Scrapbook 1: 1962 — Ariel 1, Kosmos 4, Atlas-Centaur, Lasers, Mars, astronaut pay, Telstar, Enos

Check on bleeps

And soon afterwards British Premier Harold Macmillan, who is visiting America, announced in New York that the Britnik’s official name would be “Ariel.” Nine British scientists, headed by Sir Harrie Massey, chairman of the British National Committee on Space Research, watched the Britnik go up.

At first there was a hitch. Zero hour was 6 p.m. British time—but a fault in the ground support equipment caused an hour’s delay.

At 7 p.m. Britnik One was on its way.

And as the bleep-bleep signals were picked up from its first orbit Sir Harrie said: “We are feeling very pleased indeed.”

Tracked

The Britnik’s signals were heard in America and Singapore.

Later, as it continues circling the Earth every 100 minutes or so at heights varyring between 200 and 600 miles, the bleeps will be heard at tracking stations in Britain.

Its most northern orbit is expected to take it over Gretna Green.

The instruments aboard the Britnik were designed by scientists at London’s Imperial and University Colleges, and at Birmingham and Leicester Universities.

‘Blanket’

The aim is to study the ionosphere—an “electricity blanket” which starts about thirty-five miles from the Earth.

Information picked up by tracking stations all over the world will be sent to the British scientists for investigation.

• A JAPNIK—an American rocket carrying Japanese and American instruments—did a successful straight-up-and-down trip yesterday from a base at Wallops Island, Virginia.

• THE FLOPNIK—America’s Ranger Four Spaceship which went “dumb” instead of sending back information and pictures—crash-landed on the far side of the Moon yesterday, US Space officials said.

Russia

• A SPUTNIK Earth satellite called Cosmos Four was sent into orbit by the Russians.

• A TV-NIK satellite which will be launched by the Americans this summer will relay a joint ITV-BBC programme to the US, it was announced yesterday.

A combined ITV-BBC team, headed by Peter Dimmock, of the BBC’s “Sportsview,” will produce the programme.

By RONALD BEDFORD, Mirror Science Editor

RUSSIAN scientists announced yesterday that they have brought home their latest Space satellite—Cosmos Four, which was sent whirling round the Earth four days ago.

The series of four Cosmos satellites was launched to investigate the effects of radiation in Space.

Blood

But Cosmos Four is the only one of the series to be brought back to Earth.

And there seems little doubt that it was brought home because it was carrying living matter—including, perhaps, samples of blood and bone-marrow.

Study of the samples should show what would happen to a Spaceman who penetrated the dense layer of radiation which starts about 250 miles from the Earth.

Keen

The Russians are specially keen to get this information, as they plan their next “Space Spectaculars”—

Sending at least two men circuiting the Earth for a week or more, and—

Sending a man round the Moon.

• BRITNIK ONE, the American satellite carrying British Space-probe equipment—officially named Ariel—was still going round the Earth yesterday.

• Soviet Space-traveller Gherman Titov, 26, spent two hours at Prestwick (Scotland) Airport yesterday on his way to America for a conference. He said: “I would like to visit Britain officially, but I have not been asked.”

Moon Man No 1 faces a VERY cold trip

By RONALD BEDFORD

SCIENTISTS have trained a giant radio “ear” on to the moon—and picked up bad news for Spacemen.

Whether the Americans or Russians get there first, they will find it colder than was thought.

Reports from Moscow yesterday say that Russian radio astronomers have measured the moon’s surface temperatures.

Drop

Their instruments show that during the moon night, temperatures drop to minus 312 degrees Fahrenheit.

Previous measurements put the coldest temperature at about minus 200.

Freezing point is 32 degrees.

During the moon day, the surface gets as hot as 239 degrees Fahrenheit. The earlier estimate was slightly hotter—250 degrees. Water boils at 212 degrees.

Blast-off disaster

NEW YORK, Tuesday.—America’s 105 ft. tall Centaur rocket was launched on its maiden flight from Cape Canaveral today—and exploded in the air.

It was a severe blow to plans to develop the rocket as a “work horse” to lift four-ton payloads into orbit and send probes to the moon, Mars, and Venus.

By RONALD BEDFORD Cape Canaveral, Monday

WHY do Russian rockets hit the Moon and photograph the other side of it when American rockets do neither?

