Breaking the Chains of Gravity Read online

  Now official, deciding between the various American satellite proposals fell to Donald Quarles, a member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, assistant secretary of Defense for research and development, and secretary of the air force. Quarles appointed an eight-man committee, two from each branch of the military service and two from his own office, that would weigh the nation’s options and make a recommendation. The committee’s chairman was Homer Joe Stewart from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, giving the group the moniker of the Stewart Committee. Joseph Kaplan, chairman of the U.S. National Committee for the IGY was also on the committee.

  The Stewart Committee recognized that Project Orbiter, backed by von Braun’s stunning record of success with rockets, was the program most likely to succeed. Stewart himself had even been involved in the proposal. Coming from JPL, he had served as an analyst on the proposal and made two important suggestions that ultimately strengthened Orbiter’s standing. He suggested replacing the Loki rockets with a larger solid-fueled rocket based on JPL’s Sergeant missiles. Stewart had also suggested using the Naval Research Laboratory’s miniaturized radio transmitter in Orbiter in lieu of larger army hardware, though this change never materialized. And the army-navy partnership also didn’t last. Not long after Orbiter was first proposed, the navy withdrew from the project in favor of its own satellite proposal.

  The navy’s independently developed proposal was Project Vanguard, another two-stage orbital system. The Vanguard launch vehicle was a variant of the Viking sounding rocket developed in the late 1940s by the Naval Research Laboratory and built by the Glenn L. Martin Company, making it one of the earliest demonstrations of homemade American rocket strength. Developing a more powerful version of the Viking and adding upper stages would turn the small sounding rocket into one large enough to launch a small satellite into Earth’s orbit. The navy pitched a second variant of this idea that would use a Viking first stage fitted with a Hermes engine and three upper stages making it powerful enough to put a satellite as heavy as fifty pounds into orbit as early as July 1957.

  The air force also submitted two proposals that were, like Project Orbiter, based on its missile programs then under development. The first used the Convair-built intercontinental ballistic missile with an Aerobee-Hi sounding rocket second stage. The thrust of these two rockets combined could put a 150-pound satellite into orbit. The second proposal called for a Convair series B missile to launch a two-thousand-pound payload into orbit.

  Although these navy and air force proposals existed on paper, von Braun’s Project Orbiter was the only one circulating that was based on available technology, making it the lone system that could be built and launched within a reasonable time frame and for a reasonable cost. It was, as per his design, the best option if the United States wanted to get a satellite into orbit before the Soviet Union. Though the navy’s Vanguard proposal used the Viking rocket as its core technology, developing the orbit-capable rocket would essentially call for building a new rocket. The air force proposals, too, were both based on Convair rockets that had yet to be built and proven reliable, making these programs almost too hypothetical to be seriously considered.

  But technology and speed weren’t the only considerations. The Stewart Committee also had to be mindful of other ongoing projects. Though Orbiter was the best option to launch a satellite in the immediate future, there was some concern that backing this program would divert resources and manpower needed to maintain the army’s missile program. Likewise, a purely scientific undertaking from the air force also threatened to derail ongoing projects, notably Project Feedback under the Advanced Reconnaissance System. The service was already working on attitude, guidance, and control systems, a solar-electrical energy converter, intelligence processing methods, an auxiliary power plant, and was investigating the effects of nuclear radiation on electronic components for a satellite. Duplicating this work to separate it from the military was both inevitable and unnecessary. The navy’s Vanguard was the lone proposal that wouldn’t interfere with an ongoing program.

  Another more pressing consideration was the effect a satellite launch would have on international relations. Even if it was a scientific mission, the show of technological strength would be inextricably linked. Here, Vanguard stood out—the U.S. Navy’s proposal was the only one without any ties to Germany. For all of Orbiter’s benefits, it was conceived of by an ex-Nazi engineer and both the Redstone and Loki rockets were based on his V-2 technology as well. The air force’s missiles also used the V-2 as a jumping-off point. But the Viking missile at the core of the Vanguard rocket had been developed by the navy as a sounding rocket. It had always been destined for research, never for combat.

