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Hagen, however, felt sufficiently pressured to keep up with the IGY timetable that in August 1957 he agreed to try to launch a partial Vanguard prototype, Test Vehicle 2, even though it was “an unaccepted, incompletely developed vehicle.” His decision, he wrote in a stern memo to Martin executives, “violated sound principles of operation.” But, he conceded, “this is the only way to have at least some chance of maintaining the firing schedule.”

TV2 lived up to expectations, failing to lift off five times in a row. It finally got airborne on October 23, but with only one of its three stages operating. TV3, the final Vanguard prototype, was to be the first attempt at firing the entire system, including the troubled GE main engine, the still-experimental second-stage booster, and the third small cluster of rockets bearing the satellite. A far more daunting challenge than its predecessor, with many more moving parts, untested components, and opportunities for malfunction, the TV3 test-firing was supposed to have been conducted in secrecy. Vanguard’s formal IGY attempt wasn’t slated until midwinter 1958, with TV5, and then only if the TV3 and TV4 tests went off without a hitch. But after Sputnik, White House press secretary Jim Hagerty had prematurely pressed Vanguard into early service by publicly announcing TV3’s December launch date. The newspapers had pounced on the announcement, failing to make the technical distinction between a preliminary satellite test and an actual satellite launch, and TV3 was quickly billed as America’s official response to Sputnik.

The usually unflappable Hagen had reportedly cringed at the prospect of debuting an unfinished product in front of a worldwide audience. But the damage was done. The administration, whether out of panic or confusion, had placed the hopes of the entire free world on a booster that didn’t even inspire the confidence of its own designers.

• • •

Vanguard’s travails had not gone unnoticed by Lyndon Johnson’s investigators or by the press, which was in a wrathful mood after eating so much Soviet crow and looking for someone to blame. The navy’s wobbly satellite bid made a convenient target. “An astonishing piece of stupidity,” groused Time, disparaging the Pentagon’s decision to go with Vanguard. The syndicated columnist Drew Pearson intimated that the Stewart Committee had been “prejudiced” by conflicts of interest. Hadn’t Vanguard been hamstrung by the administration’s “penny-pinching,” the New York Herald Tribune asked Trevor Gardner—lobbing him a loaded question, since he had resigned his post as assistant secretary of defense in frustration over missile and satellite bottlenecks. Gardner agreed that “the funds estimated by Secretary Quarles were totally inadequate,” as was the “low-priority status” the program was accorded by the White House. “It is predictable that the project would consistently slip, and this was pointed out to the responsible Administration officials,” he added, “including Secretaries Quarles and Wilson.”

Engine Charlie Wilson, for his part, was waylaid by the television journalist Mike Wallace. “You clearly underestimated the importance of basic research. Why?” Wallace demanded.

“This satellite business wasn’t a military matter,” Wilson replied evasively. “It was in the hands of the scientists.” Besides, he airily continued, people are panicking over nothing. “They’re so cracked loose on Buck Rogers that they’re seeing space ships and flying saucers.”

“But Sputnik I and II exist!” an astonished Wallace fired back. “They are not flying saucers.”

The upshot of the assault on Vanguard was clear: the administration, and ultimately the president, would bear responsibility if the mission failed. Ike was being set up by the press as the fall guy. His poll numbers plummeting, his supporters growing increasingly impatient, the once immensely popular leader was no longer immune to personal attack. Journalists, hunting in a pack, had turned on him. “Implicit in all the criticism was that he was too old, too tired,