Von Braun by Michael Neufeld

Author:Michael Neufeld
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC
Published: 2017-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

To his parents, who he knew were less enthused, he reported it rather differently: “It was a terrible circus, with film crews, television, press people and the usual misquotations….I escaped from this rather ticklish situation” by emphasizing the correctness of the choice between “West and East.” But as with his appearance on Disney’s TV show, this event fortified his position with the public as a loyal American and leading space advocate and helped neutralize the ever-lurking Nazi question. It also gave him access to a Top Secret clearance, with the result that by the fall he could see intelligence about the Soviet missile program previously barred to him. To his chagrin he found them much further along than he had expected from the reports of German rocketeers returning from the USSR.28

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While the Disney enterprise was gaining momentum in the public domain, von Braun’s satellite project was also picking up speed in the classified world, much to his delight. On 3 August 1954 George Hoover and another ONR officer went to Huntsville and talked to von Braun and Toftoy, now commanding general of Redstone Arsenal. Von Braun wrote White Sands optical tracking specialist E. P. Martz on the thirtieth: “Army and Navy see eye to eye on it and have promised each other fullest cooperation. It is intended, however, to get the Air Force in on it too, so it may really become a joint project.”29

At the Arsenal, Gerhard Heller and two other German engineers were completing a design study. Von Braun’s division issued the resulting report, “A Minimum Satellite Vehicle Based on Components from Missile Developments of the Army Ordnance Corps,” on 15 September, under his name and with his editing. As the title was classified Confidential, the report also had an alternate, unclassified cover sheet: “A Minimum Proposal for Project Slug.” “Slug,” coined by George Hoover, stuck as a nickname inside the project group as it ironically represented the proposed satellite: an inert 5-lb (2.3-kg) metal object, probably a sphere. In the process of refining the proposal, von Braun and his subordinates had become even more conservative about what performance they were willing to promise from the Loki cluster, now redefined as 24 + 6 + 1—the last, single Loki being the orbital injection stage. In order to get the maximum boost from the Earth’s rotation, as well as to maximize the possibilities for tracking the satellite, von Braun’s report proposed launching it at the equator, from an island or a navy ship. If the satellite orbited exactly around the equator, it would also pass over the same tracking stations on every orbit rather than covering a much broader band of the Earth.30

From the outset, the problem of optical tracking had loomed large, which is why von Braun had brought Whipple and Martz into the project at an early stage. In Huntsville’s limited experience with miniaturized electronics, 5 lb appeared to be too little for a radio transmitter and power source, not to mention any scientific instrumentation. Even if

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