Word: missilemen
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...tired Navy and civilian scientists and technicians worked carefully toward the end of an hours-long count-down-air frame, propulsion, nose cone, guidance-while liquid oxygen vented off in trailing fume. "We'll be pleased if it does go into orbit," said one of the TV3 missilemen. "We will not be despondent if it does...
After water and carbon dioxide from automatic extinguishers had put out the fire, the worn-out and heartsick missilemen found the sole survivor: the U.S.'s tiny satellite, intact, thrown out of the nose section of the rocket, broadcasting the signals that were meant to be sent down from space. The U.S. Sputnik sending from the ground was right on frequency: 108 megacycles...
Since a perfectly circular orbit is a bull's-eye in satellite launching, the Russian missilemen did not do quite so well with their second satellite...
Last week, with post-Sputnik hindsight, Director I. M. Levitt of Philadelphia's Fels Planetarium called that 1955 decision an "astonishing piece of stupidity." Levitt's argument, echoed by Army missilemen: the Army's Jupiter intermediate ballistic missile, well along in 1955, could and should have been adapted for launching a satellite (a modified Jupiter has reached an altitude of 650 miles, higher than Sputnik's orbit). But when it was made, the National Security Council decision seemed sensible enough. The U.S. had committed itself to pass on to the rest of the world, including Russia...
...Russians might win the satellite race, Defense Secretary Wilson snorted: "I wouldn't care if they did." If the Administration had wanted to win the race, it could have speeded up Vanguard's schedule or got the Army going on a crash satellite program utilizing Jupiter (Army missilemen boasted last week that they could get a satellite into an orbit on a month's notice). But the Administration did neither...