Chasing The Russian Bear
Space was just for Science Fiction fans until the world's first man-made satelite - the Ussr's Sputnik - beeo, beep, beeped down at us from orbit. Hawks imagined a future with orbiting bomb platforms and spies in the sky; Doves saw it as the dawn of a new beginning for human kind.
Either way, America had to get something in orbit in a hurry if we were to be included in a race that had started without us. Atop a Redstone rocket, the military's 2-stage Jupitar/b> was stacked with an added fourth stage. Re-named Juno 1, the 4-stage rocket pushed the 11-pound Explorer I satelite into orbit on Januari 31, 1958.
ROCKET DATA: Juno I
Height; 21.7 meters (71.25 feet)
Diameter: 1.8 meters (70 inches)
First stage propellants: Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and Hydyne
Upper stage propellants: Solid
Lift-off thrust: 83,000 pounds
From: Wikipedia
Juno I
The Juno I was a satellite launch vehicle, derived from, and commonly confused with, the Jupiter-C sounding rocket. It is most well known for launching America's first satellite, Explorer 1.
It consisted of a Jupiter-C rocket, with a fourth stage mounted on top of the "tub" of the third stage. The fourth stage was fired after the third stage burnout to boost the satellite to an orbital velocity of 18,000 mph (8 km/s). The fourth stage would also enter orbit itself.
The Juno I obviated the need for a guidance system in the upper stages, and was invented by Wernher von Braun in 1956 for his proposed Project Orbiter, which would have been just like the Jupiter-C but using the even smaller solid-fuel upper stages which were the only ones available at that time. His method was the simplest and most immediate method for putting a payload into orbit, but as it had no upper-stage guidance, it was not put into a precisely specified orbit. The name derived from von Braun wishing to make the rocket appear as peaceable as the Vanguard rocket, which was not a weapon, as the original Jupiter was, but was developed from a weather study rocket, the Viking.
Americans cheered on the orbiting of these early Explorer satellites, not realizing that it was by a means inferior to that of the Russians - or of the U.S. Navy's Project Vanguard. Von Braun had the method used again in the Juno II, which used a real Jupiter first stage rather than a Redstone. No other nation has since used this method.