ALL ABOARD FOR OUTER SPACE!

Is this the ship that will take us to earth's first manned satellite?
By G. Harry Stine, Viking-Aerobee Operations Engineer, White Sands Proving Grounds
ON May 24, 1954, a Navy Viking rocket thundered 158 miles into space.
As recently as February 1949, a V-2/ WAC-Corporal "Bumper" rocket soared 250 miles into the sky over New Mexico's White Sands Proving Grounds.
Just last year, an Air Force pilot flew the Bell X-1A rocket plane "above 80,000 feet" and at more than twice the speed of sound.
We have built rockets which have gone beyond the earth's atmosphere and returned; they have reached altitudes where the remnants of the atmosphere around them were a better vacuum than that in a radio tube. We have sent men to altitudes where their blood would boil if they were not protected by a pressure suit and a pressurized cabin.