"Like a Bullet"

Into the heavens over the Atlantic Ocean one night last week thundered a 100-ton symbol of U.S. scientific skill and diligence: the Air Force's Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile. Fully powered with close to 370,000 lbs. of thrust, the 80-ft. beast leaped from its Cape Canaveral pad, rocketed off the Florida coast into the starry night and arched serenely over the moon. The Cape's missile watchers held their breath as, in shucking its booster motors, the ICBM blazed like a meteor 200 miles from earth; then it faded and seemed to hang for a long time, suspended, like a star-colored point, just below Orion.

Tracking Far. Electronic tracking told the rest of the story: Atlas coursed over an ocean at 16,000 m.p.h.. past the equator, past Ascension island, to a point near St. Helena, where the exiled and imprisoned Napoleon died, until, only 1,200 miles from the African coast and only 30 minutes after launching, its nose cone shot down into the South Atlantic. The distance: a fully programed 6,300 statute miles, equal to the span between Denver and Peking, or between an Alaskan launching site and any major target in the Northern Hemisphere. Thus, after only 17 months of flight-testing, Atlas in one epochal shot was well on its way to being the No. 1 weapon of the U.S.'s strategic arsenal.

The months were counted in bitter challenges met. Of the 13 short-range Atlas tests, five exploded during flight. In the first attempt on Sept. 18 to go full distance, the missile blew up 80 seconds after launching. But last week's countdown was delayed only 27 minutes for a minor technical difficulty. Running the test and pressing the big button was a man appropriately named for the job: Engineer Bob Shotwell, 47. With great restraint, Shotwell and his 40-man launch team quietly waited in their bunker a full seven minutes after the lift-off before they dared shout. Then, says Shotwell, "everybody started congratulating everybody. We knew we had done it. It was going like a bullet; nothing could stop it." To celebrate, the Atlas contractor, Convair, launched a bubbly champagne party at the nearby Starlite Motel, and the jubilant missilemen hoisted Operations Manager B. G. (for Byron Gordon) MacNabb (TIME, Dec. 30) on their shoulders and carried him around the room.

Coming Fast. The rejoicing meant as much to the nation as to Atlas' dogged crews. Despite the Sputnik furor and the panicky cries that the U.S. was lagging behind the Russians in missilery, Convair and the Air Force stuck stubbornly to a schedule that was programed for maximum effort long before Sputnik. Atlas will need many more tests--and particularly refinement of its guidance system--before it is a real operational weapon. But if, as they claim, the Russians have already fired an ICBM (3,500 miles, according to U.S. intelligence guesses), the successful full-range Atlas flight makes it clear that Russia has no monopoly. It also makes clear that the U.S. missile program, already equipped with the first operational intermediate-range missiles, is coming and coming fast.

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