Man-Made Meteor

The U.S. public has not been told--and is not likely to be told--what missiles hold the altitude and speed records. A strong contender for both titles is the Lockheed X17, a comparatively unambitious research job that was not designed to break either record. According to reliable scuttlebutt last week, the X-17 has climbed 600 miles straight up from Florida's Cape Canaveral. Coming down, it reached 9,240 m.p.h.

The same individual missile could not have made both records. The X17, officially designated as a "reentry test vehicle," was designed and built to test heat-resistant materials for the nose cones of long-range ballistic missiles that will strike down from space at 16,000 m.p.h. Such speed is not necessary for the test vehicle itself. If it flies at about 9,000 m.p.h. in the thick air of low altitude, its nose will be subjected to as much heating and erosion as if it had plunged at 16,000 m.p.h. into the thin outer fringe of the atmosphere.

Speed Going Down. The X-17 is a three-stage missile powered by solid-propellant rocket motors built by Thiokol Chemical Corp. While the large, first-stage motor is burning, it climbs upward like any other missile. After coasting without power to an undisclosed but probably moderate altitude, it turns nose downward and starts to fall back to earth. Then the second-and third-stage rockets fire. Aided instead of opposed by gravity, they drive it to enormous speed.

To make its altitude record, the X-17 could not have been behaving as its designer intended. Instead of waiting until the nose was turned toward the earth, the second-and third-stage rockets must have fired while the missile was still headed for space. Their energy was not turned dutifully into low-altitude speed; it went to lift the small third stage to 600 miles. The official theory is that something must have gone wrong with the firing mechanism. Less official theorists connected with the X-17's manufacturers suspect that the mechanism was gimmicked deliberately to..prove what the missile could do in the altitude business.

Fiery Plunge. The X-17 is not intended to land safely or to hit a target. The effect of high speed on its nose is observed by instruments and radioed to earth while the missile is still in flight. No official leak has described its last moments, but an eyewitness of a night flight was enormously impressed. Rising from Cape Canaveral, the X-17 was aimed on this occasion so that it would come down in the Atlantic 80 miles east of Florida.

On schedule it climbed above a high cloud deck and disappeared. The spectators waited while it climbed into space, and while it turned down and fired its final stages. The last stage is small, certainly not big enough to be seen at that distance under ordinary circumstances, but when the X-17 struck through the cloud deck, it was moving so fast that it had become a man-made meteor, brilliantly visible 80 miles away. Most of its plunging metal must have vaporized.

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