Sad Grapefruit

This came up in discussion with friends last night... the Vanguard I satellite, victim of one of the more pathetic rocket launch attempts.

A bit of history... as part of the preparations for the International Geophysical Year, in 1957-58, the US decided to launch an artificial satellite, publicly announcing its intentions. But due to a whole bunch of politics (both domestic and inter-service military), the Eisenhower administration decided to base its effort, Vanguard, on civilian 'sounding' (research) rockets developed by the Naval Research Laboratory, instead of the military rockets developed by Werner von Braun at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency.

The Vanguard booster development was running behind schedule... and then this happened:



The Soviet crew, led by Sergei Korolev, launched Sputnik I, beating the US to the punch in October 1957. Khrushchev memorably described Vanguard as a 'grapefruit', much smaller than Sputnik I:



The end result was a highly embarrassing public failure, with the first launch attempt - Vanguard TV3 - getting just a bit more than a meter off the launch pad before the engine failed, leaving the rocket to collapse onto the launchpad and explode in an impressive fireball. To cap off the humiliation, the satellite was thrown clear of the explosion, and started cheerily broadcasting its radio beeps until someone finally ordered that it be put out of its misery.

The original TV3 satellite is on display at the National Air and Space Museum; the Vanguard satellite at the Kansas Cosmosphere is a flight-ready backup (as is the Sputnik I).