tbutler | So That's What All The Fuss Was About?

Remember all the video clips showing early US satellite launches blowing up on the launch pad?

Meet the subject. Vanguard I. (Well, a launch-ready backup.)

For decades, Vanguard was notorious as an example of US failure. Of the Eisenhower Administration insisting on a civilian program that wasn't ready, compared to the team run by von Braun at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. (In recent years, that portrait has become more nuanced - while the Vanguard rocket was based off of civilian sounding rockets, the program was run by the Navy, and there appears to have been some interservice rivalry there, if you sort out the claims and counter-claims.) After the first launch attempt exploded on the pad, the satellite was thrown free and rolled away, beeping pathetically on the ground. (This satellite is now on display at the Smithsonian.)

But you know? The one they finally launched successfully, several months later? It's still up there, orbiting long after its rivals burned up in the atmosphere. The oldest man-made object in space.