Red Moon Rising

by Matthew Brzezinski

  TV3BU, TV3’s designated backup vehicle, was proving as skittish as its late predecessor. General Electric and Martin were still squabbling over who was responsible for the original explosion, and several botched static tests on the replacement rocket in early January did not augur well for the relaunch. Nonetheless, with Medaris and von Braun breathing down their necks, Hagen and the rest of the Vanguard bosses were determined not to lose their turn in Cape Canaveral’s tight launch rotation schedule.

  The weather, on Wednesday, January 22, boded equally ill, as the final, frenetic preparations got under way. “The night was miserably cold and wet,” Stehling recalled. “With rain and hail alternating. Somehow, that night, the noise of the electric generators, the roaring of the gas compressors and the steady scurrying and shouting around the blockhouse, the squawking of the intercom boxes and the jangling of the telephones, the sizzling of the hamburgers in the Garbage [food dispensary] truck, the clicking of telemetry relays in the room, all seemed to be more discordant than usual, and we all had a premonition that the countdown would be unsuccessful.”

  Sure enough, with only four and a half minutes to launch on Thursday morning, a short circuit due to rain forced a postponement. The countdown clock was reset to 1:00 PM, and the rapidly evaporating liquid oxygen tanks were refilled for another try at 4:00 PM. More glitches pushed the liftoff time to 7:00 PM. Then with only nine minutes to go, a wall of ominous clouds rolled over the Cape. For an hour and a half, everyone waited for the front to pass. But it refused to budge. “Scrub,” the safety officer finally ordered, to general groans and curses. They would have another go the next day. “By this time the field crew had the usual number of unshaven men with dark circles under their eyes, and that gastric acid bubble uprising,” Stehling recalled. And there was the question of what to do with the fueled rocket. The liquid oxygen and especially the corrosive nitric acid in the secondstage tanks would wreak havoc on seals, valves, and plugs if left too long. Should the entire system be drained, which would require working through the night? No, said the contractors, the seals would hold another day. The red-eyed, nerve-racked navy engineers were dispatched to the Vanguard Motel in Cocoa Beach for a few hours of much-needed sleep.

  At launchpad 26A, meanwhile, where dozens of army binoculars constantly trained on the competition, ABMA’s anxious observers also took a welcome break from their nervous vigil. “Our people did not take kindly to the idea of sitting around twiddling their thumbs until Vanguard took off,” Medaris later recalled. As everyone at the ABMA complex well knew, TV3BU had only another seventy-two-hour window within which to launch, and then it would be Explorer’s turn. They were counting the hours.

  The following day, with the sun beating down on the Florida coast and the all-clear signal given by the meteorologists, Vanguard got to within twenty-two hair-raising seconds of liftoff, when its umbilical cord stuck. It was supposed to release automatically just prior to flight, but now a technician in a cherry picker was sent out to disconnect the cord by hand. For the sixth time, the countdown clock was reset for another attempt three hours later. This time it got to T minus fourteen seconds, when a valve alarm sounded. The liquid oxygen had been in the tanks so long that it had frozen a valve in the open position. It would have to be drained, and another day would be lost, as the countdown was reset yet again, this time for 1:00 PM on Saturday. Now, Vanguard was truly running out of time. What’s more, nitric acid had been sitting in the upper stage for several days now, and soon it would start eating away at the rocket’s innards.

  Saturday brought more delays and technical glitches, and at 11:00 PM the launch was postponed once again. The window had narrowed to less than twenty-four hours; Sunday, January 26, was TV3BU’s last shot. At ABMA, engineers chain-smoked, gulped coffee by the gallon, and paced like expectant fathers. No one could concentrate on the Juno. The navy was getting closer and closer with every attempt. Eventually it would get its bird off the ground.

  On Sunday, exhausted launch crews from both teams reassembled before noon. The three-hour countdown was slated to start at 1:00 PM, and Vanguard technicians in hard hats and gray coveralls were giving TV3BU a final once-over when a human shriek followed by an ear-piercing siren erupted from launchpad 18A. A worker was screaming in agony, holding his face. Brown fumes, the sign of an acid leak, were rising from the middle of the rocket. Firefighters were dispatched to douse the leak, while senior engineers ran to assess the damage. It was serious. Acid had burned its way into one of the motors. The entire second-stage engine would have to be replaced. A meeting of Vanguard’s top personnel was hastily convened. They could scavenge a new motor from TV4, which was ready at the assembly hangar, but that would take time and would create new risks. There was really only one option, they realized with creeping dread: cancellation. “Above our meeting in the hangar hovered a ghostly consortium, von Braun and his ABMA group,” a deflated Stehling recalled. “The Army rocket stood nearby, almost insolent. We had had it.”

