Word: vanguarde
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...effort to answer moons with a moon, klaxons of witless pressagentry and, after the flop, yelps of anguish (cried Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson: "How long, how long, O God, how long will it take us to catch up with Russia's two satellites?"). Yet even if Vanguard had been successful in its first try, even if the U.S. had put a dozen satellites into outer space, it would have minuscule meaning in a cold war that calls for a general overhaul of old habits of thought and judgment...
What TV3 was designed to throw into orbit, 300 miles above the earth, was a grapefruit-size space satellite, 6.4 inches in diameter, the U.S.'s first. TV3 was designed as an experimental first step of Project Vanguard, the U.S.'s No. 1 pure-science contribution to the International Geophysical Year. Since the Soviet Sputniks, TV3 had also become the symbol of the U.S.'s determination to get going in the race for the conquest of space; the President himself had called attention to its approximate firing date in a post-Sputnik press conference. But even...
...moved back again, then finally away; at 11:44 the last "umbilical" cable connecting the rocket to the disconnect pole was slipped free. Seconds later the first traces of white-hot exhaust appeared at the base of TV3 as Dr. J. Paul Walsh, 40, deputy director of Vanguard, reported over an open phone line to Washington: "ZERO . . . FIRE . . . FIRST IGNITION . . ." But then he suddenly exclaimed: "EXPLOSION...
...area-We do not see the satellite rocket-We do not see the rocket that is carrying our satellite-The rocket may not have gotten off-There is a very large black smoke cloud-a very large black area around the location that the explosion occurred." By then the Vanguard had dropped dismally back on its tail, its nose section askew; it had burst into varicolored fire and flame...
...London strummed a ditty about Oh, from America comes the significant thought/Their own little Sputnik won't go off. Said a university professor in Pittsburgh: "It's our worst humiliation since Custer's last stand." Said Dr. John P. Hagen, director of Project Vanguard, as he got ready to face a doleful press conference in Washington: "Nuts...