Scrapbook 1: 1962 — Skybolt, Ranger 3, Russian moon programme

‘Win or bust’ rocket tests

By Science Editor RONALD BEDFORD

BRITAIN’S part in the first “live” launching of the Skybolt H-rocket began in Florida yesterday.

Two-hundred RAF men and British scientists will be working with Americans at the huge US air base at Eglin, on the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists on both sides of the Atlantic are confident Skybolt will prove a winner. It had better. This is the missile which persuaded the Government to scrap Britain’s own H-Bomb rocket, Bluestreak, after £90,000,000 had been spent on it.

£100,000,000

Skybolt is being developed for joint use by American and RAF bombers. The Americans are footing the bill for development—estimated at around £100,000,000.

Britain will buy Skybolts “off the peg” at an undisclosed cost.

RAF Vulcan bombers will carry two—one under each wing.

Skybolt is dropped like a bomb. Then its motors fire within seconds and the 33ft. long rocket roars off at 10,000 mph towards the target—more than 1,000 miles from the dropping-point.

Attractive

The weapon’s destructive force equals 2,000,000 tons of TNT.

Why was it so attractive to the British Government that they were willing to write off the investment in Bluestreak ?

Mainly because Skybolt can be fired from aircraft. Bluestreak had to be fired from a fixed base, highly vulnerable to retaliation.

Vulcans can cruise around, outside enemy territory, until the need to fire. They can refuel in the air.

The Government has taken a big gamble with Skybolt. If it succeeds, the retention of the manned bomber, using air-launched rockets, will enable us to carry on as a nuclear power able to deliver a nuclear blow.

If Skybolt fails, the Government must either admit its defence policy is a flop or buy from the Americans any missile they care to sell us.

Two Skybolts nestle under one wing of an American B-52 bomber.

MOON SHOT POSTPONED

From RONALD BEDFORD Washington, Friday.

AN American attempt to send a television-carrying Spaceship to the Moon on Monday was put off indefinitely today.

The postponement was due to faults in the 100-ton Atlas rocket which was to have blasted the gold-and-silver-plated Spaceship from the launching pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Discovery of the faults is a tremendous blow to the United States.

For a similar Atlas rocket is scheduled to carry 40-year-old US Colonel John Glenn into Space on Wednesday for a three-times-round-the-world trip.

With the Moon shot and the Glenn mission, next week was to have been the most exciting in American Space history.

But news of the Moon shot postponement brought a deep depression.

And some superstitious officials are now pointing out that the engineering drawings for Glenn’s two-ton, bell-shaped Spaceship are labelled “Space Craft No. 13.”

This was Ranger 3.

Russian scientists are now preparing a gigantic assault on the moon. It will have four main stages. And the first step is likely to be taken early in the New Year—possibly in January.

Target date for a cosmonaut to set foot on the planet is 1964—perhaps three years earlier than any American is expected.

British experts are now convinced of these things after a careful analysis of recent Soviet scientific literature, and from reports from behind the Iron Curtain.

The key to Russia’s master plan to be first on the Moon was undoubtedly her series of rocket trials in the Pacific two months ago. Eight rockets were fired.

THE CLIP-ON BOOSTER

British scientists are now sure this was a double test of one rocket—made up of four boosters which can be “married up” in space to form a fully-fuelled Moonship.

This marrying-up—a fresh section can be launched from Russia and clipped on to the spacecraft every time it whirls over in orbit—is called “space rendezvous.”

It has never been tried. British experts believe it will be shortly. It would mark a tremendous breakthrough.

The “space rendezvous” technique should enable Russia to short-cut construction of monster Moonships which—if they had to be launched from Earth with enough fuel to bring a crew of cosmonauts safely back—would have to weigh anything between 1000 and 3000 tons.

THERE AND BACK—BY DOGS

The other main stages in the Soviet plan are thought to be:

1—EXPLORATION of the Moon’s dusty surface to find a safe landing area.

2—ORBITING of the Moon 240,000 miles away and re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere with dogs—living for nearly a week in the prototype of a cabin designed for men.

3—The first MANNED LANDING, timed if possible for 1964. In that year gas activity on the Sun—which directly influences the radiation hazard in space—is due to reach a minimum.

Exploration of the sterile satellite—it has virtually no atmosphere, a gravity only one sixth as strong as Earth’s, and a layer of dust over much of its face—is high on the list of Russian priorities.

Soviet scientists claim to have developed a system of telemetring high definition TV close-ups over huge distances. These should indicate danger spots in the Moon’s terrain.

Rare detail is also given in a report to the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, which has reached the West, by a leading Russian space scientist named as Professor Georgi V. Petrovich.

He points out that when rockets touch gently down on to the Moon their exhausts will shatter and melt the surface. The inspection vehicle will therefore crawl—“a few dozen metres from the rocket, or if the surface is covered with dust, a few hundred metres before making its probes.”

The Russians are known to have developed a technique of remotely controlling a rocket from Earth with a high degree of accuracy. So an intensive survey of the Moon by “automatic laboratories” presents comparatively few technical problems.

It will certainly start next year.

A ‘CRASH’ PROGRAMME

The mighty boosters which launched cosmonauts Gagarin and Titov into orbit around the world were capable of sending dogs to the Moon and back NOW. But British scientists expect the Russians to wait until they have perfected the technique and “ship” they will use for manned flight before sending dogs.

Every report to date suggests that Russian lunar flights will be completely automatic. The crew’s chief function will be to explore and observe.

Many problems remain to be solved.

The outstanding one worrying Soviet doctors is: “Will spacemen all be as sick as Gherman Titov?” For medical data later showed the Soviet pilot was nauseated for most of his 25 hours in orbit. So more tests of cosmonauts during long periods of “weightlessness” will be carried out in 1962.

But British experts believe the Russians are delighted with the behaviour of their new rockets and will now press ahead with a “crash” programme which will once more startle the world.

How the Russians are thought to be planning to put together their moonships while in orbit round the Earth—an Evening Standard artist’s impression.

1. Moonship starts 5 Circuits of the Earth

2. BOOSTER SECTIONS SEPARATELY LAUNCHED

3. MOONSHIP IN ORBIT HAS BOOSTER SECTIONS CLIPPED ON—ONE PER ORBIT

4. ON FINAL ORBIT MOONSHIP VEERS OFF ON NEW COURSE TO DESTINATION