Trial by Viking

In the movies and science fiction, rockets are almost as dependable as the family car. The take-off from earth is normally uneventful. The captain or dispatcher closes a switch, and off whooshes the rocket into the infinite.

Real rockets are not so reliable. In a new book, The Viking Rocket Story (Harper; $3.75), Milton W. Rosen describes the host of mechanical harpies that claw at each rocket that tries to take off.

Rosen is permitted to go into gruesome detail because he is head of the Navy's Viking Rocket Project, and the Viking is not a military weapon but a research rocket for exploring the upper atmosphere.

But behind their curtain of secrecy, military rockets have the same troubles--troubles that explain the notorious slowness of guided missile development.

Hostile Guerrillas. Rosen's first rocket, Viking-1, was tested over and over in the Eastern factories (Glenn L. Martin Co.

and Reaction Motors) where it was built.

In January 1949 it was shipped to White Sands Proving Ground, N. Mex. for final testing and flight. It looked fine: a slim aluminum pencil 32 in. in diameter and 44 ft. long, packed with the finest products of modern technology. But deep in its innards, as Rosen and his devoted crew gradually discovered, were massed echelons of hostile guerrillas: valves that refused to close or to open, electrical leaks and short circuits of high and low degree.

A few showed up before the "static firing" (rockets held to the ground); others maliciously held themselves in reserve.

There were so many delays and abortive trials that the White Sands supply of concentrated peroxide threatened to run out. This touchy explosive liquid, used to drive the Viking's fuel pump, was obtainable only in Buffalo, and to get a new supply would take two weeks because it could be shipped only by careful rail transport. When the discouraging news reached the Martin plant, two designers, Bill Webb and Jack Early, hopped into a station wagon, picked up a drum of per oxide at Buffalo, and drove the fearful stuff to New Mexico with carefree speed.

Final Triumph. Even such heroic action did not make the Viking1 fly until May 3. When it did, its power shut off pre maturely, and it rose only 50 miles, instead of the expected 100 miles or more.

Viking-2, otherwise a little more docile, did the same thing, rising only 32 miles.

Finally the trouble with both rockets was discovered: a small leak that did not develop until the rocket was in flight and vibrating.

Rosen's book, written with dry humor, recounts many such troubles with lurking, inanimate devils. One by one they were driven out of their hiding places, although one Viking blew up and another tore itself free during a static test. At last, after years of trying, Viking7 triumphed, rising 137 miles and exceeding the altitude record (114 miles) of the much larger and more expensive German V2. In 1954, Viking-11 established a new record (158 miles) for a single-stage rocket.

Rosen is cautiously hopeful about the future of rocketry and space flight, but he has no illusions. His book makes clear that each advance in design introduces new opportunities for delay and disaster.

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