Word: braun
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...satellite terms, the history began on June 25, 1954 in Room 1803 of the T-3 Building in Washington's Office of Naval Research. Among the service and civilian scientists present to discuss the possibility of firing a satellite into outer space was Dr. Wernher von Braun, father of the German V-2 turned U.S. Army missile expert. Von Braun assured the group that the Redstone missile, already developed at the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. and successfully fired at Cape Canaveral in 1953, could be souped up to put a 5-lb. satellite into outer...
...were heavy on the White House to dissociate the satellite program from weaponry so the world's neutralists would not be offended. In retrospect, giving jurisdiction of the satellite programs to the service that knew least about it was a blunder-and it was protested by Medaris, Von Braun & Co. But the Huntsville team had some consolation: it did have a 1955 go-ahead on the Jupiter intermediate-range missile...
Then Came Termites. Jupiter was put into blazing competition with the Air Force's Thor IRBM, and the race more than occupied the energies of the Huntsville scientists. Even so, says Von Braun, the Army missilemen "had clear sailing for about a year." And then: "The termites got into the system again." Ironically, some of the termites were hatched by the Army itself...
Wearing Them Out. From that point on, says Von Braun, Huntsville lived "under a continued threat of extinction. We were all the time told that in all likelihood, since the Air Force had roles and missions, there was no need for the Jupiter, and we would go out of business." But Huntsville did not go out of business; instead, it fought back, bitterly and sometimes unwisely. Colonel John Nickerson, one of the Army's top men at Huntsville, wrote a violent criticism of Wilson's roles-and-missions order, sent it off to Congressmen and columnists (including Drew...
Still, the Army kept working on Jupiter, with Medaris and Von Braun shuttling between Huntsville and Washington, begging and borrowing Army research and development funds to keep going. Said Medaris: "We bend every effort we can to make up for whatever handicaps or checks have been thrown into it, and we tire people and wear them out, but we get it done." With the job of testing a nose cone for Jupiter, the Huntsville team kept going on Jupiter-C. Actually Jupiter-C-a bundle of rockets beefing up the Army's Redstone-was hardly kin to the sophisticated...