  Vanguard alone promoted the idealistic notion that science was a peaceful undertaking. Backers in Washington appreciated the existing components, too, which promised to keep the program’s overall cost down. Whether it would work was another matter, but for the moment, Vanguard’s pedigree was best suited to the national aims of the IGY. It was the homegrown, peaceful, all-American exploration rocket with Viking’s success rate backing it up.

  And so the Stewart Committee put it to a vote on August 3. Members acknowledged that Vanguard was a complex system that would likely become more complicated and expensive as its development program wore on, but they also couldn’t ignore Orbiter’s ties to the Nazis. The decision was split with three votes for Vanguard, two for Orbiter, and two citing their unfamiliarity with missiles as cause to side with the majority. One committee member, Professor Francis Charles McMath from the University of Michigan Observatory, was out sick. His preference was for Orbiter, and had he been in attendance that day he might have swayed the two undecided members to land on the army’s side of a split vote. But he wasn’t, and the majority ruled in favor of Vanguard. The committee thus passed their recommendation to Quarles, adding the suggestion that the air force’s Project 1115, Project Feedback, be retained as a backup. The Naval Research Laboratory would assume responsibility for the project with funding from the National Science Foundation. The Glenn L. Martin Company, which had built the navy’s Viking rocket, would remain the prime contractor for the launch vehicle and its operation.

  When von Braun heard the decision, he was shocked. He had been with his family in North Carolina when President Eisenhower announced the United States’ commitment to launching a small satellite as part of its IGY activities and was certain that his own Project Orbiter would emerge victorious. After all, it was up against an unproven navy system and two air force proposals based on rockets that didn’t yet exist. Finding that both programs were selected above his own was more than a frustration, and his ire only increased when he learned that his proposal might have won were it not for McMath’s illness.

  The news sent von Braun and Army Ordnance scrambling to revise the Orbiter proposal with the hope of changing the Stewart Committee’s mind. The program was restructured to center around a larger rocket launching a heavier payload, effectively throwing out the window von Braun’s original idea of a small satellite to score a psychological coup over the Soviet Union. A new, more powerful Rocketdyne engine added to the new Orbiter proposal promised a system that could deliver a 162-pound payload by late summer 1957. If the team succeeded in shaving seventeen hundred pounds off the Redstone, Orbiter would be able to get a more modest, eighteen-pound satellite into orbit by the end of 1956. And if reports of the Soviet Union’s eighteen-month satellite program were to be believed, only the army’s Orbiter could keep pace with and stand a chance at beating the adversary into orbit.

  Von Braun did get a chance to try and convince the Stewart Committee to overturn its recommendation and choose Orbiter over Vanguard. He argued the army’s readiness to launch and warned of the Soviet threat, urging the committee to consider what might happen if the Soviet Union were to launch a satellite first, and went so far as to promise a satellite in orbit within ninety days. But his efforts were to no avail. The majority
still ruled in favor of the U.S. Navy’s all-American Vanguard program.

  The Vanguard program officially started on September 9, 1955, the preliminary plan calling for six vehicles for multiple launches. But before the year was out, von Braun’s warnings looked poised to come true. The political and military situation was changing on an international scale as American intelligence uncovered the existence of larger Soviet missiles. American intercontinental ballistic missile programs became a national priority, as did gathering intelligence on Soviet missile activities using high altitude aircraft and spy satellites. The focus shifted for the Martin Company as well. Not long after beginning work on Vanguard, Martin won the bid to build the Titan I intercontinental ballistic missile. Now with a priority program on its docket, Martin moved its best people to the military project and left Vanguard all but orphaned. Watching on the sidelines as the national satellite program fell by the wayside, von Braun began taking measures to retain Project Orbiter, even if it wasn’t a sanctioned move. So close to fulfilling his dream of reaching space, he wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The First Satellite Race

