The Candle and the Kid

Bright, sunny Southern California:  the rocket jutted from the launch pad like a saber unsheathed for battle.  In a way, that’s exactly what it was:  a slender, three-stage saber carrying a basketball-sized message to the Soviet Union.  Although it was developed and operated by the U.S. Navy, the rocket. Vanguard, was ostensibly on a peaceful scientific exploration (“… to seek out strange new worlds and civilizations, to boldly go …”) as part of International Geophysical Year.  But we all knew the real mission:  to show the Russkies, and the rest of the world, that American ingenuity (actually, the ingenuity of captured Germans) could create the first artificial moon.

For the first time, Americans watching on live television could hear a countdown and feel the rising tension as it approached zero.  Wisps of condensing vapor floated off the silver-and-white shell and finally, as the countdown ended, roiling clouds of smoke and jets of flame shot out of the bottom.  Vanguard paused, the clouds billowed, and it started to move slowly upward with tremendous grace and power.

And then, a few feet off the ground, it sank back down and exploded.

It was humiliating.  Even climbing into the sky and exploding there would have been better than this (which is actually what happened with the second Vanguard attempt.)  Even more humiliating:  it was to have been the first, but the Russians had already stunned the world by launching their Sputnik two months before.  Not only couldn’t we beat them; we couldn’t even match them!  And their space adventures were launched in secrecy, while we made our blunders in full televised view.

It probably altered my entire future.  The American reaction, after the initial panic, was to pour resources into a new emphasis on science and math education.  Who needed literature and art any longer?  The Russians could launch satellites!  I suddenly found myself in a new, experimental math class, so new that the textbooks were bound in construction paper and printed, it seemed, with a mimeograph.  I was baffled by it; if it hadn’t been for Rich, who was to become a lifelong best friend and who let me copy his answers on exercises, I would have failed.  SMSG Math made it clear that I had no future in science or technology, however urgent those fields might have been.  I ended up an English major.

Then the Russians orbited a dog!  True, it died up there after barking and whimpering its way around a few orbits because they had no way to bring it back, but still … Clearly, a manned flight would come soon, and we couldn’t even launch a damn metal basketball.

The Navy finally successfully launched a Vanguard (it’s still up there today) and the Army sent its own satellite, but the resources and talent went to the new civilian agency, NASA, and sending a man into space first was a national imperative.  By 1961, the Mercury program and its first seven astronauts were ready.  The plan was to send Alan Shepard essentially straight up on the nose of an Army Redstone Intermediate Range missile and then fall straight back to earth—fifteen minutes of a roller-coaster ride.  The launch was scheduled for May 2, 1961.

The Commies did it again.  April 12:  Yuri Gagarin not only went into space, but orbited the earth.  In a special affront to American rivals, he reported that he “didn’t see any angels.”

So NASA had to aim for second place, and with a different set of sub-orbital rules.  But it was still a matter of national pride and high drama.  After all:  Russian rockets worked, and American ones seemed to explode.  There was a certain macabre fascination to watching Shepard emerge from the ready room.

Actually, it got progressively more macabre, because the first two times he climbed into the Mercury capsule, the countdown was cancelled by bad weather after all the build-up. The omens didn’t look good. 

Finally, May 5, the weather report looked satisfactory.  Because the launch was to occur shortly after dawn in Florida, we West Coasters had to be up and watching at about 4:00 a.m.  It was a heady experience for a 13-year-old on a school day.   After more delays, the countdown reached its climax at 6:30 Pacific Time and Shepard, with characteristic American bravado, told Mission Control to “light this candle.”   Thanks to television and emerging national networks, and entire nation was able to share the event as it happened.  Thanks to the advent of videotape, you still can, so instead of trying to describe it, let me direct you to NBC’s coverage of the firstAmerican manned mission.