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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.