Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [129]
The army’s more conservative proposal, on the other hand, had no potentially lucrative new contracts to offer. It relied almost entirely on existing, “off-the-shelf” technology, and essentially swapped a satellite for a warhead on an upgraded Redstone missile. In opting to go with an ambitious, unproven design, the committee also accepted at face value assertions from the Glenn L. Martin Company, Vanguard’s Baltimore-based general contractor, that there would be no cost overruns on the project’s overly optimistic $20 million price tag.
The problems started almost immediately. Martin had built Viking rockets for the navy since 1948, but because the Vanguard launch vehicle was entirely redesigned, a Viking in name only, everything effectively had to be done from scratch. Within two months of being awarded the contract, Martin, GE, and the other subcontractors began to complain and Vanguard’s budget was revised to $28.8 million. A month later, in October 1956, it was bumped up to $63 million. By March 1957, it had risen yet again, to $88 million, prompting the White House to debate canceling the project altogether. “I question very much whether it would have been authorized if the actual cost had been known,” Percival Brundage, the director of the Bureau of Budget, wrote to Eisenhower in April 1957. But “abandoning the project at mid-stage,” he added, would lead to the “unfortunate conclusion that the richest nation in the world could not afford to complete this scientific undertaking.”
Vanguard narrowly won a stay of execution, though the following month its cost further increased to $96 million. Fed up, Charlie Wilson pulled the plug on Pentagon financing, and another scramble for funding ensued, with the CIA and the National Science Foundation chipping in to bridge the gap. By the time Sputnik went aloft (for an estimated $50 million), Vanguard’s total taxpayer bill had crossed the $110 million threshold, and the meter was still running.
Throughout the spiraling cost overruns, the schedules for component parts slipped, and assembled test vehicles—the prototypes—were often delivered late and in such shoddy condition that Dan Mazur, the Vanguard project manager, demanded on one occasion that the entire rocket be sent back to Martin “piece by rotten piece.” There were moisture problems, poorly located pressure indicator lines, unsoldered wire connections, corroded and leaky fittings, and badly fitted plugs. The GE engine had to be returned because of “wholesale system contamination.” Dirt and metal filings were found in the fuel lines. Cracks appeared in the propellant tanks. Batteries failed. Rubber wind spoilers attached to the exterior rocket casing fell off. The gyroscopes were off-kilter, the hydraulic oil resource was plugged, and aluminum chips were found in the hydrogen peroxide gas-generating system.
Vanguard’s tribulations were not confined to cost and quality-control issues. Relations between the program’s government overseers and private contractors had grown so strained during the delays that at one point navy personnel were denied parking at the Martin lot in Baltimore. The acrimony resulted in what at times was an embarrassing lack of communication: “What! You want to put a ball in that rocket?” a Martin official exclaimed upon hearing that the configuration of Vanguard’s satellite had been changed from a cylinder to a sphere that required a new cradle. “Why the hell didn’t someone tell us this?”
When the International Geophysical Year opened in the summer of 1957, Vanguard was nowhere near ready. “We’re never going to make it in time,” Milt Rosen, the program’s intense second-in-command, despondently told his boss, John Hagen, the project’s overall coordinator. “Never mind,” said Hagen, a gentle, pipe-smoking astronomer who was famous for never once losing his temper during Vanguard’s developmental ordeals.