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!"