New Moons Rising - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 5

jockeys. 22 With or without in-home television, every American could witness
the Vanguard explosion via grainy, black-and-white Defense Department foot-
age in a Universal-International newsreel titled “Satellite a Bust: Rocket Blows
Up in First U.S. Try.” Narrator Ed Herlihy, whose distinctive broadcast voice
most people would recognize even if they don't know his name, laments, “What
happened is already unhappy history—another setback for the United States
in the race into outer space.” 23
But what popular media recorded as a disastrous, dispiriting launch failure
was also a failure to manage public expectations, to appreciate the risks involved
in live coverage of scientific experiments, and to keep political aspirations in
line with technical progress. The launch was scheduled two months to the day
after the Sputnik shocker. When the December 4 rocket firing was delayed
multiple times—not uncommon in launch countdowns—and finally “scrubbed”
for that day, many newspapers ran large, bold headlines across the entire front
page announcing the postponement. American readers began to comprehend
the complexities of modern rocketry in stories that described the launch vehi-
cle's various components and blamed the delays on problems ranging from
frayed wires to defective parts to gusty winds. “As Impatience Mounts, Fidg-
ety Scientists Fuss with Bride-Like Missile,” read a headline in the St. Peters-
burg (fl) Times . 24 While such stories helped educate the public about this new
technology, the focus on problems and delays only reinforced the fact that the
Soviets had already overcome these complexities. During the wait, the press
corps scrambled for whatever story angles they could ind—iling reports about
how Cape Canaveral was chosen as the launch site, what the locals thought
about the commotion surrounding the event, the odds of satellites colliding
in space, and even interviews with each other. nbc cameraman Gene Barnes
fretted to a print reporter that the longer the delay, the less likely he could get
his film to a nearby affiliate and processed for airing on the evening news. 25
Camped on the beach miles from the launch pad, others complained there
were too few updates from program administrators. “They keep referring to
this as a test firing, but the public looks on this as the satellite and deserves
more information about it,” said the New York Times 's Milton Bracker. 26
This buildup to the launch contributed to an exaggerated letdown, made
worse by the timing—the December 7 anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The San
Francisco News even used the headline “Cold War Pearl Harbor.” 27 Time mag-
azine, in its December 23 issue, chastised the 127 members of the U.S. and for-
eign press corps who covered the launch, pointing out that few “gave any strong