  • • •

  After years of rejection, months of upheaval, and four agonizing days, ABMA’s fate was finally in its own hands. Now there were no more distractions, and Kurt Debus, von Braun’s unflappable firing crew chief, could concentrate on getting Juno ready. Debus was in charge of all ABMA operations at the Cape. A Peenemünde alumnus and a veteran of over two hundred V-2 shoots, he was probably the most experienced launch master on the planet. Like Voskresenskiy with Korolev, he was one of the only people at ABMA who could override von Braun, and even Medaris deferred to his judgment once the countdown started. Quiet and unassuming, Debus spoke English with a heavy accent. He had an uncanny ability to parse the torrents of information that flooded the command center just prior to launch, and with his nerves of steel he had a seeming immunity to the adrenaline rush that sent everyone else’s pulse racing so madly when rockets thundered to life. Debus did, however, have one failing, and it had almost prevented him from coming to the United States in 1945. Army investigators had classified him as “an ardent Nazi,” who had “denounced his colleagues to the Gestapo.” But such was Medaris’s confidence in his firing chief, now a U.S. citizen, that von Braun would not even be present for the January 29 launch. Medaris wanted von Braun in Washington when Explorer went into orbit so that ABMA would be represented at the press conference the IGY committee was planning to hold the moment it got word that the mission was successful. Von Braun was unhappy with the arrangement, but Medaris insisted that he would be of far greater value in the capital, making sure the army got the credit it deserved. A great deal of future funding was riding on it.

  With von Braun heading north to wage the public relations war in Washington, responsibility for Juno—though everyone at ABMA still called the rocket Jupiter C—rested entirely with Debus. Juno’s first stage, the elongated Redstone, needed little prep work. All its components had been thoroughly tested in Huntsville. The carrier’s upper sections, however, had to be carefully fitted together on site since they used solid propellant, a volatile mixture of polysulfide aluminum and ammonium perchlorate that was inherently unstable. Loading the eleven Sergeant rockets that powered the second stage was akin to handling live nitroglycerin charges, an operation best undertaken gingerly and not repeated unnecessarily. A second, more complex phase of the assembly involved balancing the bundled rockets in the special spinning tub that was used to distribute thrust. All eleven motors had to push with the exact same strength at the exact same time for the second stage to work. The rotating platform, turning on its axis at 750 revolutions per minute, negated any irregularities in the individual rockets that might otherwise send the booster off course. But if it wasn’t aligned, in perfect equilibrium, it would vibrate and shake and tear the entire upper stage. Like a car mechanic balancing a wobbly wheel with tiny lead weights, Debus spent the better part of two days supervising minute calibrations on the spinning bucket.

  Ernst Stuhlinger, meanwhile, tackled another critical task: a special timing device known as an
apex predictor, which determined the precise moment when the second stage had to be fired to reach orbital velocity. Since there were no onboard computers in 1958 capable of quickly making such precise calculations, Stuhlinger would have to figure out the apex on the fly, using Doppler radar, telemetry readings, a slide rule, and some very fast calculations, and call the blockhouse to manually send a signal for the eleven Sergeants to simultaneously ignite. This was the trickiest part of the flight. A mathematical error, a downed phone line, or any other miscommunication could doom the entire mission. Korolev had gotten around the problem by having his giant core booster fire continuously, effectively one enormous stage. For Explorer, however, everything would come down to Stuhlinger, his slide rule, and his ability to speed-dial the command center.

  Debus didn’t like the arrangement. “Do you really want to rely on this alone?” he asked Stuhlinger, pointing to the intercom connection with the blockhouse. But Stuhlinger was ahead of him. He had set up his own ignition button as a backup in case his call couldn’t get through. “I’ll push it at the right moment,” he promised. “Good,” said a relieved Debus. “Good luck.”