Why can Russia put men in Space almost one year ahead of the United States, whose Man-in-Space rocket was left grounded at Cape Canaveral at the week-end because the weather turned sour

These are the questions being asked by millions in Britain and the United States after the week-end attempt to photograph the Moon by TV came unstuck.

An electrical part failed to lock the TV transmitter on to the Earth after the picture started coming through.

Is the reason, as top German rocket scientist Professor Eugen Sanger said bluntly yesterday, that America’s rockets are far too complicated?

I think Sanger is right—but only partly so. Americans love to have lots of gadgets.

I have not seen inside Yuri Gagarin’s Russian Spaceship. But I have seen photographs of it. The cockpit is clean and simple. Seven sections control everything.

Yet when I looked into the cockpit of a copy of Colonel John Glenn’s Spaceship today, I found almost as many dials, lights, switches, gimmicks and gadgets, as in a Transatlantic jet airliner cockpit.

Thousands

There are ten thousand parts and seven miles of wiring in the Spaceship alone. The rocket has many thousands more.

Any part can go wrong. Not long ago, a US rocket costing £2 million blew up soon after launching because of a failure of a mass-produced part costing seven shillings.

Americans had to go in for gadgets because they lacked giant booster rockets capable of hurling sturdy, uncomplicated equipment into Space.

The Russians concentrated on giant booster rockets from the beginning. That is why they were the first to orbit dogs and men, hit the Moon and photograph it.

Yet the Russians envy the skill and elaboration of America’s scientific satellites. With the exception of photographing the Moon, the major scientific advances in Space have all been chalked up by the Americans.

The Russians have no weather satellites, no communications satellites, no Space “eyes” to photograph the Earth.

Now that the Americans have a big booster rocket in Saturn—successfully fired for the first time last October—they, too, will be able to hurl mighty chunks of comparatively simple machinery into Space.

• The Russians have put all their Space eggs in the booster basket. The Americans have put their eggs in many baskets and broken quite a few. But they have learned an awful lot.

war in Space

From Donald Ludlow

Washington, Sunday.

A BLUEPRINT for war in Space has been prepared by the US Air Force.

It envisages Space “battleships,” Space command posts, refuelling and repair points.

And the plan includes at least one frightening new weapon.

The Space war blueprint is the result of weeks of work by the best brains of the Pentagon—America’s High Command—working with U.S. science and industry.

Secret

The top secret study was made at the direction of President Kennedy.

It has come up with one simple objective: To move America’s military into Space.

A new weapon, the LASER, is already being developed.

The name stands for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.”

The principle: to so concentrate a pencil-thin beam that it becomes hotter than the surface of the sun.

Laboratory LASERS have punched holes in stainless steel. Last week one slashed through a diamond—the hardest substance on earth.

Enormous

Present LASERS are only the size of flashlights. If they could be built to the size of big guns and supplied with enough power, the possibilities are enormous.

Secret Service reports say the Russians are working hard on LASERS and that Krushchev was referring to them when he made his boast of “fantastic weapons” to come.

In view of the new blueprint for a future war, it is considered significant here that the Air Force has clamped tight security on all its satellite test shots.

No details, no results are to be announced.

It is also significant that the Air Force is engaged in a tussle with the National Space Administration over which should have priority: scientific or military satellites.

And the Air Force seems to be winning.

SIR BERNARD LOVELL forecasts that in 1962 instruments will be landed on the moon, probably by both the Russians and the Americans.

A year ago, Professor Lovell, the director of the radio-astronomy station at Jodrell Bank, predicted that man would go into space in 1961. He was right.

In an interview he forecast a coming year of increasing space activity, despite the secrecy shrouding Russian intentions.

“A year ago I predicted that a man would go into space in 1961. I predict with the same amount of confidence that 1962 will be a year when instruments will be landed on the moon’s surface, probably by both the Russians and Americans and this will be a very exciting step forward.

EYES

On Russia

“There will be something fairly big happening before long. Either a man going round the moon and back or an animal encircling the moon.”

Space probes of the future were expected to operate on higher frequencies, calling for a greater degree of accuracy from tracking stations.

He was anxiously awaiting another display of Russian technique to get an idea of the rate at which the Russians were changing over to higher frequencies. But any probe launched now by the Russians on a high frequency would be quite helpless.

