New Moons Rising - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 2

10 tons of fuel,” had been designed for the sole purpose of hurling the three-
and-a-quarter-pound ball three hundred miles above Earth. 2 For the United
States, the effort of putting its first satellite into orbit had gotten of to a dismal
start—in full view of millions of Americans who watched televised images of
the conflagration on the evening news on December 6, 1957.
Few people watching that night would have believed that, within a decade,
the same scientist who designed that first tiny U.S. satellite would conceive a
multi-satellite system for determining the precise location and exact time any-
where on the planet or in the air. By the time the forerunners of gps were hit-
ting the drawing boards, the public had shifted its attention to the race to put
men on the moon. Plans for a global satellite-based navigation system, largely
classified and visionary beyond what most of the military brass saw as practi-
cal, would have to wait years for technical advances and conventional thinking
to catch up. However, any discussion of gps must begin with the launching of
the first man-made satellites at the dawn of the space age. The system's dna
traces directly back to the technologies, the scientists, and the military institu-
tions that participated in what sometimes has been called “the first space race.” 3
After crews extinguished the fire and began cleaning up the Vanguard launch
site, they found the satellite lying on the ground. It survived a seven-story fall,
a 3,500-degree inferno, and being doused with tons of water. Its antennas were
bent but the sphere was intact, and ground receivers set up to monitor its orbits
confirmed that it was transmitting two radio signals, as designed. 4 Martin
Votaw, who built the small transmitters (using early transistors in place of vac-
uum tubes), was listening as the satellite made its short journey to the ground.
Votaw went to the launch pad to retrieve it. “There it was, clean as a whistle,”
he recalled clearly in an interview ifty-two years later. 5 He placed the battered
satellite in a brown cardboard box and took it to the man who led its design
team, thirty-six-year-old Roger Easton, future head of the Space Applications
Branch at the Naval Research Laboratory (nrl).
“What should we do with it?” Votaw asked.
“Take it home, I guess,” Easton replied. 6
In a move that today would provoke intense questioning, if not an airport
lockdown, Easton nonchalantly carried the box with the satellite aboard a com-
mercial flight back to Washington dc. 7 “It sat on our kitchen table overnight,”
his daughter, Ruth, recalled. 8 Easton delivered the satellite to John P. Hagen,
director of Project Vanguard, who later donated it to the Smithsonian's National
Air and Space Museum, where it remains today. 9