07/28/1961
The date is 196?. The place: White Sands Missile Range.
A colossal rocket is poised; The countdown ends. With an ear-splitting roar the spacecraft rises above the fluted Organ Mountains and disappears into the cloudless Southwestern sky, destination moon.
Incredible? Yesterday the Army said it favors White Sands as the launching site for this nation's first manned flight to the moon. It is one of eight sites being considered.
If it happens at White Sands the effect on that New Mexico
installation and the El Paso area could be almost as tremendous as the lunar voyage itself.
Several years of advance work would be necessary. Millions of dollars worth of new equipment would be installed. More personnel, perhaps thousands would move in. Hundreds of scientists and technicians would arrive, some to live in El Paso, Las Cruces or Alamogordo.
The cost would be astronomical. But one of the advantages of White Sands is that the Government already has plenty of land there or nearby. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which would boss the shoot, could use the facilities of Holloman Air Force Base laboratories, Ft. Bliss, and William Beaumont Army Hospital.
The moon rocket itself would not be manufactured at White Sands. It already is under construction at Huntsville, Ala. Saturn, as it Is called, is of multi-stage design and will stand about 200 feet high —about as tall as the El Paso Natural Gas Co. building.
Saturn would be transported in sections to its launching place. Many, many tests would be made before its eight rocket engines and its maze of equipment would be pronounced ready. But at last the long trained astronauts would climb in and the countdown would start.
Millions of Americans would be watching television. The greatest concentration of newsmen, in history, no doubt, would be at the launching. The whole world would be watching White Sands.
Two years ago, scientists were predicting a lunar shot within 10 years. Now there is talk of a full-scale space mission for Saturn, without a landing on the moon, in 1964 or 1965.
Meanwhile the U. S. is almost ready to launch a spacecraft with the same basic design that later will be used in the spacecraft that will attempt to make actual landings on the moon and possibly the planets. It is called Ranger I.
Chief aim of Ranger is to test "basic elements of spacecraft technology." It also will carry instruments for studying cosmic rays, magnetic fields, and radiation and dust particles in space.
It will not be aimed at the moon. It will zoom off on a long curve into space , probably traveling 685,000 miles from the earth before it gets back into the earth's atmosphere and burns up. The round trip may take 58 days.
With the experience of the Ranger and other space vehicles to draw on, the scientists of NASA will take the boldest step of all — the flight of human beings for a landing on the moon and return.
Saturn's rocket engines, able to generate 1.5 million pounds of thrust in the first stage alone, will boost the vehicle ponderously. But only 35 miles up the first stage drops off and the second fires. Three minutes later, the third stage fires.
By this time the spacecraft should be traveling at some 23,800 miles an hour outside the earth's atmosphere.
As the astronauts near the end of the flight — the moon — is 218,857 miles distant from earth — they will fire braking rockets to slow their descent. After a soft landing the men, in their science fiction uniforms, will disembark for exploration. When ready to return, they will fire the last stage.
Re-entering the earth's atmosphere, their capsule will be moving so fast it will glow with heat from friction. At 30,000 feet or so a parachute will open, lowering the capsule to the sea or perhaps at its home base.
In any event White Sands Missile Range will have made history.
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