The Death of TV-3

In a spiderweb gantry at the U.S Air Force Missile Test Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. stood Navy Test Vehicle 3, a tall, three-stage rocket, the sun sparkling off a rime of frost crystals (from liquid oxygen fuel) on its silver and jet-black skin. Around TV-3, tired Navy and civilian scientists and technicians worked carefully toward the end of an hours-long count-down--air frame, propulsion, nose cone, guidance--while liquid oxygen vented off in trailing fume. "We'll be pleased if it does go into orbit," said one of the TV3 missilemen. "We will not be despondent if it does not."

What TV3 was designed to throw into orbit, 300 miles above the earth, was a grapefruit-size space satellite, 6.4 inches in diameter, the U.S.'s first. TV3 was designed as an experimental first step of Project Vanguard, the U.S.'s No. 1 pure-science contribution to the International Geophysical Year. Since the Soviet Sputniks, TV3 had also become the symbol of the U.S.'s determination to get going in the race for the conquest of space; the President himself had called attention to its approximate firing date in a post-Sputnik press conference. But even as the days and hours and minutes ticked by to the critical T (for test firing) Time, it was clear that the symbolism was getting out of hand. At Cape Canaveral, Project Vanguard scientists and Pentagon aides briefed 127 U.S. and foreign newsmen on the hopes, the postponements, the new times of firing and even the homely housekeeping details of the usually top-secret countdown; e.g., there is a valve leak; a new valve is being tried, but there is difficulty aligning it; the old valve is put back, it still leaks, but is soon fixed.

The briefings blazoned into worldwide headlines, U.S.. READY TO FIRE SATELLITE, said the New York Times, followed by U.S. DELAYS TEST OF SPACE ROCKET. The Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph proclaimed: MOON--MINUTES TO GO.

Cutting the Cables. For miles around the cape on Friday morning, schoolchildren, housewives, servicemen, office workers poured out into streets, yards, roadsides and public beaches not three miles from the launch pad. The red ball signifying test imminent was hoisted. The crash boats plowed out. The observation planes, two old World War II B-17s and a new Cessna, circled above, gaining altitude. At 10:42 the gantry was rolled away from the rocket; at 11:32 it was moved back again, then finally away; at 11:44 the last "umbilical" cable connecting the rocket to the disconnect pole was slipped free. Seconds later the first traces of white-hot exhaust appeared at the base of TV3 as Dr. J. Paul Walsh, 40, deputy director of Vanguard, reported over an open phone line to Washington: "ZERO . . . FIRE . . . FIRST IGNITION . . ." But then he suddenly exclaimed: "EXPLOSION!"

For about two seconds TV3 had followed its programing perfectly. Ponderously it lifted itself off the pad--one foot, two feet, three feet. For one blink of an eye it seemed to stand still. A tongue of orange flame shot out from beneath the rocket, darted downwind, then billowed up the right side of TV3 into a fireball 150 feet high. "There it goes! There is an explosion!" an observation pilot cried into his radio. "Black smoke is now over the entire area--We do not see the satellite rocket--We do not see the rocket that is carrying our satellite--The rocket may not have gotten off--There is a very large black smoke cloud--a very large black area around the location that the explosion occurred." By then the Vanguard had dropped dismally back on its tail, its nose section askew; it had burst into varicolored fire and flame.

After water and carbon dioxide from automatic extinguishers had put out the fire, the worn-out and heartsick missilemen found the sole survivor: the U.S.'s tiny satellite, intact, thrown out of the nose section of the rocket, broadcasting the signals that were meant to be sent down from space. The U.S. Sputnik sending from the ground was right on frequency: 108 megacycles.

"Worst Since Custer." News of the failure of TV3 was flashed out around the nation and the world. Impact: shock, scorn, derision. Almost instantly the U.S.'s tiny, grounded satellite got rechristened stallnik, flopnik, dudnik, puffnik, phutnik, oopsnik, goofnik, kaputnik and--closer to the Soviet original--sputternik. At the U.N., Soviet diplomats laughingly suggested that the U.S. ought to try for Soviet technical assistance to backward nations. An office worker in Washington burst into tears; a calypso singer on the BBC in London strummed a ditty about Oh, from America comes the significant thought/Their own little Sputnik won't go off. Said a university professor in Pittsburgh: "It's our worst humiliation since Custer's last stand." Said Dr. John P. Hagen, director of Project Vanguard, as he got ready to face a doleful press conference in Washington: "Nuts."

In the uproar of frustration there was a rush to find a scapegoat. First in line were the scientists and Pentagon press-agents who had yielded to press clamor for information on this nonsecret project. Even Vanguard's Boss, Dr. Hagen, handed out some afterthoughts. "This program," he said, "has had unprecedented publicity in the development stage, which is not usually the case, and in many respects I think it is unfortunate. In this case, I think the enthusiasm of the country carried people beyond the point where the fact that this is a test phase was lost sight of."

He was right: somewhere between accurate reporting and scientific enthusiasm the U.S. and the world lost sight of the fact that the complete Martin rocket had never before been test-fired, and first firings of test missiles are remarkably uncertain affairs.

"The Space Frontier." Out of the uproar at week's end some sort of perspective was forming on the TV3 fiasco. Items:

SPACE SATELLITES : Navy's Project Vanguard has another test missile at Cape Canaveral all but ready to test-fire a second satellite as soon as the blast damage to the launch pad has been repaired. Navy's estimated next T-day: January 1958, possibly before. The Army, ordered by Defense Secretary Neil McElroy to use its much bigger military rocket engines to blast a satellite into space as soon as possible, has eight Jupiter-C rockets available in its Redstone Arsenal. Army's estimated T-day: March 1958. The Army smartly made it clear that there would be no pressagentry before firing.

MILITARY MISSILES: Day after T-3 the Air Force unobtrusively test-fired a big, pilot production-line Thor, the 1,500-mile intermediate-range ballistic missile. Result: qualified success. The Thor, fourth to be launched in good style, sailed off skyward, but fell short, said the Air Force, of its target area. Meanwhile, the Air Force's 100-ft. tall, 5,500-mi. intercontinental Atlas underwent a static, bolted-down test at Canaveral, will shortly be due for its third flight test.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE : Defense Department Pressagent Murray Snyder, after blaming subordinates, newsmen and the beachside location of Cape Canaveral for the stupidities of the Vanguard carnival of failure, resolved--or was told--not to let it go as far again. Result: a security clampdown at Cape Canaveral.

But somehow sober second thought on TV3 never really obscured furious, frustrated first thought on what had gone wrong and what might have been. The most poignant note: an Associated Press advance story distributed to newspapers for use the moment when TV3 put the U.S.'s first satellite into space. It read: THE RADIO-SIGNALING BABY MOON CIRCLING THE EARTH IS THE U.S.'s REPLY TO RUSSIA THAT IT TOO CAN STAKE A CLAIM TO THE SPACE FRONTIER.

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