In the movies and science fiction, rockets are almost as dependable as the family car. The take-off from earth is normally uneventful. The captain or dispatcher closes a switch, and off whooshes the rocket into the infinite.
Real rockets are not so reliable. In a new book, The Viking Rocket Story (Harper; $3.75), Milton W. Rosen describes the host of mechanical harpies that claw at each rocket that tries to take off.
Rosen is permitted to go into gruesome detail because he is head of the Navy's Viking Rocket Project, and the Viking is not...
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