A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey
1957 - The Space Race Begins
ONE
Those Damn Bastards!
On October 4, 1957, the USS Glacier, stubby and wide-beamed, chugged westward in the Pacific Ocean, tracing a course a few hundred miles north of the Galápagos Islands. Shaped like a watermelon cut lengthwise, the ship was designed to crush through polar ice. Her engines were powerful and her steel skin was thick enough to survive even high-speed collisions with growlers, small bergs that sounded like angry dogs as they scraped along the hull. On her maiden voyage in 1955 -- called Operation Deep Freeze -- the Glacier had cut through 400 miles of frozen ocean that would have stopped any other American ship.
But as sturdy as she was, in the open sea the Glacier was a bit tipsy, rolling with almost every ... read full excerpt from A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey: 1957 - The Space Race Begins ebook
