Eight Out of Nine

In the wake of the Russian moon triumph, U.S. spacemen had two failures and one success last week. A Jupiter rocket blew up, and a Thor Able navigation satellite failed to orbit. The bright spot was the last of the much-criticized Vanguards, which put a 50-lb. payload in a high orbit expected to last 30 years or more.

This made nine satellites circling the earth. Eight of them are American: three Vanguards, three Explorers, and two Discoverers. They range in weight from a 3.25-lb. instrumented Vanguard to an empty 1,700-lb. second stage of a Discoverer. The other is Russia's massive space body. Sputnik III (2,134 Ibs.); the other two Sputniks have fallen back into the atmosphere and burned up. Of the U.S. satellites, the grapefruit-sized Vanguard I is expected to keep circling for 2,000 years, the basketball-sized Vanguard II for 200 years. Both Vanguard I and Explorer VI have solar batteries designed to keep their radio transmitters operating for many years to come.

The Vanguard was a typical product of U.S. space technology: a small, sophisticated bird strained to the utmost to achieve its purpose. The thrust of its first-stage rocket was only 27,000 Ibs. (v. Lunik's estimated 800,000 Ibs.), and everything in the upper stages had to be meticulously miniaturized to save tiny bits of weight. Its intricately instrumented satellite will send down valuable data from space, perhaps more than the Russians get with their comparative giants, but the U.S. will not match the Russian achievements in bulk or accuracy until a new generation of bigger rockets reaches the flying stage.

Middle-sized U.S. birds, still not so big as the Russians' biggest, will use the reasonably reliable Atlas as their first stage. Highest U.S. hopes are pinned at present on an Atlas-boosted job intended to whip around the moon and transmit a picture of its mysterious backside--a feat considerably more difficult than simply hitting it. Its timing may not be so good as that of Lunik II, which hit the moon just before Khrushchev's arrival in the U.S. (just a lucky break, said Khrushchev). But the U.S. moon shot's target date is early October--just before President Eisenhower is scheduled to visit Russia.

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