Science: X Marks the Minute

It was firing day at White Sands Proving Ground, N.Mex. A Viking rocket, built by the Glenn L. Martin Co. for the Navy, stood pencil-slim on the launching stand, its gleaming aluminum body surrounded by a gantry crane. Zero hour (X) was 10 a.m.

As daylight came, the lonely cluster of buildings on the edge of the great dry valley hummed with nervous tension. This rocket, the Viking II, had misfired two weeks before, and a rocket that has once misfired makes everyone a little nervous. Sometimes rockets “walk” (i.e., move sidewise) on firing; sometimes they explode prematurely. On such occasions the control blockhouse, which looks like a concrete igloo, is a good place to be.

At 7 a.m. (X minus 3 hours), a truck drove up and began pumping alcohol into the Viking II. Then came men in plastic suits to fill it with strong, corrosive hydrogen peroxide. The last fuel to enter the tanks was “lox” (liquid oxygen).

Jet Steering. These chores took a long time, while the tension grew. At X minus 30 minutes, a cascade of white smoke billowed out of a vent near the nose of the rocket, showing that the tanks were full. “This is a marginal firing,” warned an Army major. “If it doesn’t go off promptly, run for the blockhouse. If it starts to topple, fall flat.” Even the Glenn Martin men were pessimistic about this new-design Viking. “She’s like a woman,” one remarked. “There’s nothing wrong with her . . . we just don’t understand her.”

Built on the general plan of the German V2, the Viking has one great difference. The V-2 is steered by graphite vanes set in the rocket blast, but the Viking’s preset gyro instruments steer it by moving the whole rocket motor, playing the gas blast from side to side like water from a hose. After the fuel is gone, and the rocket is moving in the last of the atmosphere, small jets of nitrogen shot out of a pressure sphere keep it flying true. The proving of this new system, potentially superior to that of the V2, is the most important work being done with the Vikings. Altitude records, though nice to crow about, are secondary.

By the time smoke began to boil out of the rocket’s top, nearly everyone had retreated to the blockhouse. “It is now X minus 20 minutes,” warned the operations officer, Lieut. Commander W. Patrick Murphy, over the loudspeaker. “Silence in the blockhouse. No smoking.”

Red Bomb. At X minus 15 minutes, a bomb set off a cloud of bright red warning smoke. The gantry crane had been wheeled away; the rocket stood slim and alone. Just before X minus ten minutes, a man jumped up on the launching platform and pulled the safety plug from between the rocket’s fins, and thus closed the control circuits. It was ready to fire.

From the great valley, telescopic and radar and camera eyes were focused. Radio intercoms, film recorders, telemetering devices, electronic computers, machines that still have no names were tuned up and throbbing eagerly.

“X minus five minutes,” chanted Commander Murphy. A guard at a roadblock (all roads across the target range are closed before the firing) reported that a car had broken through the blockade. “To hell with him,” said Commander Murphy, “X minus three minutes.”

At X minus one minute, Commander Murphy began to count in five-second intervals. When he reached “X minus 35 seconds,” Milton Rosen of the Naval Research Laboratory ordered, “Recorders on.”

Fire! Then Murphy counted by seconds: “X minus 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .” When he reached “5,” Rosen ordered: “Fire!” A man at the control board pushed a switch, setting off the rocket’s igniter. The rocket was not supposed to go off until “zero,” but as Commander Murphy chanted “4 . . . 3 . . .” an enormous, fiery blast broke out from under its fins. For a fraction of a second, the rocket hesitated. For another fraction it rose slowly. Then it rose like a streak, as if an irresistible force had picked it off the earth and tossed it into the sky. Behind it trailed a jet stream mixed with white dashes of visible sound waves. A gigantic roar rolled across the desert, rolled back from the steep Organ Mountains that stand over White Sands.

For 49 seconds the Viking rose properly, leaving a trail of white vapor that twisted with the wind. Then the fuel stopped burning, prematurely. When its fire went out, the rocket was 10.5 miles up and rising at 1,775 m.p.h. Coasting upward on momentum, it reached an altitude of 33 miles and started down again.

A few seconds later, a radio signal from the control room exploded a small charge and blew off the rocket’s nose. Unstream-lined by separation, the parts tumbled over & over. As they fell toward the earth, observers saw silvery flashes of sunlight reflected from aluminum. Dust rose from the desert, and back from eight miles away came a muffled sound of an alcohol-oxygen explosion.

The flight broke no record; it was not even a success. But the instruments will tell what went wrong. Later Vikings will be better.

After a trip to the impact point, Commander Murphy reported: “The warhead was in one piece.”

“You mean the ‘instrument section,’ don’t you?” asked a civilian engineer.

Thereafter Murphy was careful to call it the “instrument section.” For the record, the Navy maintains that its rockets are strictly for peaceful research.