High Polish

The U.S. last week polished off three new achievements in its ever-brightening space program:

P:Discoverer XVII, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, swung into polar orbit, logged 1,000,000 miles in 31 turns around the earth, then, on signal popped its instrument capsule over the Pacific. As if that triumph of precision were not enough, an Air Force C-119 flying boxcar, one of nine planes covering a 12,500-sq.-mi. "ballpark" near Honolulu, snagged the parachuting capsule at 9,500 ft.

P:Downrange in the South Atlantic, the recovery ship Timber Hitch stood by as Cape Canaveral launched an Atlas 700 miles into space. Seventy-six minutes and 5,000 miles after the blastoff, Timber Hitch plucked from the water a cylindrical instrument package ejected by the Atlas nose cone. Later, it was packed off to the States in a trombone case (it just happens to fit snugly within the shaped confines of a sliphorn box).

P:In California, Test Pilot Scott Crossfield slipped into the cockpit of the experimental space plane X-15, dropped free from the wing of a high-flying B-52, gunned to 80,000 ft. at speeds nearing 2,000 m.p.h. It was the first test of the X-15's new 57,000-lb.-thrust engine, the most powerful airplane rocket engine that the U.S. has built to date (earlier X-15 engines developed 16,000 Ibs. thrust). Said Crossfield, who flew only at half throttle: Acceleration with the new engine was so abrupt that it was "almost like an explosion."

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