"A Few Seconds on Infinity"

Pad 17A at Cape Canaveral was bathed in a fluffy, gently swirling fog. Cradled in its candy-striped gantry, breathing icy puffs of liquid oxygen, was the Air Force's 88-ft. Pioneer moon-probe missile. In the blockhouse, the countdown droned on for nearly 24 hours, finally ticked through the seconds to zero.

Just after zero, the blast burst down into the undulating swamp fog; there came a cloud of fiery gold that swept smoke and flame into eddying billows. As the rocket rose roaring, 100 newsmen cheered from the observation post a mile away, and down on the nearby beaches men, women and children, camped out in tents, told each other that this was a night to remember.

Up into the black space shot Pioneer, trailing its dazzling fire, burning first one stage, then the next, then the next, shucking off, in turn, its carefully designed earth clothes. In three minutes it was gone from sight, truly free, reaching up to where no man-made thing had ever touched. And a few moments later, as if responding to the challenge, the waning moon rose out of the Atlantic to the east of the Cape.

Whoops. Pioneer's destination was the skirt of the moon's gravitational field. Only during three days of each month--and within that period, only during 18 fleeting minutes of each day--were the earth and moon in such relationship to each other that Pioneer, precisely fired and guided, would pass ahead of the moon, sweep slowly into her field and take up an orbit (see below).

As first word came of the shot's success, Project Pioneer's scientists, technicians and observers threw off the guarded reserve that they had built up over months of missile woes, were all but hysterical with joy. When Cape Canaveral's pencil-mustached Major General Donald Yates walked into a press conference, newsmen rose and applauded. In Hawthorne, Calif., at the Data Reduction Center of Ramo-Wooldridge's Space Technology Laboratories (the Air Force's top moon-probe contractor), Air Force officers and civilians whooped and pounded one another. In the Pentagon, top brass cheerfully poured out their delight in hourly pronouncements on Pioneer's progress.

The Trajectory. One by one, Pioneer's tracking stations reported in with good news. Cued by the Hawthorne Data Reduction Center, the big radiotelescope station in Manchester, England picked up Pioneer within a dozen minutes, sent tracking information clacking back into the electronic data-reducing headquarters in the Space Technology Lab. But moments later, at the third stage rocket burnout, with Pioneer at maximum velocity, Canaveral scientists quickly computed speed and altitude. Had Pioneer shot up at too vertical an angle and thus been robbed of some of its getaway speed? The computations said yes. The scientists instantly decided to fire all eight vernier rockets in the fourth stage (although these had been held in reserve to deliver only incremental power) in the hope that the speed would increase enough to keep Pioneer aimed at its target. But the added thrust only increased the speed by 160 ft. per second--not enough.

Still, the news of the deviation did not dim the achievement. The all-important fact was that the bird had plumbed the black beyond, had climbed to unheard-of heights, and what was more, was reporting its voluminous findings.

The Dream & the Count. This itself was beyond the fond expectations of the men who gathered six months ago with Major General Ben Schriever, boss of the Air Force's Ballistic Missile Division. With Schriever were Ramo-Wooldridge's Simon Ramo (TIME, April 29, 1957) and Space Technology Lab's General Manager Louis Dunn. At the time, the Air Force missile program was ticking along on schedule, and Defense Secretary Neil Mc-Elroy wanted some new ideas for the space age. The men quickly agreed that moon and space exploration must be the first big step. From McElroy's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) came the decision a few weeks later: there would be five lunar probes, three by the Air Force, two by the Army.

Says Science Boss Dunn: "I got all our people together and told them that we had taken on a new job, and that in many ways it represented the biggest challenge we ever faced. Because while we were supposed to have this ready to fire in something like less than six months, we could, under no circumstance, let it interfere with the Air Force ballistic missiles program. That meant, among other things, that the 4O-hour week was out the window. And I thought I'd better be honest about it right then and there, so I also told them that it would be impossible to pay overtime, that we would have to do most of this on our own time. There isn't a man in the organization who hasn't done just that."

The Mating. Space Technology Lab s dedicated theorists and technicians planned the project and pulled together the labors of more than 50 contractors. As days tumbled by, one problem after another was met and solved, each piece of the vast puzzle was painstakingly collected and locked into place. Thousands of men, working hundreds of thousands of man-hours, fashioned the rocket--a Douglas Thor, an untested Allegany Ballistics Vanguard section, a North American Rocketdyne engine (improved over the model that failed when the U.S. tried its first moon shot in August). Within its slim hull, they planted more than 300,000 separate parts--wires, black boxes, gyros, batteries, automatic switches, explosive bolts, sensitive instruments--each machined to microscopic tolerances, each laboriously tested and installed.

In the topmost section was the payload, with 39.6 Ibs. of intricate sensing devices, transmitters and auxiliary mechanisms. These were sterilized to avoid possible contamination of the moon if it should be "impacted." Then, wearing rubber gloves, surgeons' gowns and brass "lightning rod" foot braces, the assembly crew placed them in position inside a top-shaped black chamber with the care of a heart surgeon. In the final 25 days, they "mated" the Pioneer's parts, put the finishing touches on their unearthly job; then the project scientists took their seats in the blockhouse, and the countdown began.

No matter that the Pioneer's trajectory missed the moon's vicinity. As one Air Force colonel put it: "It's enough that it fired, that we got the staging and free flight, and that that beautiful little son of a bitch is away the hell and gone out into space." Added Ramo-Wooldridge's Simon Ramo: "What we gained this weekend was a few seconds on infinity."

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