Mars Is Not Red, Says A Russian

By ROBERT CHAPMAN

MARS, the Red Planet, may not be red after all, says a new report from Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory.

The report, which challenges fundamental beliefs about the planet, is based on observations made by Dr Nikolai Kozyrev, one of the Soviet Union’s leading astronomers.

Mars, it says, may not be the lifeless world that generations of scientists have thought: on the contrary, it may be very much like our own world with lush vegetation and animal life.

The ruby glow of Mars in the night sky has long been interpreted as sunlight reflected from a barren, orange-red, sandy surface.

Dr Kozyrev says the redness is due to the absorption of blue and violet light rays in the atmosphere—creating a red sky similar to that often seen at sunset on Earth.

WASHINGTON, Sunday.

AMERICAN astronauts will get extra “danger money” if present plans go through. They are entitled now to no more than their normal pay as military test pilots.

The object is twofold: To compensate them for the special hazards of their profession and to lessen any temptation to accept embarrassing gifts or favours.

£178,000 CONTRACT

It is no secret that the Kennedy Administration is unhappy about the £178,000 contract the astronauts signed collectively with Life magazine during the Eisenhower years for exclusive rights to their “personal” space fight stories.

The men are investing some of their capital in a luxurious motel nearing completion at Cape Canaveral. National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials, anxious to avoid public criticism, have reported to have laid down a strict policy amounting to an official boycott of the motel.

ATLAS TESTING TOO RISKY

From Our Own Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Sunday.

There will definitely not be a full-scale test of an Atlas missile with a nuclear warhead during the current American test series in the Pacific, the technical journal Missiles and Rockets reported to-day.

“The administration feels that the 3,000-mile flight of the Atlas would involve too great a risk,” the magazine said. A Defence Department spokesman said he could neither deny nor confirm the report.

LIVE television programmes beamed from America will be screened DAILY in Britain this summer.

The programmes, “bounced” off a 125lb. TV satellite 3,000 miles up which the American Telephone and Telegraph Company plan to put into orbit by May, will be carried by BBC and ITV.

A new Post Office receiving station is now being built in Cornwall. It will be Europe’s first Space receiver and will pick up the TV sputnik’s signals.

This week top men of Europe’s TV networks have been in London working out how to relay America’s Space TV to the rest of Europe.

Many

They also plan to send live programmes from Europe to America.

For a start, each programme will last about ten minutes—the length of time that the satellite will be in orbit at the required distance of 3,000 miles above the Atlantic.

But as it will circle the earth several times a day, many more programmes will be possible.

The first sputnik—called Telstar—will go up in May. It will cost £2,000,000 to launch, and America’s A T and T Company is bearing the whole cost.

In the autumn the American Government will launch another—to be called Relay.

ITV and BBC experts will work together. Associated TeleVision has already set up a team of ten engineers and technicians.

ATV will have a crew in Cornwall to pick up the sputnik’s signal from the Post Office receiver at the Lizard, feed it into the network and convert it into the European line standard for sending across the Channel.

An ITV spokesman told me last night: “We don’t know what kind of programmes the Americans will send. On our side, we plan to have outside broadcast units at various historic places in London, such as Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus and so on.”

• But all this is only a beginning. If Telstar is followed by other sputniks, then round-the-clock live TV between Europe and America will become a reality. It’s an exciting thought.

AF Lofts 38th ‘Discoverer’

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP)—Discoverer 38 rocketed into orbit on a secret mission.

The Air Force did not disclose the satellite’s altitude nor the length of time it takes to whirl around the earth from pole to pole.

The Thor-Agena-B combination usually reaches an orbit ranging from 100 to 500 miles high and completes a full swing in about 90 minutes.

Sometime in the next four days the rocket’s orbital second stage is supposed to eject a capsule which Hawaii-based planes will try to catch in the air.

The chimpanzee named “Enos,” which orbited the earth in a U.S. satellite last November has good grounds for being mixed up—and for hating buttons.

Enos was trained to perform certain duties during the flight, including pushing buttons.

If he did it right he was rewarded with food and drink. If he did it wrong he got a slight electric shock.

Now it is revealed that throughout the actual flight, because of a short circuit, Enos was receiving a shock each time he pressed a button, whether he was right or wrong.

“But,” U.S. scientists now report, despite high blood pressure, the chimpanzee “continued to perform tasks for which he had been trained.”