They Shine in a Rocket's Bright Glare

The U.S. Explorer roared into space on a Jupiter-C missile, developed as a byproduct of the Army's Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic' missile. And Explorer's victorious streak turned a bright light on the Men of Jupiter. The big three:

Wernher von Braun, 45, rugged (5 ft. 11 in., 185 lbs.) son of Prussian Baron Magnus von Braun, is director of the development operations division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Huntsville, Ala., stands out as the inspirational as well as the scientific leader of the Men of Jupiter. At 18 Von Braun was working with crude liquid-fuel rockets, using Berlin's municipal dump; one day a black sedan stopped. Three German army officers stepped out, offered Von Braun military facilities to carry on his rocket work. At 20 he was chief of the entire German rocket program; at 32, working in the Nazi rocket center at Peenemuende, he built Germany's V2, which rained ruin on Britain. Caught between the advancing U.S. and Russian armies, Von Braun and his team unanimously voted to give themselves up to the West, also turned over some 2,000 tons of rocket equipment. The U.S. Army, keenly aware of the value of its prisoners, sent Von Braun and about 120 colleagues first to Fort Bliss, Texas, then to Huntsville to work on the Redstone missile. At Huntsville Wernher von Braun strides tirelessly through the agency's nine labs, oversees some 3,000 scientists and technicians, brings his lunch in a briefcase and eats off a bookcase while reading papers. When Huntsville's existence was threatened by the Defense Department, it was Von Braun who lobbied with Congressmen, accepted every interview and television date he could get, and kept the Army's team from falling apart. Von Braun eloquently describes the meaning of space travel: "It will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven."

Major General John Medaris, U.S. Army, 55, commander of the Huntsville Agency, with black mustache and swagger stick, often comes across as the dashing soldier type. He is something more and something different. Ohio-born John Medaris worked his way through high school driving a lobster-shift taxi and street car, began flying at twelve (he lied about his age). On his 16th birthday he enlisted in the Marine Corps, arrived in France too late for combat, was discharged as a corporal, and went back to Ohio State University for a degree in mechanical engineering. As a senior R.O.T.C. cadet, he won an Army commission; six years later he resigned it to work more than ten years in the management-consultant field. He returned to the Army as a captain of ordnance in 1939. Reason: "Once you've been inside, you miss the life, the friends." Medaris was a lieutenant colonel with the II Corps in North Africa during World War II, later served as assistant chief of Army ordnance before being assigned to Huntsville in November 1955. At Huntsville John Medaris welded 4,000 civilians and 1,000 military people into a close-working group. Medaris and Wernher von Braun have such respect for each other that Medaris wants the Army's next missile to be named the "Wernher." By function, Medaris is middleman between the space-at-all-costs Huntsville scientists and the cost-conscious Defense Department--and if Von Braun is mainly responsible for the blueprints that sent Explorer into orbit, Medaris deserves credit for wangling the wherewithal. Says John Medaris of past threats against Huntsville's continued existence: "It was all incredible to me." Medaris, Von Braun, and all their subordinates refused to believe the incredible--and put the U.S. into space.

William H. Pickering, 47, sandy-haired, New Zealand-born director of the Government-owned Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, led the Caltech team that developed the satellite payload for the Army's Jupiter-C. As a teenager he became a celebrity in his home town of Havelock, N.Z. by bringing home from boarding school the town's first crystal set, entertained his friends with dance music from Australia. A wealthy uncle from Los Angeles took him off to California to study, enrolled him in 1929 at Caltech, where Pickering took his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, a doctorate in physics. During World War II he headed up the Army's investigation of Japanese incendiary balloon attacks on the West Coast. After World War II he studied guided-missile work with Caltech Aerodynamicist Theodore von Karman in Germany and Japan, decided that German work had been overestimated, Japanese work underestimated. Now at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pickering directs about 2,000 highly skilled men and women, controls a budget of some $25 million (most of it from the Army), has only one reservation about his big administrative job: "I'd like to get my hands dirty more often. I miss being in the lab."

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