Dad told us later that it
was a Vanguard. It went up what, in the distance seemed to be all of
a few inches but was, in reality, probably a few hundred feet...and
came right back down and exploded. BRBR


That's interesting. None of the three Vanguard failures would have looked like
that. The closest was TV-4, which on 6 December 1957 rose inches from the pad
before exploding. The next one went off course and was blown by the Range
Safety Officer. Of course, it's easy for human brains to mix memories of
similar events a little. Mine certainly does.

Anyway, the recollection is very interesting nonetheless. I was moved to Vero
Beach in 1966 (Dad worked for Piper Aircraft) and watched most of the Apollo
shots from the beach or a Piper (thanks, Dad), and one smaller bird from what I
recall as a spot directly across the river a couple miles from the pad (that
would have been around August '66).

The two that stand out were Apollo 17, stunning even from a beach miles down
the coast, and a suborbital launch around 1969 (for a historian, I'm not very
good at remembering to look things up) which carried a barium cloud
experiment. Seen from Vero, the rocket arced up one clear night until it
vanished in a surprisingly bright silver flash that left a glowing green cloud.
We kids were all VERY impressed.


I never have seen a book collecting recollections of "space age kids" from that
area. It would be fun to do.








Matt Bille
)
OPINIONS IN ALL POSTS ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHOR