Scrapbook 2: Aug 1962 — Stratoscope II, Wally Schirra, Moon
By MIRROR REPORTER
A GIANT TV station in Space, transmitting educational programmes to underdeveloped countries, was forecast yesterday.
The plan was revealed by Dr. Donald Bond, of the Radio Corporation of America, at an international conference on satellite communications in London.
American experts had found that it is possible for a satellite to beam three TV programmes over an area of 4,000,000 square miles, said Dr. Bond.
Programmes could be sent to the satellite from a central transmission station on earth.
Languages
For multi-language countries, the picture could be accompanied by a number of different languages on a separate sound chanel.
“This could be a great contribution from the West to the underdeveloped countries,” Dr. Bond added. “We think it is technically possible to establish such a system within the next ten years.”
Dr. Bond is one of 270 scientists attending the conference from fourteen countries.
The scientists were told that British Post Office engineers believe that a satellite communications system will be in full operational use within six years.
MOON THEORY
“Formed independently”
DR. HAROLD UREY, Nobel Prize winner, said to-day that many scientists believe, through lunar studies and mathematical calculations, that the moon was formed independently of the earth.
He told a conference of more than 200 lunar scientists and space physicists at Blacksburg, Virginia, that it now appears likely the moon was “captured” by the earth early in the history of the solar system. Shortly afterwards the moon was bombarded by earth satellites.
Japan, NASA To Cooperate
WASHINGTON (UPI)—The United States and Japan have announced an agreement to cooperate in testing communication satellites.
The agreement was signed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Japanese of Postal and Telecommunications Ministry.
Japan will supply a ground station capable of communicating via artificial satellite. The satellites will be launched by NASA.
Similar agreements have been made with France, Great Britain, West Germany, Italy and Brazil.
The agreement with Japan was concluded in an exchange of notes. It provides that transmissions through the communication satellites will be used for test purposes only and not for commercial exploitation.
They will include demonstrations of satellite telephone, radio, television, and photograph transmissions through domestic telecommunication networks.
NEW YORK, Tuesday.
AMERICAN astronaut Walter Schirra, due to go into orbit on October 3 and circle the earth six times, may be the last U.S. spaceman but one to take a solo ride in space.
If Schirra’s nine-hour flight goes according to plan the Space Agency will give serious thought to cutting back the one-man Mercury Project flights and instead press on with longer missions involving the Gemini two-man capsules.
At present four 18-orbit 24-hour-long Mercury missions are listed to follow Schirra’s flight.
But space officials are now considering dispensing with all but one of the 18-orbit flights.
Next Year
The Gemini capsule, capable of maintaining two men aloft for about a week, is expected to be ready for manned flight about this time next year.
There are believed to be two reasons for the possible reduction of the Mercury flights:
Little new is likely to be learned by continuing flights in the well-tried one-man spacecraft; and
Scientists are understood to be anxious to switch from the Atlas booster to the Titan II, the more powerful rocket which will launch the Geminis.
Four In A Row
Privately, space scientists feel that by continuing to use the Atlas they are pressing their luck. Statistics show that the Atlases’ record of reliability on launch is currently running at about 70 per cent.
So far Project Mercury has had four successful Atlas launches—two manned and two unmanned—in a row.
But by statistical law an accident is inevitable one day.
SPACE ARMS RACE
Minister’s promise
AMERICA did not plan to put “any weapons of mass destruction into orbit,” Mr. Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defence, said yesterday. An arms race in outer space would not help America’s security.
“I can think of no greater stimulus for a Russian thermonuclear arms effort in space than a United States commitment to such a programme,” he said to industrial and university representatives at South Bend, Indiana.
ADELAIDE, Thursday.
Prof. Hoyle, the British expert on solar physics, said in Adelaide to-day that what had been accomplished so far in the space race was not worth one thousandth of what had been spent.
The United States Mariner spaceship, now on its way to Venus, would not give any information that could not have been found out far cheaper by sending up a telescope with a high-altitude balloon.
The results of research in radio astronomy in Sydney were worth far more than the whole of the American space programme. Nothing, for instance, “has been discovered to compare with Einstein’s theory of relativity.”—Reuter.
Lifting by balloons to 80,000ft
FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT NEW YORK, Monday.
AMERICAN scientists are to float a giant telescope 80,000ft above the Earth early next year. It will give the closest view so far of stars and planets and will help to decide whether or not there is life on Mars.
Two balloons will lift the six-ton telescopic apparatus from the balloon flight stations at Palestine, Texas, in February or March. At that time Mars will be particularly close to the earth.
The telescope, called Stratoscope II, will have sharper vision than the 200-inch telescope on the top of Mount Palomar, California. It will be able to pick out an object six inches wide at a distance of 1,000 miles.
TELEVISION LINK
It will be radio-controlled from a mobile van on the ground. Television will enable scientists to look directly through its sighting instruments and through the telescope itself.
