Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
1
New Moons Rising
The Satellite age arrives
From the vantage point of 2100 A.D., the year 1957 will most
certainly stand in history as the year of man's progression from
a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional geography. It may
well stand also, as the point in time at which intellectual
achievement forged ahead of weapons and national wealth as
instruments of national policy.
Geophysicist Lloyd V. Berkner,
Foreign Affairs,
, January 1958
Two seconds after liftoff and four feet into its flight, the Vanguard rocket stalled
as if held by an invisible tether and sagged back toward the launch pad. As the
bottom of the first stage, filled with liquid oxygen and kerosene propellant,
crumpled against the platform, the engine's orange exhaust erupted into a
massive fireball that engulfed the tottering seventy-two-foot rocket. In the
final moment before flames obscured its tip, the nose cone could be seen break-
ies and transmitters packed inside and a half-dozen solar cells and antennas
attached outside. The entire twenty-two-thousand-pound, three-stage rocket
assembly, which an Associated Press story described as “a ton of metal and