  Luck, however, was not on ABMA’s side, as January 29 rolled around and the jet stream howled in from the Atlantic with winds registering 175 knots at 45,000 feet, reaching 225 miles per hour in some pockets. Cape Canaveral’s commander, General Donald Yates, had been Eisenhower’s meteorologist during the stormy Normandy invasion. He had brashly predicted before dawn on June 6, 1944, that the weather would clear, and Ike had gambled all on his being right. But now he shook his head with professional dismay. The jet stream would not shift, and Juno would not survive that kind of wind shear. With its elongated hull, retrofitted tanks, and added upper stages, it had been stretched to a perilously slender seventy feet, and the swirling crosswinds could twist it or snap it in half. For the sake of structural integrity, the launch would have to wait.

  Now it was the army’s turn to start sweating while the navy bided its time. The scrubbed TV3BU launch had been rescheduled for February 3, which meant that ABMA had to get its shot off by January 31 or lose its turn in the rotation. Vanguard still had priority over Explorer at Cape Canaveral, and since U.S. tracking stations could not juggle two satellites at once, a period of three days had to be left idle between rival attempts. So ABMA’s window was now down to forty-eight hours.

  The jet stream did not let up on Thursday, January 30. Despite the fact that at sea level only a gentle breeze ruffled the flags outside ABMA’s assembly hangar, at 41,000 feet the winds raged at 205 miles per hour. High-altitude weather balloons were sent up every few hours to track the disruptive air currents, which showed some signs of subsiding by late afternoon. “What’s happened? What are you going to do?” a helpless and clearly frustrated von Braun messaged frantically over the Pentagon’s Teletype machine from Washington. Much like the Vanguard crew a few days earlier, Debus and Medaris now faced the dilemma of whether to fuel Juno. If the winds didn’t die down, and the countdown was scrubbed, they would have to drain the rocket and replace all the seals rather than risk a repeat of TV3BU’s corrosion problems. But if they were too cautious, they risked missing their opportunity, since the weather forecasts were growing increasingly optimistic. Debus decided to compromise: load the fuel but hold the liquid oxygen until the last moment. That would mean less work if they had to scrub.

  A final set of weather balloons was released three hours before the scheduled 10:30 PM liftoff. As data floated back to receiving stations an hour later, the initial reports seemed promising. The liquid oxygen tankers were put on standby while Debus had the numbers sent to ABMA’s Computation Lab in Huntsville for more detailed analyses. “Highly marginal,” the lab messaged at 9:20 PM. “We do not recommend that you try it.”

  Drain the rocket, Debus ordered, to collective groans. The engineers shook their heads in disbelief. To have come so far, to have battled back from the political brink so many times, only to bested by the wind. It was maddening. Unbelievable. The height of poetic injustice. And now they were down to their last shot, with Vanguard breathing down their neck.

  Get some sleep, Medaris counseled his dejected crew. Tomorrow would be a long, hard day.

  The first weather report on Friday, January 31, gave a little reason for hope. The high-altitude winds had tapered off slightly overnight but still gusted at 157 miles per hour. A Redstone would have no problem slamming through this turbulence, but the more fragile, overextended Juno could still sustain damage in such conditions. Medaris munched nervously on a ham and egg sandwich. “Everyone was going on sheer nerve,” he recalled. “The men were tired. They had been working long and irregular hours, snatching sleep whenever they could.”

  Once again, liftoff was tentatively scheduled for 10:30 PM, and at 1:30 PM the countdown clock was set to T minus eight hours, leaving an hour leeway for unforeseeable delays. The wind was still not cooperating, and as he waited for weather updates Medaris chain-smoked and forced himself to catnap. By late afternoon decision time was approaching. Juno would have to start fueling soon. The highly noxious dimethylhydrazine von Braun had swapped for alcohol required special care, and technicians in hermetically sealed suits with integral breathing apparatuses needed extra time to load the toxic propellant. They would need to start the operation no later than 6:30 PM to be ready. It was do or die. For the umpteenth time, Medaris and Debus pored over the weather charts. Cape Canaveral’s chief meteorologist, a twenty-four-year-old first lieutenant by the name of John Meisenheimer, predicted a shift in the jet stream by late evening, with winds declining to within acceptable norms. But not everyone agreed with the young lieutenant. If he was wrong, it could mean disaster and could set ABMA back cruelly. But if he was right and they didn’t seize the opportunity, Vanguard would get another chance at making history. “Every man on the crew was conscious that the hopes of a Nation were riding with us,” Medaris reflected. The hell with it. He would gamble the hopes of the nation, and the future of his five thousand employees, on the word of a twenty-four-year-old kid. Fuel the rocket, he ordered.

