ARGONIA, Kansas USA — What was to be the highlight of a national gathering of experimental rocket makers turned to disappointment Monday afternoon when a replica of the rocket that carried America's first man into space blew up on the launch pad.

The one-third scale replica of Alan Shepard's Redstone/Freedom 7 rocket and space capsule barely got off the ground.

Shepard's daughter, Laura Shepard Churchley, pushed the launch button on what was to have been a flight of tribute to her late father.

"Oh, no!" she said as she realized what was happening, "Oh, what a shame!"

No one was hurt in the explosion, which happened about 3 p.m., after a three-hour delay in the launch sequence. The launch was to have been the high point of the five-day rocket convention staged by the national LDRS (Large, Dangerous Rocket Ship) organization.

The rocket stood about 30 feet tall, with its miniature Mercury space capsule and escape tower on top. It was to have soared nearly a mile into the air under the 3,200 pounds of thrust its motor was to generate, said project director Bruce Lee.

"The rocket motor apparently overpressurized and it split the motor casing down the side," said Lee, of Omaha. "It just laid down on its side and burned up." Lee was one of 28 Nebraska rocketeers who poured more than 1,500 hours and $5,000 into the rocket club project.

"When you get into projects as big and as aggressive as this one, these things sometimes happen," Lee said.

Alan Shepard became America's first man in space in 1961 when he soared 116 miles high during a 15-minute sub-orbital flight. Shepard died last year at age 74.

Churchley said she recalled watching the historic flight on television in the boarding school she attended as an eighth-grader in St. Louis.

She was invited by Team Redstone to push the launch button Monday after she heard of the plans to launch the replica of her father's rocket.

Patty Carey of Hutchinson, founder of the Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center, had suggested that a former board member, Ann Brown, fax a copy of an earlier Eagle story on the Redstone/Freedom 7 model launch to Churchley, who lives in Evergreen, Colo.

Brown met Churchley last year, and visited with her for more than 30 minutes before she realized she was an astronaut's daughter. The women became friends and have stayed in touch.

"We are thrilled to have her here -- she seems so much like her dad, and this is all in honor of her dad," Lee said before the attempted launch.

"This is so neat. Daddy would have loved this, especially all the kids being here," said Churchley, who wore a necklace made from a piece of the heat shield of her father's first space capsule. She and her husband, Fred, had spent the weekend in Lawrence, helping their daughter, Megan, a KU student, move. They decided to stop by the rocketeers' convention on their way home.

Members of Team Redstone had struggled to get the body of the rocket assembled and put in place on the launch tower.

As a loudspeaker counted down the seconds to launch, Churchley leaned over the control panel and pressed the "fire" button when the count reached zero. There was a momentary pause and then the motor rocket ignited and the replica Redstone lifted slightly off the launch pad.

It suspended briefly and then burst into a bright white explosion.

The upper stage of the rocket, which did not contain an engine, never cleared the launch tower and hung on it at a sharp angle as the first stage exploded off to one side, where it burned intensely for several seconds -- hot enough that spectators several hundred feet from the launch tower could feel the heat.

A collective groan went through the crowd at the launch site, which was about three-quarters of a mile from the main viewing area. A fire truck rolled onto the scene within seconds, but the resulting fire quickly died, leaving only blackened shards of the rocket body smoldering on the freshly plowed ground.

Camera crews from the Discovery Channel, there to film a segment for Discovery's "Extreme Machines" program, and from the Travel Channel documented the attempted launch.

Churchley, who had been signing autographs for children during the afternoon, told youngster Robert Young, "I'm sorry it didn't go today. Darn, it's so sad," as she autographed the disposable camera he had used to shoot snapshots of the launch.

Copyright © 1999 The Wichita Eagle