Science: Quiet Rocketman

At 6:30 p.m. a balding man in crepe-soled shoes and a dark blue suit strolled quietly into the blockhouse opposite Pad No. 5 at Cape Canaveral, where Juno II stood tall and white with the gold-plated cone—Pioneer IV—hidden in its nose. Carrying his 72-page countdown book, he ambled around the blockhouse. The countdown had begun at 12:06 p.m. and was going well. He looked up at the rocket. "Very dignified," he observed approvingly. Later, as is his custom, he patted it affectionately before taking his position behind the three sheets of thick tempered glass that protect blast-off watchers.

Dr. Kurt Heinrich Debus, 50, is the free world's most experienced rocket firer. Even-mannered, precise, saber-scarred from student dueling, he was once a professor at the Technical University at Darmstadt, Germany, started his rocket firing at Peenemunde in 1940. He fired more than 200 rockets in Germany (where an errant V-2 once missed him by 25 ft.). At war's end he came to the U.S. as part of the willing spoils of Hitler's defeated Germany, soon found himself in charge of all rocket firing for the Army.

Steady Platform. In the blockhouse, Debus listened as the clipped argot of the missilemen's countdown came over the loudspeaker: "Telemetry—on. Radar beacon—on. DOVAP*—on." Hundreds of men both in and out of the blockhouse were doing thousands of things. The rocket itself had come awake. In its guidance section, a gyroscopically stabilized platform was accurately aligned with the intended course. When the rocket rose into the sky, the platform would keep steady in space, allowing the rocket's computer brain to steer by it as if it were both a compass and a horizon.

"All RF systems† are go," continued the countdown.

It was too late now to change the rocket's instructions, which would control its course inexorably once it had left the pad. Each second of delay, Debus remarked, would cost an error of 17 miles at the distance of the moon. He studied the jeweled panels of lights. They had been green, red and amber. Now all were green.

"Minus 45 seconds—firing command. Tanks pressurized. Twenty seconds—missile on battery power. Two seconds—ignition. One second—mainstage. Zero—lift-off."

Black Line Payoff. At lift-off Dr. Debus looked through the window, studying the quality of the roaring flame. His experienced eye told him that ignition had been perfect. He strolled to the instrumentation room, where a moving pen was tracing a black ink line on a flowing chart. If the black line, which represented the rocket's trajectory, stayed sufficiently close to a blue line representing the planned course, all would be well. He watched for a minute or so. Then his saber-scarred face smiled gently. "It looks good," he said. Pioneer IV was on its way toward the moon.