Talk:SCORE (satellite)

Comments
Greetings. Why does this page need expert attention? It looks reasonable to me, I am an Associate Fellow of the AIAA. Charles 03:00, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Question: a recent documentary called "The Fever of '57" claims that SCORE was initiated by Eisenhower, and it claims the military did not know about SCORE until after the launch. However, these claims contradict the official military history. Are these claims true? If so, it should be added to the Wikipedia entry. Bubicus 21:08, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Roy Johnson visited Convair in the spring (May or June)of 1958 in the wake of the Soviets launch of Sputnik 3 and told Convair management "We need to put something big up". It was Deanna Davis who responded "Well, we could put the whole Atlas missile in orbit." Eisenhower had sent Johnson so he (the President) certainly knew what was going on. It was Eisenhower who insisted on the maximum possible secrecy because he was tired of the embarrassment caused by Vanguard, the 4 failed moon shots, etc. If Atlas 10B/SCORE failed, he wanted it to go down as just another ICBM test. Johnson limited the "need to knows" to just 88 people--only people who were critical to the success of the project. The "military" was NOT informed other than the few who needed to be directly involved and they were warned not to tell anyone on threat of court martial. The launch crew was not informed. Atlas 10B flew to orbit guided by its own inertial navigation system, which was a one-of-a-kind unit at the time. False timing signals were being sent to the 2 ground radars feeding the guidance computers to create the impression the missile was "on course" to its target, the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic. It eventually became clear 10B was headed due east, not toward St. Helena, but when launch crew yelled at the RSO to "Blow it up", he was ordered to let it go, so at least 1 Air Force general was present who knew where 10B was really going. (That general was identified by name in the book Sputnik--Shock of the Century but I do not recall his name.) The Convair guidance engineer who master-minded the electronic hi-jacking of the missile had written the Electronic Countermeasures Handbook for the Pacific Fleet prior to going to work for Convair, so he knew not only guidance but how to spoof radar as well. He died in 1997. It is too bad so little information is available about 10B/SCORE. It sounds almost like a James Bond event. Magneticlifeform (talk) 10:16, 2 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Look at Chapman's 1961 book about the Atlas rocket. As early as 1955, Convair engineers calculated that the Atlas could go into orbit.  The decision to actually do it came during meetings between Dempsey (project head) and Roy Johnson at DARPA.  Convair engineers simply removed the radio tracking transponder, and during the countdown, the launch supervisor told the staff to ignore the Azusa no-signal and proceed with the launch.  That arroused suspicion, but seconds before launch, who cared.  It would make no sense to create an expensive false tracking signal just to keep the mission secret for an extra few minutes. DonPMitchell (talk) 06:57, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Eisenhower's remarks to Polish delegation
The following sentence is not supported by the cited source: "His announcement pointedly described that although SCORE was a peaceful mission, the U.S. now had the capability of delivering a nuclear weapon from space." The source says his statement sparked debate about nuclear launch capability, not that he himself "pointedly described" such capability.--Cam (talk) 23:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Two years later, and now the link is dead. The statement is unsupported and should be deleted.70.192.8.189 (talk) 21:05, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Now deleted.2600:1000:B111:E5EE:C9DA:1B4F:D9FE:C0D1 (talk) 08:11, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

The Talking Atlas
This term for the SCORE satellite was popular at the time. It should be mentioned in the article. Here's a NASA-published reference that refers to "PROJECT SCORE or the 'talking atlas' ": http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89045768215;view=1up;seq=121 70.192.8.189 (talk) 21:08, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Now mentioned in the opening paragraph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1000:B111:E5EE:C9DA:1B4F:D9FE:C0D1 (talk) 08:12, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

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Possible inconsistency; booster engines?
The "launch weight" is given as 3980 kg, whereas the "on-orbit package" is given as 3969 kg. Maybe I'm missing something. But Atlas B rockets had a "jettisonable rocket booster section" (SM-65B Atlas) If so, I would expect a larger difference between the launch weight and the on-orbit package. So there may be an inconsistency. Can someone who knows the details please reply? Maybe the definitions of "launch weight" and "on-orbit package"? Oaklandguy (talk) 01:01, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Polishing up
This article is quite close to a B. It needs one more section, essentially supporting the assertion that Project Score brought the US to rough parity with the Soviets (such parity lasting a few days until Lunik 1...)

Newspapers and AvWeekly probably will be useful sources for this. --Neopeius (talk) 21:12, 12 September 2021 (UTC)