Word: karsch
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...rocket which rose last week from White Sands Proving Ground, N. Mex., reached an altitude of 95 miles. The most important man in the act, at least to innocent bystanders, was Herbert L. Karsch, flight safety officer. Karsch's job is to keep rockets from leaving the 90-by-35-mile area of uninhabited desert and mountains where they are supposed to hit. The authorities would consider it unfortunate, for instance, if a wandering rocket were to smack El Paso...
Like most safety directors, Karsch owes his job to a "regrettable incident." On May 15, 1947, when White Sands was young, a German V-2 swooped down at 3,500 m.p.h. and landed three miles from Alamogordo (pop. 5,000). Alamogordans had been hardened by years of practice-bombing and an atom-bomb explosion. One woman called up the Army to "get that thing out of my backyard...
...bang and dug a crater 24 feet deep and 40 feet in diameter. No one was hurt, and the people of Juarez, enjoying their spring fiesta, thought the bang was part of the show. But the diplomatic repercussions were painful. The White Sands brass, covered with cold sweat, told Karsch to work out a system for riding herd on rockets...
...Karsch is more worried about the rockets that pick nearly right courses which would carry them far outside the target area. To deal with them, he has set up a system he calls a "safety screen...
...When Karsch learns that a rocket is heading out of bounds, he can send up a radio signal that cuts off the rocket's flow of fuel. This is usually enough to bring it down in a safe area. For really bad cases of rocket misbehavior, there is stronger medicine: he sends up a different signal and blows off the rocket's nose, which may force it to land near by at low velocity...