Scrapbook 2: May–Jun 1962 — TV telescope, Minuteman, Sugar Grove
AID FOR SPACE SCIENTISTS
THE combination of a 24in telescope and a television system is giving American space scientists their best pictures so far of rocket launchings . . . and of the Moon’s features. The “television telescope,” which is at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, can distinguish an object the size of a football at 100 miles range. The television system gives less distortion than conventional pictures taken with the fastest film.
LEFT: The moon’s surface with the 56-mile-diameter crater Copernicus (arrowed) brought into sharp focus.
CAPE CANAVERAL (AP) […] television telescope powerful enough to spot a bowling ball in orbit 100 miles high is now watching missiles and satellites fired from this rocket center, the Air Force announced.
It consists of a 24-inch aperture astronomical telescope using a TV image orthicon system rather than conventional photographic recording. TV is used because the image tube is thousands of times more sensitive than the fastest photographic emulsions.
Less Motion
This permits shorter exposures, with less image motion caused by turbulence of the atmosphere and therefore there is less distortion in the picture, the Air Force reported.
THE latest and strangest sight to be seen on the Cape Canaveral missile launching range is a new type of “space suit” designed for the men who fuel Titan II rockets.
Special safety suits had to be devised because the fuels used are toxic. The green suits, the first of their kind ever devised for earthmen, are called SCAPE, standing for Self-Contained Atmospheric Protective Ensemble. They are very light, weighing only five lb., and extremely flexible.
2 Contracts Let For Missile Work
WASHINGTON (Special) — The Army has awarded two new missile system contracts totaling more than $9.2 million.
General Dynamics-Pomona Division of Pomona, Calif., was awarded a $7,779,600 contract for continuation of work on the Mauler missile system. Work will be done at Pomona, a labor surplus area.
Stanford Research Institute of Menlo Park, Calif., was given a $1,493,247 contract for work on the wake radar system. This is a study of low frequency radar phenomena during the flight of missiles. The award was made by the San Francisco Ordnance District at Oakland, Calif., for the Army’s Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Missile Workers Dispute Settled
CAPE CANAVERAL (UPI)—About 200 Atlantic missile range technicians have settled a six-month-old dispute with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in time for this country’s next manned orbital flight. The employes, stationed here and at other points on the missile test range, are primarily involved in tracking test rockets and satellites.
Federal Mediation and Conciliation Commissioner John R. Morgan of Washington said his proposed settlement was accepted by RCA officials and union leaders and will soon be put up to a union vote for ratification. Details of the settlement—arranged last Saturday—were not disclosed.
AF Sends Minuteman On 3,600-Mile Flight
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)—Preceded by a huge fireball, a Minuteman missile thundered out of an underground silo here and propelled its warhead 3,600 miles on a successful test flight.
Earlier Friday, a Nike smoke rocket darted nearly 12 miles high in the first of 80 launchings planned in a year-long program to chart wind patterns above Cape Canaveral.
The Nike studies are expected to help engineers design future space rockets, determining where they should be beefed up against high altitude cross winds and where they can be scaled down to save weight.
As the intercontinental range Minuteman ignited near the base of the 85-foot pit, sheets of flame shot more than 100 feet into the air. Seconds later, the rocket speared through the flames, pitched quickly toward the southeast and sped from sight.
The Air Force announced the success, 11th in 14 launchings for Minuteman, which is scheduled to become operational late this year.
The Defense Department plans to plant hundreds of the solid-fuel missiles in concrete- and steel-lined holes like that employed in Friday’s test. In case of attack, they can be launched almost instantly.
The Minuteman carried a new data gathering system tested successfully for the first time last week. The system, which radios via 352 channels information from all three stages of the missile, is expected to reduce the number of test firings in the program.
£15m Goes Up . . . The Telescope
THIS is the radio-telescope that never will be. Despite that, it is the most expensive one there has ever been.
For the past four years the Americans have been building the telescope, at Sugar Grove, West Virginia, the dish of which would have had over twice the diameter of the one at Jodrell Bank, and so far they have spent almost £15m. on it.
Now the United States Government has ordered that the work should be stopped, and what would have been the world’s largest steerable telescope now will not be. The American Defence Department does not know how much of the money already spent will be recovered.
However it will certainly save the remaining £57m, which the telescope was going to cost before it was completed. Even the original estimate of £28m was big enough. But since 1958 that estimate has jumped to £71m.
It is noteworthy to place these figures by the side of those for Jodrell Bank. The British telescope has a dish diameter of 250ft (as against 600ft for Sugar Grove), and the original cost estimate was about £400,000.
This estimate also rose, and there was a considerable hullaballoo when it did, but it rose to some £800,000.
This is very small beer, indeed, when set beside the American figures. Sugar Grove, even before it was cancelled, had cost 18 times as much as Jodrell Bank did by the time it was completed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A coin-sized pellet fired 200 miles into the sky plunged back into the atmosphere at 32,000 miles an hour, the U.S space agency said.
This apparently was the “highest reentry velocity ever achieved by a man-made object,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.
The fiery tail was so intense, in spite of the object’s minute size, that it was seen over a wide area.
The tiny “payload” was launched from Wallops Island, Va.
The man-made meteoroid was in the nose of a six-stage Trailblazer rocket.
Two rocket stages fired upwards to send the tiny object to an altitude of 200 miles. Then the four other stages fired downwards successively to simulate reentry of a space body.
Defense Dept. Denies Study of New Space Plan
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Department has denied it decided the Air Force should develop the technology for a manned satellite capable of inspecting and destroying an enemy space vehicle.
At the same time, a Pentagon spokesman said “I don’t know of any” six-month study to draft an enlarged military space program.
He issued the denials in response to questions about a New York Times dispatch which said the Defense Department is embarking on a man-in-space program to prevent military control of space by the Soviet Union.