One Down, One Up

With a shore-shaking roar, an 85-ft. Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile shot from its Cape Canaveral launching pad in Florida one afternoon last week, less than two minutes later ignominiously exploded. The failure of the missile (control-system malfunction, officials explained) was bad enough; worse, this Atlas was the first fully powered U.S.-made ICBM to be flight-tested. It carried for the first time a wedge-shaped tactical nose cone capable of carrying a hydrogen-bomb warhead, and it was powered by three engines that burned simultaneously from the moment of ignition and generated more than 350,000 Ibs. of thrust. Atlas score, so far in nine launchings: three successful limited-range (600 miles plus) flights, six midair failures.

Well on its way toward operational perfection, the Army's IRBM Jupiter was shot off last week from the Cape, lunged hundreds of miles into the sky and 1,500 miles downrange; two hours later its nose cone was dipped out of the sea intact. It was the third nose cone to be retrieved, and, reported Army missilemen happily, it proved that the critical problem of warhead re-entry into the earth's atmosphere had been solved.

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