This is John Batcher.

Colleagery Hendrix, Captain U.S. Navy Retired Aviator of the Sagamore Institute

commenting on the Hypersonic Glide vehicle testing going on now in the US. Many many tests. Test of failure is

the concept and Jerry does it the favor of a quick history of how test to

failure has served U.S.

arsenal since the 20th century.

The missile test, the airplane test, the rocket ship test, the booster test, the tests of SpaceX and now the

hypersonic glide vehicle.

Test of Failure.

Jerry Hendrix, Sagamore Institute, much more of this later tonight.

Yes, so our first attempt to get a satellite up

after the Sputnik launch in October of 1957

was the Vanguard satellite, and which was a sort of. of laboratory put together. And of course it very famously blew up on the pad in front of the

international audience because we were televising it, being a free people, we were totally

transparent with it. It wasn't until several months later that the Army actually

got the first satellite Explorer 1-up on top of a Jupiter missile or an adapted Jupiter missile

at that point.

But the problem here is that in the beginning days of our ballistic missile defense,

our rockets had a high percentage of them would blow up during the initial test

flights. Whether it was the Thor missiles or for that matter the Atlas

missile or even the Titan missile, there were a number of very high profile failures.

And in fact, once we created Project Mercury, which was our first manned spaceflight,

...