Voyage of the Explorer

Hear the sum of the whole matter--every art possessed by man comes from Prometheus.

--Aeschylus

A bright, waxing moon rode through the racing cumulus clouds above Florida's Cape Canaveral. At the floodlit launching pad, a gangling service structure, standing like a jeweled skyscraper, nestled against the U.S. Army's Jupiter-C rocket. A homely creature it was, its streamlined shell topped with a bucketlike piece and a long, thin, cylindrical nose. This was the Explorer, the Promethean gift that the U.S. aimed to fling against the invisible doors of space.

Only the week before, the Navy had babied its slender satellite-laden Vanguard. Day after day the tension on the Cape had tightened as the Vanguard countdown crept steadily toward zero: once within nine minutes of launching, once again within 4 1/2 minutes, again to 22 seconds--even to a hairbreadth 14 seconds. Each time the launching was scrubbed. And at length, the red-eyed, nerve-racked Navymen found a small propellant leak in the rocket's second stage. It was during the Vanguard trials that the Army moved its shrouded bird from a hangar to its launching pad and began to groom it for flight.

Fume & Smoke. At 9 o'clock one night last week the Explorer was ready. Lox vapors (liquid oxygen) waved in the floodlights' glow. In Central Control, scientific and technical missilemen tended their network of instruments. In the Pentagon at that moment, Army Secretary Wilber Brucker and the Jupiter's top Scientist Wernher von Braun joined a score of other military and civilian officials in the Army's telecommunications room, seated themselves at a table before two huge screens, one enlarging teletype messages from the Cape, the other carrying Pentagon messages back to the site. Elaborately, Von Braun lectured the attending brass on the rocket, described the painstaking timing and complex processes that must bring the big bird to life for its skyward trip. Then everybody settled down to wait. In his cottage at Augusta, Ga., President Eisenhower stayed near his telephone.

The countdown had begun. On the roof of a building near the launching sites, 50 newsmen trained eyes and cameras on Jupiter-C, only a mile and a half away. Nerves tingled as each heart-leaping minute of the countdown squawked over an intercom box. At 9:42 a mournful warning horn sounded from the launching area. Two red warning lights blinked steadily. The white rocket fumed and smoked, growing whiter and colder under the pebbled casing of ice caused by the subfreezing liquid oxygen. The service structure moved away on its tracks.

Spinning Bucket. The Pentagon teletype clacked: WHEN THE COUNTDOWN REACHES ZERO, THE BIRD WILL NOT BEGIN TO RISE IMMEDIATELY SO DON'T BE WORRIED IF WE DON'T TELL YOU IT'S ON THE WAY . . . THE SEARCHLIGHTS ARE GOING ON AND LIGHTING UP THE VEHICLE. IT IS A BEAUTIFUL SIGHT. Meanwhile at the White House, Presidential Aide Andy Goodpaster relayed the countdown, received over a Pentagon line, to Press Secretary James Hagerty in Augusta. From Central Control at 10:33 the calm voice on the mike droned on: "T minus 15 and still counting."

The satellite bucket began spinning, built up to about 500 r.p.m. (see SCIENCE). The voice came again: "T minus nine and still counting . . . T minus eight and still counting . . ." The Pentagon teletype reported: THE BLOCKHOUSE is BUTTONED UP (i.e., people are cleared from the pad). The loudspeaker rasped: "T minus 100 seconds . . ." Then: 10:48, T minus zero--Jupiter-C was fired. In even rhythm, the speaker counted 15 3/4 seconds as the bird built up its fuel-tank pressure, its whole nervous system jangling sluggish innards to action. After 14 seconds, flame belched from the rocket base, slammed up a pink cloud of smoke and dust.

Fire Dance. The rocket moved. The Pentagon teletype sang: IT'S LIFTING . . . IT'S SOARING BEAUTIFULLY . . Like a flame-footed monster it kicked upward, its white, fiery legs pumping beneath, as if to fill its creature lungs with the air aloft. Then, with a thunderous, angry roar of determination, it surged free, climbing faster and faster and faster. Thirty-five seconds later it passed through a small cloud, turned it bluish white. Beyond, in a clear patch of sky, the light bloomed again, rose with incredible power into an upper layer of cloud. The missile's electronic voice cut into the loudspeaker system with a steadily rising whine. The President cradled his phone to await news that the Explorer was in orbit. Rising in the southeast, the missile sped on, and its red glow funneled into darkness.

Now it turned into its preset track. One by one its first three stages (see diagram) spent their monstrous energy. Six minutes and 52 seconds after launching, the Explorer exultantly pushed itself into orbit. Army's weary Ballistic Missile Agency chief, Major General John Medaris, standing in the blockhouse, was asked if Washington should be informed of the Explorer's apparent proper performance. Said Medaris crisply: "No. Let's let 'em sweat a little."

"It's in Orbit." Sweat they did. According to Von Braun's calculations, the Explorer had to prove its place in space at exactly zero plus 106 minutes, when California tracking stations should pick it up over the West Coast of the U.S. In the Pentagon, Scientist William Pickering called the code name of a California station: "Do you hear anything, Earthquake City?" The answer came back: "No. We hear nothing." Von Braun tensed: satellites are never late, move with immutable regularity; something must have gone wrong.

Two, three, four minutes passed. In the Pentagon, Wilber Brucker, sometime governor of Michigan, cracked lamely: "This is like waiting for precinct returns .to come in." Von Braun and Pickering sat down and scribbled some figures. At zero plus in minutes, three California stations reported the pickup. Pickering said: "I want four stations. These are all Army stations, and they may be over enthusiastic." The fourth followed: a Navy tracking station checked in with the confirming news. Announced Pickering: "It's in orbit." Brucker beamed; Von Braun smiled. The Explorer was late, he concluded, because it had shot farther out into space than had been expected, thus had to travel the extra distance of its elongated elliptical orbit. "It's fine, fine," he murmured. At 12:44 Andy Goodpaster passed the word to Jim Hagerty: "It's in orbit." Hagerty called the President. Said Ike: "That's wonderful."

At the Cape, the cheers had long since faded. But the unself-conscious awe that swept over the missilemen and other observers hung on from the first moment of the rocket's majestic birth and the first wild dance of flame that fired it. Said one man: "There was something about the way it went up. No nonsense. It seemed to know what its job was."

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