The U.S. man-in-space program, Project Mercury, scored its greatest triumph last week, when with infinite precision, the robot-manned Mercury capsule MA4 was boosted into orbit, permitted to circle the earth, then brought down and recovered in good condition. Despite all the excitement stirred up by the short, sub-orbital flights of Astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil Grissom, last week's achievement was far more significant.
The Atlas liquid-fuel rocket that put the capsule in orbit had been a cause of concern in Project Mercury because of two disastrous earlier failures. But last week's Atlas was...
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