  It was a warm day when Homer Joe Stewart arrived at the sprawling Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, at the end of September 1955. The visit was an unscheduled stop on his way home to Pasadena from Washington, a visit borne out of frustration. He remained convinced that the Naval Research Laboratory would fail to orbit a satellite on schedule for the International Geophysical Year, and he was determined to preserve the army’s Project Orbiter in some capacity or other. Stewart wasn’t alone in this conviction. Wernher von Braun shared the same concerns about the navy’s Vanguard program, as did leaders of the Army Ordnance division. And so the two engineers devised a way to hide Project Orbiter under another name as part of another project, trusting the convoluted bureaucratic labeling system to act as camouflage.

  Stewart and von Braun first revised the proposal, turning it into a more powerful launch system. Further analysis at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory supported Stewart’s own recommendation to use scaled-down Sergeant rockets rather than the smaller Lokis as the upper stages. Eleven Sergeants for the second stage, three for the third stage, and one for the fourth stage mounted on top of a slightly elongated Redstone first stage promised a successful launch configuration. It was also one that could be modified to meet other program goals. An inactive fourth stage carrying a dummy warhead would make this rocket a perfect test bed for testing reentry materials. And so Orbiter was redesignated and retained under the guise of a reentry test vehicle, a small research and development program that would investigate how different materials and warhead configurations fared when reentering the Earth’s atmosphere from a high altitude. Five missiles were diverted to this test program before the month was out, among them Redstone missiles RS-27 and RS-29. If the navy failed and the need for a satellite launch became pressing, the program could easily be reconfigured to launch a payload into orbit. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but Stewart was nevertheless satisfied when he left Huntsville.

  Project Orbiter might have been temporarily saved, but the same could not be said for von Braun’s team. Having lost the satellite bid, they were operating without any long-term programs, a situation that loomed as a threat to shut down the Redstone Arsenal altogether. Salvation came in November when, after the drawn-out deliberation over the satellite program, Defense Secretary Charles Wilson finally made a long-delayed decision on the nation’s Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile programs. Wilson funded two missiles, an air force concept called Thor based on components of the Atlas missile, and a joint army-navy concept called Jupiter that would have to launch from both a ground site and a ship at sea. Securing a new program not only gave von Braun’s team much coveted job security, it also brought an influx of personnel to Redstone.

  The sudden increase in activity prompted the army to create a new organization separate from but on the same grounds as the Redstone Arsenal. On the rainy first afternoon in February 1956, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency was formally dedicated. It was a strategic move designed to cut down on the red tape surrounding missile programs by separating von Braun’s group from the rest of Redstone. The new ABMA stripped resources and personnel from its former home. Under the direction of von Braun and the strong leadership of the chief of Ordnance, Industrial Division, General John Bruce Medaris, the group set about bringing more Redstones and the new Jupiter to life.

  On the surface, Jupiter wasn’t much more complicated than incorporating the latest developments in missile technology into a new design. Fins, something von Braun had used in all his rockets for stability in flight, were becoming obsolete with the advent of increasingly sensitive control systems. Modern engines were not only more powerful, they were also able to swivel to help guide a missile in flight. The inclusion of these advances made von Braun’s first design of the Jupiter missile an advanced intermediate range missile, but the navy disagreed. Because ships have a limited storage space, the navy needed the missile to fit inside a launch tube. And so von Braun shortened the Jupiter’s body and added inches to its diameter to recover lost volume resulting in a fatter, squatter, finless vehicle with a large liquid-fueled engine in the rear. The missile’s guidance system was another problem area for the navy. Ships constantly pitching and rolling in the ocean meant launching a missile at sea from an unstable platform while fuel sloshed around inside the rocket’s body. Jupiter would need an extremely sophisticated guidance system to compensate for these launch conditions.

