e-Claire

William H Pickering

It was a dismal October Saturday in 1957 when the United States public learned that the Soviet Union had launched a grapefruit-sized satellite called Sputnik into orbit around the Earth, trumping U.S. efforts 10 years into the Cold War. Before that time, Pickering once said, the public had paid little attention to the nation's rudimentary space program. "The existence of the Sputnik was a great shock to the people of the United States," Pickering later recalled. "They suddenly realized that the Russians, who they thought of as peasants, had launched technology that was circling above them several times a day. That horrified people." ..."More than any other individual, Bill Pickering was responsible for America's success in exploring the planets," said former Caltech President Thomas E. Everhart. "Under his leadership and vision, the field of planetary science grew into a distinct and cohesive new discipline." ..."Dr. Pickering was one of the titans of our nation's space program," said the current JPL director, Charles Elachi. "It was his leadership that took America into space and opened up the moon and planets to the world." William H. Pickering ... died of pneumonia Monday at his home in La Cañada Flintridge.

So long and thanks for all the planets.

1. Take a close look at Von Braun in this photograph (he’s the guy on the far right—appropriate, no?).

   He’s saying to himself, “Hey!  I coulda had a V-2!”

   Sha-boom.

   Posted by  on  03/18/04  at  01:40 AM

2. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

   Posted by Claire  on  03/18/04  at  02:16 AM

3. The Redstone upper stage WAS a V-2.  If not for that, the US would never have launched Explorer, nor the first 2 Mercury flights.

   I met Pickering once when I was a kid—my late uncle was his deputy director during the early days.  I still have some very nice 8x10 glossies of Explorer-Redstone on the pad.

   Dr Pickering was an American hero.

   Posted by Kevin Murphy  on  03/18/04  at  05:00 AM

4. Er...it was (a) a joke.  And (b) the upper stage of the Jupiter C (also known as a Juno 1) was *three* upper stages—and all of them were solids.  That cylinder that one sees in the photos of the launch?  That cylinder has two of the three upper stages; a ring of solids (stage two) surrounding a smaller bunch of solids (stage 3).  And sitting on top of it all is a single solid (stage four) with the satellite instrumentation attached.  What Pickering and Von Braun are holding up in the picture on Claire’s website is that last stage, stage 4, which was also Explorer 1.  The instrumentation part is the one on the end with the point cone on it and with the black and white stripes (which are for temperature control).

   Posted by  on  03/18/04  at  05:29 AM

5. Oh, I also forgot...the Redstone was, of course, the first stage of the Juno 1/Jupiter C launch vehicle—modified a bit of course.

   And, modified a bit more again, the Redstone served, as you note, as the launcher for the first two Mercury flights.  The Redstone was, in effect, a V-2 that had been modernized with the various lessons learned by Von Braun and his team in their manufacture of about 4,000 V-2s (IIRC), and with the battlefield launching of about 1800 of them factored in.

   But the Redstone was only ever a single stage vehicle, as designed.  It was a battlefield ballistic missile (or was supposed to be).  It really did fill the same mission niche as the V-2/A.4 did.

   Posted by  on  03/18/04  at  05:34 AM

6. And forgot again!  Ya dammn betcha Pickering was and is a hero.  Period.

   But I couldn’t resist the joke!

   Posted by  on  03/18/04  at  05:35 AM

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