SCORE

The red-coated Marine Band had just broken into the march strains of The Bay State Commandery, and President Eisenhower's 78 diplomatic guests were preparing to flow into the State Dining Room. Ike, in white tie, whispered to his naval aide to order the music stopped, stepped into the center of the East Room. "Ladies and gentlemen." he said, his face creased in smiles. "I have something interesting to announce. I have just been advised that a satellite is in orbit and that its weight is nearly 9,000 pounds." The crowd broke into applause. Even Communist Poland's ambassador, Romuald Spasowksi said, "Terrific. I am myself a physicist, and to put such a big load so high is a great achievement." Said Denmark's new ambassador, Count Gustav Knuth-Winterfeldt: "It was the best Christmas present we could have got."

The news quickly flashed across the world: the Air Force's 85-ft. 8,600-lb. ICBM Atlas had been fired, not in a trajectory whose end was a watery South Atlantic target but into the skies. Its tape recording of President Eisenhower's greetings heralded the beginning of worldwide communications through outer space. Earlier U.S. satellites were fired in stages, dropped sections after burnout, and finally flung small instrumented payloads into orbit around the earth. But somehow there was greater impact in the fact that the body of the Atlas went up in one piece, was circling the globe as the U.S.'s biggest satellite, its weight easily comparable to the heaviest the Russians have put up so far (see SCIENCE). Moreover, the Atlas needed no extra rocket stages to help it change course and move into orbit (as other satellites do); the course was directed from the ground. Said one Atlas man happily: "We steered it into orbit."

The Club. The project, called SCORE (for Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment), was begun last June in Convair's beige-carpeted board room in San Diego. Gathered there were Convair officials and the Pentagon's Roy Johnson, chief of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency. Subject of the discussion: Sputnik III. Said Johnson: "We've got to get something big up." Replied J. Raymon Dempsey, manager of Convair's Astronautics Division (since named a vice president): "Well, we could put the whole Atlas in orbit."

That was it. Johnson left Convair experts to work out the details, returned to Washington to push the program through. The decision was made to keep the project secret, and secret it was: no more than 88 people ever knew of it. One day early last week, a few Army Signal Corps technicians showed up discreetly in the President's office, recorded the satellite message that Ike himself had written, tucked it away till it was needed at Cape Canaveral. Even the button pusher who fired the Atlas from the Cape blockhouse did not know that the bird contained the tape recording, or that it had been set to orbit. Most of the others in the launching crew were equally in the dark and equally furious during the first moments of flight, when they noted from instruments that the Atlas was not heading on its customary course down range. When they yelled for the range safety officer to blow it up, he refused. He was a member of the tight little "club" of 88.

Astounding Thing. Day after his dramatic announcement of success, the President hurried into Press Secretary Hagerty's office to listen with newsmen to a playback of his taped message. Ike's amazement was written all over his face as he sat in Hagerty's chair, cocked his ear toward the loudspeaker, heard the eerie sound of his voice coming from 400 miles above the earth. Turning to the reporters, he said: "That's one of the astounding things again in this age of invention. Maybe the next thing they'll do is televise pictures down here."

Neither was the military significance of SCORE lost on the world. For one thing, the firing indicated that a missile, guided into orbit, could also be guided to intercept an enemy satellite or missile. For another, it proved that the Air Force's Ballistic Missile Division, under Major General Bernard Schriever, had been solidly on the right track in missile development. Said Schriever: "Project SCORE shows that we have a booster capable of putting something the size of a capsule and a man into space. We're making the progress that we thought was possible when we started the program on a high-priority basis in 1954. And it shows that the military, scientists and industry can get together and get the job done--and in a hurry."

At week's end, as the Atlas churned through the skies, brighter than most planets, SCORE ground stations as well as amateur radio operators round the world were tuning in to the President's message, triggered by signals from the U.S., then erased, and transmitted anew to the Atlas, and again played back. It would be seen and heard for 20 days or so before burning up in the atmosphere. But that, obviously, was just the beginning.

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