Into the Blue

The WAC Corporal is a graceful, pencil-slim, 1,000-pound rocket, 16 feet long and 12 inches in diameter. Booted along at supersonic speeds by the combustion of liquid hydrocarbon, she aims to search out secrets of the ionosphere (super-stratosphere). The Army announced last fortnight that, on her first try, the Corporal rose 43 1/2 miles into the blue, came down by parachute.

In the rocket's nose are instruments to record the composition of the upper atmosphere, its temperature, pressure and density. Later the Corporal may report on cosmic ray and meteoric conditions, and possibly provide new spectroscopic photographs of astral phenomena unimpeded by the optical distortion of the lower atmosphere. Heretofore the best information on the upper air has been supplied by radio-equipped weather balloons which level off some 20 miles below the Corporal's recorded ceiling.

Bigger & better tests are on the way. Later this month the Army plans to send an emasculated German V-2 a full 100 miles straight up over the White Sands, N.Mex., proving grounds.

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