  News that the launch was a go was quickly wired to Washington, where von Braun, Defense Secretary McElroy, Army Secretary Brucker, and the rest of the top brass descended on the Pentagon’s main communications center to follow the final countdown on large-screen Teletype monitors with direct links to the Cape. President Eisenhower would not be present during the launch. He was at a golfing retreat in Augusta, Georgia, but Jim Hagerty, his press secretary, would keep him informed of the developments.

  At 9:42 PM, a warning horn sounded on launchpad 26A, as a giant gantry crane was slowly pulled away and the gleaming white Juno was doused in the bluish embrace of powerful sodium searchlights. Vapors hissed and swirled from the missile and rose through cumulus clouds, which parted to reveal a bright waxing moon. A pebbled casing of ice encrusted Juno’s midsection, reflecting the glare from a pair of red signal lights winking on the pad below.

  “T minus fifty minutes,” loudspeakers throughout Cape Canaveral blared, while at the Pentagon the VIPs read the Teletype. “The searchlights are going on and lighting up the vehicle,” the Teletype relayed. “It’s a beautiful sight.”

  “T minus fifteen,” the countdown continued, and Medaris felt the bile rising in his stomach. “There is nothing that I have ever encountered to equal the feeling of suspended animation that comes during those last minutes,” he later recalled. Soon, the automated firing sequence would commence, and there would be nothing to do but watch and wait and worry. “When the countdown reaches zero,” Medaris teletyped Secretary Brucker, “the bird will not begin to rise immediately so don’t be worried if we don’t tell you it’s on its way.”

  “T minus eight and counting. The blockhouse is buttoned up.” The area around the launchpad was clear. Juno began powering up. Inside the rocket, motors whirred, valves opened and closed, and pressure started building up in the fuel pumps. The spinning bucket with the eleven second-stage Sergeants
began to rotate, slowly at first, then faster, and faster still, until it was whizzing at 550 revolutions per minute and the entire missile hummed. T minus one hundred seconds. Inside the sealed concrete blockhouse, the fifty-four systems engineers grew quiet, scanning their instruments for any signs of trouble as Debus ran through a final checklist. “T minus ten,” he announced, his voice hoarse but calm. Just before 11:00 PM, the firing command was given, and the ignition switch was flipped. “Main stage!” For fourteen and three-quarters seconds, Juno remained on the pad, as flames tumbled beneath it, growing brighter and stronger, until the entire pad was shrouded in pink flaming dust. Then it moved. “It’s lifting,” the Pentagon’s Teletype sang. “It’s soaring beautifully.”

  In Washington and at the Cape, grown men danced and hugged and whooped like excited teenagers, shouting, “Go, baby! Go!” Overhead, the missile’s red glow receded from view as it pierced the clouds, slashed through the edge of the jet stream, and rose toward the stratosphere. “It looks good. It looks good. Still going good,” Medaris’s information officer, Gordon Harris, dictated to the Teletype operator.

  Five miles away from the blockhouse, in a small, equipment-laden cubicle at ABMA’s noisy assembly hangar, Ernst Stuhlinger was also tracking the missile’s progress, slide rule in hand. He’d practiced his calculations countless times, had the math down till it was almost second nature, but now that it mattered, there was no signal from him. More than six and a half minutes had elapsed since takeoff, and the Redstone main stage should have reached its apex by now. Where was the signal? T plus four hundred seconds. Juno was now 225 miles above the earth, in the nearly horizontal position needed to circumnavigate the globe. Still no signal. Something must be wrong. Get Stuhlinger on the line, Medaris frantically shouted, just as red panel lights flashed SECOND STAGE IGNITION. Stuhlinger had done it. But what if he had made a mistake? What if he was just a fraction of a second or degree off? Either way, they would know soon enough. The upper stages fired for only six and a half seconds each, in rapid automated succession. Thirteen agonizing seconds later, at six minutes and fifty-two seconds into the flight, relief swept the room. Another indicator light flashed. “It’s in orbit,” said a technician matter-of-factly. For a stunned instant, the blockhouse fell completely silent. Should they tell Washington? Harris asked, finally breaking the trance. “No,” replied Medaris, with a smile. “Let ’em sweat a little.”