Two for Space

After weeks of agonizing difficulties, the U.S. had a big week in missilery. On Johnston Island, 700 miles southwest of Hawaii, one morning the sky blossomed red when the Army's reliable Redstone took a nuclear warhead up an estimated 100 miles and exploded it in the thin air on space's edge--a high-altitude test, say intelligence reports, that came ten months behind a similar U.S.S.R. shot in the crucial race for the anti-bomber and antimissile missile (see SCIENCE). Next day Air Force missilemen at Cape Canaveral, Fla. sent their mightiest beast, a 100-ton three-engined Atlas-B ballistic missile, on its first successful full-power flight.

One Atlas attempt last month had ended in an ignominious mid-air explosion two minutes after launch. No such trouble dogged last week's test. With the loudest bull bellow the cape has heard yet, the Atlas rose from its pad on 360,000 Ibs. of thrust (150,000 each from the two out board booster engines, 60,000 from the central sustainer). Hitting mach 10 just 132 seconds up, the boosters abruptly shut off and dropped away with their skirts. The central sustaining engine roared another 120 seconds or so, shoved the missile to its apogee 400 miles up. After a 22-minute hop through 2,700 miles, the separated nose cone splashed down for the longest and best flight of the nation's biggest bird.

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