Some Solace

For 14 minutes last week, Cape Canaveral was treated to one of the most spectacular displays of rocketry in its 11-year space-age history. Splashing a white, blue and orange vapor trail across the radiant dawn sky, a 100-ft.-tall Atlas-Agena rocket lifted in stately perfection off the pad, thundered up on a mission that was to carry its payload 685,000 miles into interplanetary space.

Riding on Atlas-Agena's shoulders was a needle-nosed, 675-lb. assemblage of instruments called Ranger I, whose 19,520 electronic parts were designed to measure cosmic rays, solar radiation and magnetic fields with hitherto unparalleled accuracy. Ranger was not aimed for the moon, but its big exclamation-mark loop would test equipment for a lunar trip that man some day will take.

All seemed well. Separating smoothly from its first stage, the second-stage rocket Agena, with the Ranger still attached, swung into a 100-mile-high parking orbit, coasted with its engine dead. Fourteen minutes after launch, the Agena's engine reignited on schedule to boost its Ranger payload on the long route into space. Then something went wrong. Instead of burning for the scheduled 90 seconds, which would have increased Ranger's speed from 17,400 m.p.h. to the necessary 23,800 m.p.h., Agena cut out too soon. Disconnected below maximum velocity, Ranger coasted up to a mere 312 miles, into a mildly elliptical earth orbit whose low point is 105 miles.

Since Russia achieved the same space feat last February by sending a satellite toward Venus from a similar parking orbit around the earth, U.S. missilemen, still trying to pinpoint last week's Ranger failure, looked for consolation in the near success. At least Ranger's complex instruments were behaving perfectly, and the Atlas-Agena combination had got off to a beautiful start.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.