SpaceMarathon wrote:
On Wikipedia I read that the Vanguard TV3 satellite was originally planned to be launched on September 1957, but countless delays forced it to be postponed to December culminating in its Kaputnik embarrassment.
Let's suppose that in an alternate timeline most of the problems for the Vanguard satellite got fixed prior and significant delays are far lesser than OTL. Thus it is slated to be launched in September as planned. Would the circumstances (like weathers) of Cape Canaveral during the 26th of September 1957 permit the launch of that TL's first artificial satellite?
You're free to link the historical weather reports of Cape Canaveral made in 26th September 1957 here too.
The weather was the least of the issues with Vanguard and IIRC TV3 was not originally planned as a full-up orbital launch but a vehicle verification flight that got changed due to Sputnik. "Fixing" the various problems was the hard part as a lot of the issues didn't actually crop up until all-up testing and/or launch. TV3 specifically tested fine... Right up until it lost thrust, fell back on the pad and exploded.
The Vanguard program was underfunded and under-supported for a supposedly "high profile" national prestige project and coupled with the restrictive nature of the "civilian only" policy of the Eisenhower administration tends to support the idea that it was never meant to be 'first' (and that Eisenhower significantly underestimated the backlash of not being first is obvious in hind-sight) on purpose.
The choice of Vanguard, despite the rhetoric, was a surprise to everyone especially the Navy. Policy was already in place putting most 'space' oriented (what there was of it anyway) operations under the Air Force and the Army had the more 'near-term' hardware while the Navy program could in theory produce a very anemic LV it was very far from an operational system initially.
Arguably the Army's "Project Orbiter" was the most 'ready' proposal and everyone fully expected it to "win" but it had several strikes against it. One being based on a (at the time) still in development weapons system taking time and effort to produce the proposed satellite LV would have impacted that development. (Along with the follow-on Jupiter which was dependent on the "Jupiter-C" Redstone test vehicle) As such it was also not in line with Eisenhower's "policy" of not supporting explicitly "military" space efforts. And lastly the main engineer was an ex-Nazi whom Eisenhower didn't trust or particularly like and of whom it was worried that that 'past' would in fact have an adverse effect on public support. (Which is funny as he'd become the main public 'face' of space travel due to Collier's and Disney so how that would have been an issue at that point in time is questionable at best)
The Air Force proposal of an Atlas based satellite was pretty much a pure paper concept at that time and despite their having "space" as part of their mission in fact the DoD was very soon to release a 'gag-order' on military and contractor personnel over speaking on the subject of 'space' and 'satellites' and military/DoD support thereof. (Getting roundly tired of Air Force, Army and even Navy high ranking officials spouting off about all this 'science fiction' space stuff for which there was no general interest at DoD levels at this time)
So since the Navy was NOT considered at the 'forefront' of space work AND their concept (in theory) used 'off-the-shelf' parts to make a very marginal satellite launcher, (but more importantly the Navy WAS at the forefront of microelectronics and had the technology to make a very sophisticated but obviously 'non-threatening' satellite) which was not tied to any weapons development program or direct military system the 'choice' was obvious. Especially if you, (or the Administration) were not all that concerned with actually being 'first' anyway.
The Army program would have been very difficult to 'slow-down' (as noted they had in fact been 'ready' for over a year already and any of the Jupiter-C test launches probably could have orbited a minimum satellite, btw Archibald it was the FOURTH and final stage that was ballasted without propellant not the third
) and it was not a small concern that 'side-tracking' to launch a 'useless' (DoD assessment) satellite could adversely affect either or both the Atlas or Jupiter missile development program.
By not assigning Vanguard much priority, funding or support the obvious outcome was going to be a drawn out process in conversion, testing, and operations and it was. So as I said weather was the least of Vanguard's issues and the "other" problems were the main drawback. "Fixing" those requires a quite different PoD.
Randy