Successful Failure

Solemn as a team of surgeons emerging from a hospital amphitheater, scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration last week reported on an operation of their own. Operation Echo A12, they said, was highly successful --but the patient died.

The operation began when a Thor rocket took off from Cape Canaveral just before dawn carrying a canister containing a tightly folded deflated balloon of plastic film and aluminum foil. This was Echo A12, an experimental successor to Echo I, the 100-ft. radio-reflector that was launched on Aug. 12, 1960, and is still orbiting the earth. Echo A12 was not expected to orbit; its job was merely to expand in space and test a new kind of aluminized film that would stay rigid after the gas that blew up the balloon had escaped through meteor punctures.

When the rocket was 150 miles up, the canister containing Echo A12 was released by explosive bolts. Retrorockets fired, slowing the burned-out Thor, while small stabilizing jets in its nose kept it pointed at the departing canister. Still aboard the rocket were cameras.

Scientists gathered around a TV screen at Cape Canaveral, watched the canister soar free. Out swelled the silvery balloon. It took shape swiftly--too swiftly. The balloon expanded to its full 135-ft-diameter in two seconds. Then a rip raced across the silvery skin; almost instantaneously the great balloon tore into shapeless shreds. The pictures were so good that they could be reshown on household TV sets. Back to the drawing boards went Echo A12's designers. But airborne TV had already told them what had gone wrong: Echo A12 contained too much residual air, which made the balloon expand too violently into the vacuum of space.

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