 
> huge acceleration, like 100g) that was for
> intercepting missiles on the way down?  What happened to that?

Whether it worked or not, I'm not so sure.  It was intended to be
used in tandem with the Nike to catch anything that got through.

Acceleration was 0-Mach 10 in <5 seconds, or 65g.

Both of them used nuclear warheads for their dirty work; the Nike
Zeus did hit-to-kill airborne targets with similar speeds and
trajectories to incoming ballistic missiles (usually other Nikes)
(in the 1960s!  which is what they are unsuccessfully trying to do
now), but when deployed relied up a fairly large extra-atmospheric
nuclear detonation to stop incoming warheads.  The Sprint used 
kiloton intra-atmospheric bursts to do the same.

Both ultimately fell victim to party politics and the ABM treaty.

http://www.paineless.id.au/missiles/Sprint.html

Perhaps I was a little harsh in my comment about the effectiveness
of other ABM systems earlier; it should be noted that Sprint was
effectively a descendent of technologies in the Nike Zeus.

Also note that the missile was so fast it needed ablative coating
to deal with the heat generated by drag.  Thrust was substantially
higher than that of most rockets used to launch humans.

Mike H.
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