To Cape Canaveral for the Deal II launch

I left Pasadena with Henry Richter for Washington on Thursday, 20 February, to deal with the ground station readiness problem.8 Finally, on Saturday, over a week before the scheduled launch, I was on my way from Washington to Florida. After hitching a ride from the Orlando airport to Cocoa Beach with Roger Easton, Marty Votaw, and other NRL personnel, I checked in at the Sea Missile Motel. Early on Monday morning, I joined the JPL and Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) crews at Cape Canaveral and we all worked, steadily and methodically, to prepare for the second Jupiter C launch.

Being at the Cape for a full 10 days during the preparations for the initial Deal II launch attempt, I received an extraordinarily complete and exciting exposure to the myriad activities involved in launching a large multistage rocket. With the countless components that had to work together flawlessly, the handling of highly corrosive fuels and cryogenic oxidizers, and the pushing of the state-of-the-art in materials and electronics, I still marvel that it was possible to launch the first satellites at all.

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Cape Canaveral was an isolated piece of real estate before it was tapped for its rocket-testing mission. A nineteenth-century lighthouse is still located near its tip. The few early inhabitants had to contend with swamps and myriad pests, including coral snakes and rattlesnakes, wildcats, deer, armadillos, alligators, and, of course, the always troublesome swarms of mosquitoes.

The first rocket launches from Cape Canaveral had taken place on 24 and 29 July 1950. They were of the two-stage combination of the German V-2 boosters topped by JPL WAC Corporals, the so-called Bumper rockets. They took place from a site, later identified as Launch Complex 3 but long since dismantled, near the lighthouse.

The evolution of the complete Cape Canaveral and Merritt Island area into the massive complex of today is a fascinating story in itself. The layout of the portion of the Cape that was active in 1958 is shown in Figure 10.3.

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The satellite preparations at Cape Canaveral were centered at the Spin Test Facility, located not far from Launch Complex LC-26, from which the Deal satellites were launched. The Spin Test Facility was a simple blocklike structure containing a single large bay with a high ceiling. It was built for the express purpose of stacking and checking the Jupiter C second-, third-, and fourth-stage solid rockets. The satellite received its final assembly and electrical checkout in a trailer just outside the Spin Test Facility. It was then carried into the Spin Test Facility, subjected to a payload spin test, and mated with the final rocket stage. That top assembly was spin tested, and then mated to the rest of the rocket cluster. Finally, the composite second-, third-, and fourth-stage assembly was balanced and spin tested.

The roof of the Spin Test Facility served as a wonderful observation post. It placed us in the open above the scrub growth so that we had a clear view of all launches then being conducted at the Cape. The Redstone and Jupiter pads with their blockhouses were just over a mile away. The Thor site was only one and a half miles away, and the Vanguard site was one and three-quarters miles distant. The Atlas pads were taking shape in Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) row about four miles away. (The Titan pads shown on the map had not yet been built in early 1958.)

From the vantage point of the Spin Test Facility roof, during 1958, we observed a steady parade of launches, of both spacecraft and military rockets. This was a truly overpowering experience, even if not very wise, as we were so close that a stray missile would have been impossible to dodge. Sometime later that year, Cape officials moved the security line farther back when launches were scheduled, and we had to do our recreational watching at a roadblock somewhat farther away.

Even there, the launches were spectacular beyond words. The sense of unleashed raw power as the vehicles lifted from their pads and arched into the blue or nighttime sky was awesome, indeed. During my many visits to the Cape from 1958 through 1965, I watched launches of Bomarc, Matador, Navaho, Snark, Polaris, Juno, Thor, and Atlas rockets. Many were failures. On one occasion, I observed a particularly memorable show—an evening launch attempt of a Thor by the Air Force. It exploded only a few thousand feet into the air. The resultant burning of aluminum and magnesium parts lit the nighttime sky like a monstrous flare, so bright that objects on the ground were as clearly visible as though it were daytime.

To my great disappointment, I was never able to witness a Saturn or Shuttle launch, but by extrapolation, I can imagine the intense sensations of hearing and feeling that must be conveyed by the launch of those much larger vehicles.

Back to Deal II: the JPL satellite payload crew and I concentrated on the detailed checkout of the three identical flight instruments. Those tests included electrical performance, spin, and radiated power tests. For some of those tests, we used a

OPENING SPACE RESEARCH

special interrogation station set up in the nearby Atlas Radio Inertial Guidance (RIG) area. For all three payloads, I read and analyzed a seemingly endless stream of data recordings, concentrating on the performance of the onboard recorders. Although some of the tests used radioactive sources to stimulate the GM counters, others required extended periods to register the less frequent natural cosmic rays.

We also performed a major radio frequency interference test by mounting the Spare Payload atop the fully assembled multistage rocket in its launch gantry. During that test, we displayed the instrument’s signal, both in real time from the test-site receiver and post facto from data recordings made at the fully functioning ground station located some distance away. Part of that test included interrogating the onboard data recorder via the transmitter at the RIG site. Those tests worked well. Unfortunately, we were not able to spin the tub containing the three upper rocket stages and instrument atop the Redstone booster. That omission resulted in considerable anguish later, during the actual launch countdown.

On Monday and Tuesday (the two days before launch), I briefly summarized the results of the complete array of tests on all three payloads in my notebook.9 Flight Payload 1 was “no good,” with much skipping of the data tape recorder’s toothed ratchet. Flight Payload 2 and the Spare Payload were both generally satisfactorily, although there were some conditions under which the Flight Payload 2 data recorder also skipped.

It was at that time that I learned with tremendous relief that NRL had completed and tested all of their interrogating ground stations.

On the day before launch, it was time to make a final decision on the selection of the flight payload. Since Flight Payload 1 was not acceptable, it was a question of whether to fly Flight Payload 2 or the Spare Payload. Milt Brockman, the JPL payload manager, strongly preferred Flight Payload 2. It had been fully assembled and tested back at JPL, whereas the Spare Payload had been finally assembled at the Cape and had received less testing. Furthermore, a thermistor substitution had been made in the Spare Payload, and that component had not been as thoroughly calibrated. I had a slight preference for the Spare Payload, as the tape recorder operation was more dependable. I noted, “The tape recorder [in the Spare Payload] does not skip when jarred so easily. P. L. [Payload] II is quite bad in this respect. However it seems to be OK when kept still.” After lengthy discussions, I reluctantly acquiesced to Brockman’s recommendation, and Flight Payload 2 was selected for launch. That payload is shown in the photographs of Figure 10.4.