Second Stage

More important than the rumbling of the defense debate last week was the roar of a 110-ton Titan intercontinental ballistic missile lifting cleanly into space with 300,000 pounds of thrust. After nine months of frustrating failure at its Cape Canaveral pads (which crews had dubbed "the inferiority complex"), Titan No. B7A got off to its first two-stage flight. Two minutes and 50 miles downrange, its second stage kicked in with 80.000 pounds of thrust, a roar heard round the world because Titan's 41-foot, 24-ton second stage is the largest vehicle known to have been separated and fired on the edge of space.*It plunked into the Atlantic 2,000 miles downrange, might have stretched three times that far had it not been weighed down with so much testing gear. The milestone shot cheered Titan's hard-pressed assembler, Martin Co. (TIME, Jan. 4), and Pentagon missilemen, who have bet heavily ($850 million in the fiscal 1961 budget alone) that highly touted Titan will go on the line next year as a more powerful and flexible ICBM than the 14-stage (single engine plus boosters) Atlas.

Their jubilation was short-lived. Three days later another Titan flashed skyward for 55 seconds, then exploded in a ball of smoke and flame. But even in this red glare Titan scientists and engineers could not be too gloomy; they were hard at work analyzing flawless, detailed telemetered reports of the unprecedented first shot.

Also in the space and missile picture last week:

P: The Navy's solid-fuel Polaris missile, slated for submarine duty late this year, scored its fifth straight success in a prototype surface firing from Cape Canaveral, soared goo miles downrange into the Atlantic.

P:Two hours later, an intermediate-range Army Jupiter missile was guided 1,500 miles downrange on its final shakedown flight. The Jupiter is now rated operational--four months ahead of schedule--and will soon go on NATO duty in Italy and Turkey. The record of reliable Jupiter in 29 shots: 22 successes, five partial successes, two flops.

P: An Air Force Discoverer satellite failed to orbit (because malfunctioning ground gear cut off its in-flight power 15 seconds too soon). Discoverer's record in nine tries: six orbits, three misses (all due to ground equipment lapses). P:The Saturn cluster engine, with an awesome 1,500,000 pounds of thrust, was earmarked for another $90 million in 1961 budget cash, lifting it to a fat $230 million for the year. The Saturn will shake through its first ground tests at Huntsville, Ala. in April, when Rocketeer Wernher von Braun will switch on two of its engines; later tests will step up to all eight engines. Said one Army spaceman: "That will really rock the whole state of Alabama.''

The Pentagon itself was impressed by some sobering reports on the second Soviet missile firing in mid-Pacific. Last week's long-range shot into an area 1,000 miles southwest of Honolulu was seen and monitored by a U.S. Navy plane crew, proved that the Russian ICBM is indeed very sophisticated. As the missile bore in at a re-entry angle of 18DEG (which indicated that the Soviets fired at maximum range), a capsulelike object was detached from the nose cone and dipped into the ocean. Both hit near the middle of a triangle of three Soviet ships, each three to five miles apart. Red sailors fished out the instrument-crammed capsule, turned tail for Soviet ports.

*When it shucks off its fuel-heavy first stage, a multistage missile loses a lot of drag, thus can fly farther and more efficiently than a one-stage missile.

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