Scrapbook 1: 1961 — Gherman Titov, Venera 1, Skylark, D. Brainerd Holmes

Above is the Spaceship in which Yuri Gagarin was shot into orbit. It is believed that Russia’s second man in Space, Gherman Titov, rocketed up in a ship almost exactly the same. It weighs four and a half tons. And it whirls round the Earth at 18,000 m.p.h.

SIR Bernard Lovell, director of Britain’s radio telescope, was stunned last night at the “nonchalant” way the Russians had performed their latest Space feat.

He said at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire: “It is a natural consequence of the Gagarin fight that they would want to put up a man for a longer period of time.

“But the absolutely nonchalant way they do it is incredible.

“It underlines the amazing scientific and technological advances in the Soviet Union.

“In comparison with the Americans, you can guess which country appears to be struggling–and it is certainly not Russia.

Sir Bernard added: “It is another important step in the Russian plan to populate the solar system beginning with the invasion of the moon in a few years’ time.

“That is, always assuming that this man does not suffer any unforeseen biological effects from his prolonged exposure in outer Space.”

Sir Bernard said he was dismayed by the number of people who had asked him “if Gagarin had really gone into orbit.”

“This most striking success will demonstrate to such doubters the utter folly of their attitude,” he went on. “It is not only folly, but extremely dangerous for the world today not to believe these startling facts. No country would attempt to endanger its reputation by attempting such a hoax.

“I’m far from being pro-Russian in the political sense, but I think it is one of the greatest dangers in the world today to underestimate their tremendous strength in science and technology.”

Then he warned the West, “I said at the time of the Gagarin flight that this was an example which the West would disregard at its peril.

“I say that the peril is even greater today.”

TAMARA, 23, wife of Spaceman Titov, at first “did not quite approve” of his flight.

Major Titov told Russian Premier Krushchev this in a personal phone call yesterday soon after his landing. Their talk went like this . . .

TITOV: I report that the task set by the Party and the Government has been fulfilled.

MR. K.: Excellent. Your voice sounds as though you had just arrived from a wedding feast.

TITOV: Well said, Nikita Sergeyevich. There was a feast, but not a wedding one.

MR. K: A wedding feast is the happiest time for the newly married. But what you have done—this is a happy time for the whole of mankind.

TITOV: Thank you, Nikita Sergeyevich.

MR. K: I kiss you and embrace you by phone . . . but when we meet I’ll embrace you in a fatherly manner. Did you manage to sleep during the flight?

TITOV: I should have wakened at two o’clock in the morning, but woke at 2.35.

MR. K: That is good. It means you have a healthy constitution if, after strenuous work, you can have a good rest and make yourself wake up when needed so as to resume your duties.

You are now no longer a candidate member of the Party. I reckon that your candidate probationary period has already ended. Because every moment of your stay in Space can be counted as years.

TITOV: I sincerely thank you, Nikita Sergeyevich, and I thank the Party and the Government.

MR. K: How is your wife? She knew about your flight?

TITOV: Yes, she knew.

MR. K: And did she approve of this flight?

TITOV: At first, she did not quite approve, but later she did.

MR. K: This is wholly understandable.

Gay

The most human picture to come out of Russia… Major Titov and his wife Tamara on holiday at a resort on the Block Sea.

Grave

Tamara listens at her Moscow home to a radio broadcast about her husband’s Space flight.

Professor Masewitch

Britain joins search for Venus rocket

SPACE scientists in Russia and Britain are to combine in a full-scale bid to trace the “lost” Venus-bound rocket, it was announced last night.

The scientists in Russia will try to switch on the radio transmitter in the rocket—now estimated to be more than 60,000,000 miles away.

At the same time, Britain’s “Space ear,” the giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire, will try to pick up any signals sent out by the rocket.

A WOMAN Space expert, Soviet Professor Alla Masewitch, is at Jodrell Bank trying to track down the rocket which was launched in Russia last February.

British rocket shot will help to put chimp in Space

By RONALD BEDFORD

A BRITISH rocket roared into Space yesterday to seek scientific facts for the Americans to send a chimpanzee into orbit soon.

The 25ft. Skylark rocket—called “The Flying Drainpipe”—was fired at the Woomera range in Australia.

It went 120 miles into Space to study altraviolet radiation from the Sun.

Success

Mr. Alan Hulme, Australian Minister of Supply, said in Canberra that the shot was made for the American Space Agency.

It was a success. “All instruments behaved satisfactorily,” he said.

The information gleaned will help to assess hazards to the chimpanzee, which will be sent three times round the world in the next few weeks.

The chimpanzee’s flight will be a final rehearsal for America’s attempt to put a man into orbit.

December or June safest for that moon trip

Evening Standard Reporter

WASHINGTON. Monday.—Best time to go to the moon is in June or December.

American scientists who have been keeping watch for 11 years reported here today that for some strange reason radioactivity in space drops to its lowest in those periods. Men who set out during “safe months” stand the best chance of returning from the moon unharmed.

The finding is of tremendous importance for designers now at work on the first moonships for it means they should not need to supply thick protective skins as was once believed necessary.

Gas blobs

It is now clear that the sun is entirely to blame for sudden increases in space radiation. When flares occur on its surface, huge blobs of radioactive gas puff into the heavens and form dangerous floating obstacles to manned space flight

But American and Russian scientists now claim to be able to predict solar flares three to four days in advance by noting sudden appearance groups of black spots on face.

So it will be possible on three-day journeys to the moon to give enough warning to astronauts to allow them to turn their spaceships round to return to earth or press on quickly to land, so that the moon’s bulk shields them from approaching streams of dangerous radioactive sun gas.

The man whom America has just entrusted with the task of getting an American to the Moon does not believe it matters if a Russian lands first. “Our task is to explore space,” he says. “For all its brightness Moon is only one part of space. If a Red gets there before us we will not stop.”

D. Brainerd Holmes—or “Mr. Moon” as newspapers here now refer to him—is neither politician nor scientist but a business executive aged just 47.

Reaching for the moon conjurs up with him not a vision of huge rockets or spacemen but a paper jungle of statistic budgets and personnel.

Today Brainerd Holmes’ downright realism makes an interesting contrast to what is being called “space crazlest week in history.”

One thousand scientists with rocket engineers have gathered here to trumpet out a most impressive “Spacefight Report to the Nation”.

No choice

If any American wondered why his country has indulged in a multi-billion dollar space programme he will be left in no doubt after this week.

Holmes puts it like this: “We have no choice but to go ahead with a space effort of this magnitude. It is most unlikely we could continue to grow as a great world power unless we did. You cannot look at it only in the light of getting a man on the Moon. Benefits will rub off on our entire economy—there will be advances for industry, labour, government and public to share.”

Costliest

The Moon programme is the biggest and costliest peace-time venture ever undertaken by the United States, swamping all other space research put together.

Holmes—who welded 10,000 men with scores of contractors together so that they delivered the West’s £350 million ballistic missile early warning system on time—is only just realising the extent of his task.

Loudest noise

A Moon rocket, for instance, is likely to make the loudest noise ever heard on Earth, requiring an area as big as London to be evacuated. It will trail an exhaust perhaps 1000ft. long and need a firing gantry so heavy that it cannot be moved.

Such enormities do not frighten “Mr. Moon.”

“When it can all be achieved I cannot say until I have looked properly at the job,” he says.

“But if instead of having people trying to kill each other we can turn this particular world struggle into peaceful competition then whether we get to the Moon or not we will have achieved something very worthwhile—certainly all I could wish for.”