  Pressure from the navy’s unique demands was compounded by a directive from Washington in the spring ordering that some missile—any missile—launch on a demonstration flight as soon as possible. Reports of Soviet progress suggested the United States might be lagging behind on missile development. A demonstration flight would alleviate fears of a technological gap at home and abroad. But neither Jupiter nor Thor was close to launching or could be ready before the end of the year. Even the reconfigured Orbiter-turned-Redstone reentry test vehicle wasn’t quite ready to fly. The rocket was in good shape, but engineers still had to figure out exactly what materials and design to use for the small-scale Jupiter warhead needed to justify the rocket’s launch. But there was another option. Von Braun’s team suggested that they launch the first of the reentry vehicles, Redstone RS-27, with a dummy fourth stage. Little more than a payload, the inactive stage would reach a range of several thousand miles to demonstrate the power of the missile system. It would be a placeholder launch unrelated to the Jupiter program, but it could launch as early as September. When, two weeks later, Medaris got the go-ahead from the secretaries of the Defense and the army, von Braun felt slightly vindicated. His unwavering commitment to Orbiter, even under a different name, and his crafty though sanctioned retention of the launch vehicle was paying off.

  Though it was a suborbital flight, the basic Orbiter hardware finally had an official mission. And if it worked, there was a chance that the second vehicle, Redstone RS-29, could have a shot at launching a modest, seventeen-pound satellite into orbit before too long. Vanguard was, to no one’s great surprise, months behind schedule, making it clear that some backup system would be needed before long.

  As much as von Braun and Medaris wanted to use the capability they knew they had to launch an army satellite, they also had to be careful not to offend the navy team or appear to be positioning their system as a direct competitor to Vanguard. They also could not admit that they had circumvented national policy after losing the satellite bid. Interservice relations had to be maintained.

  Redstone RS-27’s potential as a satellite launch system was obvious, but it moved through launch preparations strictly as a nose cone test. The missile was redesignated yet again as a Jupiter C—Jupiter so the launch would be imbued with the support and high priority of that program, and the C denoting it as a composite reentry test. The Jupiter C, in reality, bore no similarity to the army-navy joint Jupiter mis
sile. The only technological overlap was the payload, the 86.5-pound nose cone that would follow a high arcing trajectory to demonstrate that its aerodynamic shape and materials could protect it from the searing heat of reentry. The test was looking ahead to a time when the Jupiter missile would launch warheads so high that they would need to survive reentry to detonate on their targets intact.

  In September, RS-27 was stacked and erected on its launchpad at the air force’s Cape Canaveral launch facility in Florida amid a flurry of excitement from the army team eager to see their vehicle in action. But the energy in the air worried officials in Washington who suspected that von Braun might “accidentally” launch the test with a live fourth stage and put a small satellite into orbit. And so the Pentagon stepped in. One day during launch preparations, von Braun got a call in his office from Medaris with an official order not to sneak a live fourth stage onto the rocket. Still wary, the Pentagon sent an official to Cape Canaveral to inspect the stage and confirm that a satellite launch was not von Braun’s covert plan. These fears, though possibly justified, were unfounded. The RS-27’s long Redstone first stage was topped by a live second and third stage but a dummy fourth stage. Rather than propellant, the upper stage was loaded with structural elements and sand as ballast. More crippling than the inactive stage was the missing attitude control system that would be needed to fire the upper stages horizontally on an orbital trajectory.

  The Jupiter C stood on the launchpad as days of rain and bad weather pushed the launch later into the month. The skies finally cleared enough on September 19 to begin the countdown, and at one forty-seven the following morning the rocket lifted from its launchpad through the cool air. Watching the telemetry on their screens as it flew out of sight, ABMA engineers saw the Jupiter C performing perfectly. The short flight reached a top speed of thirteen thousand miles per hour and covered a distance of 3,350 miles downrange away from the launch site. And most importantly, the dummy fourth stage was lofted to a peak altitude of 682 miles. It was clear that had the fourth stage been active it could have sent a satellite into orbit.