Scrapbook 1: Nov 1961 — Nike-Zeus, Enos

America plans a fantastic shooting match in Space

by RONALD BEDFORD

UNITED STATES Space scientists are getting ready for the most spectacular shooting-match in history. The contest is between two mighty missiles.

THE PLAN: One missile, travelling at 5,000 m.p.h., will attempt to knock out the other missile, heading towards it at 12,000 m.p.h.

THE BATTLEGROUND: The emptiness of Space about 200 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

THE DATE: Early in the New Year.

Missile One is the 100-ton Atlas rocket, the H-bomb carrying frontline weapon of the US arsenal.

CLAIM

Missile Two is the twenty-ton Nike-Zeus rocket, which, it is claimed, can destroy enemy H-rockets in Space, before they reach their intended targets.

The shooting match will put these claims to the test—and determine the future of Nike-Zeus.

Already, nearly £300,000,000 has been spent in an attempt to develop a rocket that can destroy incoming rockets.

The coming contest has all the ingredients of the finest science-fiction—missile against missile, robot “eyes” against robot “brains.”

Early in the New Year, without any advance warning, an Atlas will blast off from a launch-pad at the Vandenberg base 200 miles north of Hollywood, California. It will be aimed to land, at the end of a thirty-minute flight, in the Pacific close to the coral island of Kwajalein.

But Kwajalein will not, it hopes, be caught napping.

On the 600-acre island, United States Army engineers and scientists have put up a fantastic array of equipment. Already the bill has reached the £30,000,000 mark.

THERE IS a triangular radar antenna, 80ft. wide, that looks like a grotesque sea-monster, whirling ceaselessly round.

THERE IS a 65ft.-high fence to keep people, and birds, away from the radar’s high-energy beam.

THERE IS a long metal tunnel, also for protection, through which the scientists and engineers walk to get from outside the safety-fence into the control building.

The energy that the big radar, called ZAR (Zeus Acquisition Radar), pours out is utilised to hang an invisible curtain thousands of miles out in Space.

Once an incoming rocket passes through this curtain, ZAR is alerted for trouble.

It passes on the information it receives to a “little brother” radar called Teeter (Target Tracking Radar).

BRAINY!

Teeter has the job of pinpointing the incoming missile, locking on to it, working out its speed and impact point, and deciding whether it has a nuclear warhead aboard, or whether it is just a decoy.

Teeter feeds all the information into an electronic brain. This works out the point at which the incoming missile can best be intercepted for destruction.

It sets the fuses of the warhead on a Nike-Zeus missile waiting on a launch-pad. And it presses the firing-button at the precise moment needed for a perfect interception.

ALL-ROBOT

And all this is done electronically, as no human brain could cope with the split-second decisions needed.

ORIGINALLY, the plan for next year’s shooting-match was to send up Nike-Zeus armed only with special radars and split-second cameras.

These would have worked out the nearness to the Atlas achieved by the Nike-Zeus, crediting it with a “kill” if it got within a secret distance.

But the Soviet resumption of nuclear tests last September, and Russia’s claim to have perfected an anti-missile missile, will change this.

PATTERN

President Kennedy is being pressed to authorise the use of a small nuclear warhead for the Nike-Zeus—to show, beyond any doubt, it it achieves a “kill.”

Next year’s shooting-match will also set the pattern of Space-war—with nuclear-tipped rockets being launched to blast out of Space H-bomb carrying satellites orbiting the globe at 18,000 mph.

ENOS, the champion Space chimp, landed safely in the Atlantic tonight after soaring twice round the world at 17,500 m.p.h.

It was an emergency landing. Three orbits were planned. But the trip was dramatically cut short by US Space scientists at Cape Canaveral when the Space capsule’s mechanism overheated.

The capsule, blasted 130 miles Into Space by a 100-ton Atlas rocket, was streaking across the Pacific towards the end of its second orbit when ground controlrecording machines signalled that something was wrong.

US Space Agency officials immediately decided to halt the flight.

They beamed special radio signals to the capsule, guiding it gently over America and out over the Atlantic.

The capsule fell into the sea on the end of a parachute, 220 miles south of Bermuda, and was picked up by a patrolling ship.

Enos was “chattering wildly” when he was released, the rescuers reported, but he seemed “quite normal” otherwise.

Enos—weight 38lb., height 3ft. 2in., aged 5½—was the first animal to be put in orbit by America.

His task was to blaze the trail for the first manned orbital flight—before the end of the year.