Each flight will last just one night. At dawn the balloons will lower the telescope to 5,000 feet when a helicopter will guide the apparatus to the ground.
NEW YORK, Monday.
AMERICAN space researchers and Government officials gave generous but uneasy praise to-day to the skills of the Russian scientists which made the space double possible.
In the absence of more detailed information out of Moscow there was widespread speculation on the possible scientific and political significances of the achievement.
And at the U.N some delegates were suggesting that Mr. Kruschev might seek to exploit the Russian triumph by again visiting New York next month for the opening of the 17th U.N. General Assembly.
But against the fog of speculation there was solid agreement that the Russian achievement has eclipsed the recent American successes.
Eyes On Moon
The Americans will not even attempt a rendezvous in space for at least two years. By that time they hope to establish a meeting in orbit of a two-man Gemini space capsule and an Agena B rocket.
It will be an essential stepping stone in their preparations for the eventual moon trip aboard a three-man Apollo space craft.
During the American moon flight—which will not take place before 1967 at the earliest—the craft which actually lands on the moon will rendezvous with its “mother ship” in orbit around the moon for the return journey to earth.
At The Cape
The two Russian space men came close to a perfect rendezvous.
At Cape Canaveral there was some disagreement on whether the double flight put the Russians far ahead of the Americans in the actual race to the moon.
Dr. Krafft Ehricke, Director of Advanced Studies at the Astronautics Institute in San Diego, appeared to believe it did.
But the Deputy Director of the American Moon Programme—Project Apollo—Dr. Eberhard Rees disagreed.
NEW YORK, Saturday.
For the fifth time in succession, an advanced model of the Polaris submarine missile went out of control after a test launch from Cape Canaveral early this afternoon and had to be destroyed. Model is the A-3 which is being developed to increase the range of Polaris missiles to 2,875 miles, as compared with the present 1,725 miles.
WASHINGTON (UPI)—President Kennedy has informed Congress that “significant progress” has been made in the nation’s all-out drive to win the space race.
The claim was included in the sixth semiannual report to Congress by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
It said NASA is giving “highest priority” to the projects leading to manned exploration of the moon as urged by both Mr. Kennedy and Congress. The report said plans call for reaching the moon by the late 1960s.
The report on activity from July 1, 1961, through Dec. 31, 1961, said that achievements ranged from big gains in new scientific knowledge to demonstration of high performance by the space systems.
Short Bros. have offered the Army a mobile version of the Navy’s Sea Cat low level anti-aircraft guided missile. Named Tiger Cat, a full scale model is on show at Farnborough.
The Army is seeking a replacement for the L.70 Bofors. The British PT.428, a highly sophisticated system, was recently cancelled on the grounds of expense, leaving the Army apparently dependent on the American Mauler system.
Tiger Cat may not fully meet all the Army’s operational requirements. For one thing it is subsonic, but it has a number of advantages.
It is comparatively cheap and has already been fully developed for the Navy. It can be integrated with the existing L.70 Bofors-Yellow Fever radar system, and so integrated has a lethality advantage over the Bofors of five to one.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has agreed to sell antiaircraft missiles to Israel in an effort to restore the Middle East power balance, upset by heavy deliveries of Soviet arms to Israel’s Arab neighbors.
The missiles — with deliveries probably beginning in about a year — are Army Hawks.
The have a ground-to-air striking range of about 25 miles and a homing device which guides them to the target at supersonic speeds.
Diplomatic officials said the United States will keep the Middle East arms situation under close observation.
U.S. officials say that the decision to sell missiles does not involve any real change in policy. However, Israel first requested short-range antiaircraft missiles in 1959. The request got nowhere.
In early 1961 Russia began stepping up deliveries of modern arms to Egypt and other Arab countries. These include high-speed jet fighter planes and long-range jet bombers of a type known as TU16, which have an operating radius of 1,800 miles.
In recent years the United States has sold some arms to both Israel and various Arab states. It has tried to limit such sales, officials said, to strictly defensive weapons such as small arms, radar equipment, communications gear and the like.
Israel’s major arms suppliers have been U.S. allies, notably France.
The United States has declared that the objective of its policy is to prevent an imbalance of military power as between Israel and the Arab states.
Town M.P.’s “Space Post”
MR PAUL WILLIAMS, M.P. for Sunderland South, has been elected Vice-Chairman of a new aero-space sub-committee set up by Conservative M.P.s. The sub-committee of the Conservatives’ Parliamentary Aviation Committee will watch developments in space research.
Mr Williams takes a great interest in space development, and frequently questions Ministers in the Commons.
Britain is at present collaborating with other European countries to develop a launcher for space satellites, using the British rocket, Blue Streak, as the first stage element. The Ministry of Aviation says it would have doubled the cost to have made an all-British launcher.