Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [151]
At 9:42 PM, a warning horn sounded on launchpad 26A, as a giant gantry crane was slowly pulled away and the gleaming white Juno was doused in the bluish embrace of powerful sodium searchlights. Vapors hissed and swirled from the missile and rose through cumulus clouds, which parted to reveal a bright waxing moon. A pebbled casing of ice encrusted Juno’s midsection, reflecting the glare from a pair of red signal lights winking on the pad below.
“T minus fifty minutes,” loudspeakers throughout Cape Canaveral blared, while at the Pentagon the VIPs read the Teletype. “The searchlights are going on and lighting up the vehicle,” the Teletype relayed. “It’s a beautiful sight.”
“T minus fifteen,” the countdown continued, and Medaris felt the bile rising in his stomach. “There is nothing that I have ever encountered to equal the feeling of suspended animation that comes during those last minutes,” he later recalled. Soon, the automated firing sequence would commence, and there would be nothing to do but watch and wait and worry. “When the countdown reaches zero,” Medaris teletyped Secretary Brucker, “the bird will not begin to rise immediately so don’t be worried if we don’t tell you it’s on its way.”
“T minus eight and counting. The blockhouse is buttoned up.” The area around the launchpad was clear. Juno began powering up. Inside the rocket, motors whirred, valves opened and closed, and pressure started building up in the fuel pumps. The spinning bucket with the eleven second-stage Sergeants began to rotate, slowly at first, then faster, and faster still, until it was whizzing at 550 revolutions per minute and the entire missile hummed. T minus one hundred seconds. Inside the sealed concrete blockhouse, the fifty-four systems engineers grew quiet, scanning their instruments for any signs of trouble as Debus ran through a final checklist. “T minus ten,” he announced, his voice hoarse but calm. Just before 11:00 PM, the firing command was given, and the ignition switch was flipped. “Main stage!” For fourteen and three-quarters seconds, Juno remained on the pad, as flames tumbled beneath it, growing brighter and stronger, until the entire pad was shrouded in pink flaming dust. Then it moved. “It’s lifting,” the Pentagon’s Teletype sang. “It’s soaring beautifully.”
In Washington and at the Cape, grown men danced and hugged and whooped like excited teenagers, shouting, “Go, baby! Go!” Overhead, the missile’s red glow receded from view as it pierced the clouds, slashed through the edge of the jet stream, and rose toward the stratosphere. “It looks good. It looks good. Still going good,” Medaris’s information officer, Gordon Harris, dictated to the Teletype operator.
Five miles away from the blockhouse, in a small, equipment-laden cubicle at ABMA’s noisy assembly hangar, Ernst Stuhlinger was also tracking the missile’s progress, slide rule in hand. He’d practiced his calculations countless times, had the math down till it was almost second nature, but now that it mattered, there was no signal from him. More than six and a half minutes had elapsed since takeoff, and the Redstone main stage should have reached its apex by now. Where was the signal? T plus four hundred seconds. Juno was now 225 miles above the earth, in the nearly horizontal position needed to circumnavigate the globe. Still no signal. Something must be wrong. Get Stuhlinger on the line, Medaris frantically shouted, just as red panel lights flashed SECOND STAGE IGNITION. Stuhlinger had done it. But what if he had made a mistake? What if he was just a fraction of a second or degree off? Either way, they would know soon enough. The upper stages fired for only six and a half seconds