Enos made the trip zipped into a Space-suit, and strapped down in a plastic cradle.

As he soared through Space, he obeyed various commands flashed to him by coloured lights, by pulling a series of levers.

If he failed to obey, or pulled the wrong lever, he got a slight electric shock.

Eighteen tracking stations dotted round the globe kept a close watch on the flight—and the chimp’s reactions.

They found that his reactions were not affected by weightlessness, or by the shock of the take-off.

A Space Agency official said later: “The chimp didn’t miss a single trick. It was a very successful flight.”

The overheating, he added, could have been corrected if there had been a man in the capsule.

A CHIMP pathfinding for America’s first man into orbit was snatched from space today when its capsule went wrong.

The capsule was brought down into the sea after it completed two out of three scheduled orbits of the earth.

Warships picked it up 500 miles south of Bermuda.

The chimp, a five-year-old named Enos, was in good shape after three hours in space and an hour in the water.

THE WAIT

For six hours before blast-off this morning, Enos lay in baby’s nappie and white nylon suit strapped in a mummy-like case atop a 93ft. Atlas rocket.

Nineteen seconds before zero there was a hitch. But soon afterwards the rocket went like an arrow, through wispy cloud over Canaveral and flung its capsule into orbit over Bermuda.

Enos was on his own now.

At nearly 18,000 miles an hour the capsule sailed 150 miles high over the Canary Islands, over West Africa (where Enos was born), over Zanzibar, over Australia.

“All well,” said reports.

THE FAULT

The capsule reappeared over Mexico, then completed the first orbit in 92 minutes.

The second orbit went like a clock until the last 20 minutes. Then trouble.

The space-ship was overheating due to an electrical fault and veering off course. The men watching the dials far below switched in the retro-rockets and brought Enos plunging earthwards.

Parachutes opened. The capsule plopped into the sea. Rescue ships moved in. The chimp was safe.

One man in particular watched every move—John Glenn, a cool, 40-year-old Marine colonel.

Just before Christmas he is expected to become America’s first man in orbit—thanks to Enos and despite today’s snag.

ENOS, the five-year-old American space-chimp, was picked up safely in the Atlantic today after his space capsule ran into trouble during the second of three planned orbits of the earth.

The U.S. destroyer Stormes plucked Enos from the sea 220 miles south-east of Bermuda. Doctors aboard the ship opened the capsule and removed the special cradle holding the 37½lb. chimpanzee. They reported: “He looks normal to us.”

Enos was hurtling over the Pacific towards America’s west coast at 17,500 m.p.h. when signals from the capsule warned Cape Canaveral technicians that something was wrong.

Doubts

His intended third circuit was immediately abandoned and reverse rockets were fired by radio from California to tug the capsule gently back from space in a long glide across America.

The capsule, which parachuted down, touched the ocean at 1.28 p.m., just three hours and 21 minutes after it rode on a 125-ton Atlas rocket into the blue Florida skies.

The Stormes and a sister destroyer, the Compton, steamed at full speed towards the bobbing chimp, who went on pulling levers merrily to let everyone know he was still alive and kicking after his hair-raising trip.

What went wrong? Officials said an inverter in the cockpit which changes power from direct to alternating current had overheated.

But they said that a man could have corrected the malfunctioning rocket with a turn of a switch.

Although Enos came through his ordeal, the flight raised doubts as to whether the intended crash programme designed to get an American astronaut in orbit before the end of the year will now be mounted. It was dependent on complete success of the chimp-shot.

Chimp and capsule were taken to Bermuda for preliminary examination. They will then be returned to Cape Canaveral.

A comic

Earlier, the scientists at Canaveral had cheered as Enos whirled over the cape after blasting off from the concrete pad 120 miles beneath.

Cheerfully the space ape was pulling levers on the control panel for a reward of banana pellets. His first orbit lasted 88½ minutes.

Enos was in fine form. The Project Mercury control centre at Canaveral, in touch with all tracking stations, said “This ape isn’t missing a trick.”

His altitude ranged from 146 to 99 miles. A tape recording broadcast voice messages from his cabin.

Enos, a native of the French Cameroons, is a comic, clown-faced chimp. Through his rocket ride he reclined, freshly shaven and in a nylon jacket, upon a fibre-glass couch.

Space note: Ham, America’s first ape in space, was also scheduled to make the flight. But three days ago at Canaveral he rifled a box of biscuits and ate himself out of the trip.