Sputnik by Dickson Paul

Author:Dickson, Paul [Dickson, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

The Launching of Juno

The actual launch vehicle that would put the first American object in space was sent by plane from Huntsville to Cape Canaveral (the same location where the next Vanguard Test Vehicle was being prepared for launch). On December 20, 1957, the ABMA Missile Firing Laboratory, headed by Peenemünde alumnus Kurt H. Debus, began preflight tests for Jupiter C and prepared the main stage for firing. This was accomplished under heavy guard in a hangar at Patrick Air Force Base. Wernher von Braun, director of development at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, and his boss, Major General John B. Medaris, who had promised to put an Army satellite in orbit within ninety days, were moving according to schedule.

The Jupiter C, which had begun its life as a Redstone, was renamed the Juno because Juno was the sister and wife of the Roman god Jupiter; the Juno rocket would be a satellite-bearing sister of the Jupiter C. The immense modified unit that arrived at the cape was a Juno carrying the large letters UE, which meant that it was Redstone 29. In an attempt to keep secret how many Redstone missiles were actually being produced, the Army came up with a system that owed more to the Captain Midnight secret decoder ring than to modern cryptology. Each letter in the name Huntsville represents a digit.

H = 1 U = 2 N = 3 T = 4 S = 5 V = 6 I = 7 L = 8 E = 9 X = 082

On December 20, the Juno rocket was transported to Cape Canaveral’s Hangar D to undergo additional tests and calibrations. It was erected under the cover of darkness on January 15 without searchlights at Pad A of Launch Complex 26. Scaffolding was put up, and the spin-stabilized upper sections were put into place. Most of the vehicle was shrouded in heavy canvas. On December 24, the final upper stages were added, including the satellite.

The ABMA’s opportunity arrived on January 26 when the backup to the ill-fated TV-3 vehicle, the Vanguard TV-3BU (i.e., Test Vehicle-3 Back Up), had to be delayed pending a second-stage engine replacement. Twice it had come to within seconds of a firing—once to within twenty-two seconds, once within fourteen—and then the problem-plagued Vanguard simply lost its place in line.83

The Huntsville team then went to the front of the line for five days. Beginning on January 28, at about the time they were finally ready to launch, weather balloons sent aloft detected a severe shift in the weather, so the first scheduled launch was scrubbed. The seventy-foot-long space vehicle was susceptible to wind shear, and it was feared that it could break up or tumble out of control. A check the following morning showed worsening conditions, and a second countdown was scrubbed later that day as high-altitude winds reached a speed of 217 miles per hour.

Things looked bad for the Army on the night of January 30, after the second cancellation. The

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