_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [7]
NBC had its live television breaking news report, and NASA was now a fact, but the “spook” boys around the Pentagon weren’t happy. The Russians hurled large payloads in orbit, and our puny satellites could only watch. The Advanced Research Projects Agency decided something had to be done, and they came up with a propaganda doozey. They decided to put a whole damn Atlas into orbit. The entire missile would be the satellite. Let’s see the Russians top that!
The Atlas was, at the time, the country’s intercontinental ballistic missile, and for it to hurl a warhead more than five thousand miles, the stage-and-a-half rocket had to achieve a speed just under orbital velocity. Engineers figured if they stripped an Atlas down to its socks, to what they called a “hot rod” rocket, it would go into orbit with the assist of Earth’s easterly rotation. This meant Atlas had to be launched due east, out of the range of safety guidelines, but Major General Donald Yates, commander of the Air Force Eastern Test Range, told the White House he could handle that.
Only eighty-eight people were brought in on the plan. They had to strip Atlas 10B of everything not needed to fly, and they had to place a tape playback unit and a broadcast transmitter inside the missile. The tape was what we in the business call a closed loop. It would continually repeat a message recorded by President Eisenhower wishing all peoples peace on Earth from the world’s largest satellite.
The scheme was given the name “Project Score,” and Atlas 10B was ready to fly on December 18, 1958. The mission was the most secret American launch ever, and the “spooks” were off and grinning.
The newly created remote television truck is seen here at the Cape. Inside is executive producer Jim Kitchell (second from center). Correspondent Roy Neal (third from center) is seen talking to unit manager Dick Auerbach. The November 8, 1958, launch of the Thor-Able rocket to the vicinity of the moon is seen captured by NBC’s cameras—the first live television of a breaking news event. (Gold Collection).
Four days before the launch, I was in a stall in the men’s room down the hall from General Yates’s office when I heard a familiar voice. It was the general himself, talking to an ARPA man.
“Check the place out,” Yates ordered.
The ARPA man scanned the men’s room before bending over and looking under each stall’s door. By then my feet were up around my ears.
“We’re clear.”
“Okay,” the general said, adding, “My biggest concern is some damn reporter will find out about the launch.”
“So what?” The spook sounded gleeful. “If he tells the world, and we fail, we’ll simply deny it. He’ll be left out on the proverbial limb.”
“Right,” Yates agreed, “but if we get Ike’s message in orbit, then the President can announce it himself from the White House.”
The two men finished and left. Now I was the one feeling smug. It was dumb luck for sure, but just what in hell were they talking about?
The next launch was Atlas 10B. That I knew. But they were talking about Ike’s message from orbit. 10B wasn’t going to orbit anything! Or was it? I had been told how Atlas rockets almost achieve orbit each time they are launched on intercontinental ranges. Could that be it? Well, why in hell not? They could be orbiting something with 10B. That was it! They could be orbiting a message from