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Science / Space Race

[June 28, 1967] Around the World in Two Seconds (Our World Global Satellite Broadcast)

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by Kaye Dee

I love how our world is drawing closer every day to some of the amazing futures that science fiction has spread before us. I’ve written before about the importance of satellite communications in connecting this divided planet. Just two days ago, 24 countries around the globe were linked together in the first world-spanning live satellite broadcast, titled – appropriately enough – Our World.

Our World's visual symbol incorporates a modernised version of da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man", with arms encircling the globe, and vertical and horizontal lines representing longitude and latitude

Down Under Comes Up Live – from a town with no television!
For us in Australia, being instantaneously connected to the rest of the world through phone and television is a major step in breaking the “tyranny of distance” that has shaped our national history. Our first Satellite Earth Station was opened just last October in Carnarvon, a remote township in Western Australia, whose only other connection to the rest of the world is a phone line. It’s no wonder NASA wanted to provide a satellite connection back to the United States for its tracking station located there, using the INTELSAT communications network. Just after the station opened, a mishap with the launch of the first INTELSAT II satellite (Blue Bird) on 26 October placed the satellite into the wrong orbit, providing an opportunity for the first satellite broadcast from Down Under.


SES Carnarvon's unusual antenna, one of only four that have been built for the INTELSAT network. Officially described a 42-foot aperture cassegrain-fed folded-horn antenna, you can see why it's nicknamed the “sugar scoop”

According to my friend at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), some hasty calculations revealed that short segments of television broadcast could be relayed to the United Kingdom via INTELSAT II in its unplanned elliptical orbit. So the ABC and the BBC quickly put together a plan for a live telecast, called Down Under Comes Up Live, from Carnarvon – a town which doesn’t even have a television service!

Connection was the theme, and ordinary people were the stars of the show. The program reunited three families of British immigrants living in Carnarvon, two of whom who happened to be employees of the NASA tracking station, with their relatives in the BBC studios in London. It also included some interviews with local residents talking abut life in their remote community. Introducing new babies to family is a universal ritual, and it's delightful to see that it was one that played out in both Down Under Comes Up Live and Our World.

Down Under Comes Up Live was a direct one-way broadcast (a return signal was not possible for technical reasons) that was a complex undertaking (and a good rehearsal for our involvement in Our World). Without a local television station in Carnarvon, ABC outside broadcast vans and their technical staff made a 560 mile trip from Perth to produce the program. The vision was sent live to London from the satellite station, but the audio to and from London was transmitted separately by cable.

On Friday 25 November 1966, more than twelve minutes of television was broadcast to London. Although the program was seen live in the UK, rather ironically, we couldn’t see it live in Australia because there are no television links between Carnarvon and Perth. We had to wait for a few days to see this history-making program, once a film copy of the UK broadcast was flown back to Australia.

Incoming – Australia Day at Expo 67
Apart from a few test transmissions, it was just three weeks ago that we saw the first satellite broadcast into Australia – a live telecast of Australia’s ‘special day’ at Expo 67 in Montreal. This time the transmission came via NASA’s Applications Technology Satellite (ATS)-1. To support this program, NASA has established a temporary satellite station at Cooby Creek dam, about 14 miles north of Toowoomba in Queensland.

The picturesque setting for NASA's Cooby Creek tracking station that brought both Australia Day at Expo 67 and Our World to Australia via ATS-1

Several hundred thousand people around the country, including my sister’s family and I, watched live through the early hours of 7 June our time, as Australia took centre stage in Canada. The program commenced with Prime Minister Harold Holt officially opening the Australian Pavilion at the Expo. Special events for “Australia Day” included boomerang throwing, sheep-dog trials, wood chopping contests and tennis matches with members of the Australian Davis Cup team. Celebrity was an important theme for the variety concert, "Pop Goes Australia", which showcased Australian talent, including the internationally-known Rolf Harris and The Seekers.

The clarity of the satellite picture from Montreal was surprisingly good: I’ve heard that hundreds of viewers rang the ABC in Sydney wanting to be assured that the vision really was being broadcast live from Canada! I just wish I could find some decent reproductions to show you or had thought to take a picture on the screen of our TV set. 

Our World – joining hands (almost) around the planet
So, with just two satellite broadcasts under its belt, from 4.50am Australian Eastern Time on 26 June, Australia participated in the Our World program, helping to string Puck's "girdle around the world". We joined 13 other nations in providing television content for the first live global television broadcast, which instantaneously linked 24 countries on six continents via four communications satellites, with the signals travelling around the world in just 2 seconds!

The brainchild of the BBC, though produced under the auspices of the European Broadcasting Union, the global telecast was controlled from the BBC in London, with America’s National Educational Television in New York City feeding items from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Japan to the British Control Centre. Literally thousands of technicians handled the outside broadcasts and studio operations around the world. Satellite ground stations in Australia (NASA's Cooby Creek facility again), Japan, Canada, the United States, Britain and France transmitted sound and vision to and from the satellites. As each of the contributing countries provided commentary in their own language, there was also the necessity of rapidly translating the various languages, so that everyone in the receiving countries could understand what was being said.

The technical complexity of Our World is evident from this diagram, which shows just part of the world-wide links between television stations and satellites necessary to make the global broadcast a reality

Given the incredible technical complexity of the television transmission, it’s quite amazing that the two-hour program was carried through with very few technical problems – especially when the entire broadcast was televised live, with no filmed insertions or other previously produced material apart from the opening montage. We saw everything as it happened.

Our World was intended as a major achievement for both space technology and international relations, a bridge between East and West in these troubled times of wars cold and hot. Unfortunately, at the last minute, politics reared its ugly head and the USSR and several Eastern European nations that were originally going to participate pulled out of the broadcast just a few days before, as a protest against the recent war in the Middle East. This was disappointing and made for some hurried re-arrangement of parts of the program, but it didn’t dampen the mostly aspirational tone of the broadcast as a celebration of human achievement and hope for a more peaceful future. There was also the irony that a US segment about the Glassboro, New Jersey conference between American president Lyndon Johnson and Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin was still included in the broadcast, although – since the Our World producers insisted that no politicians could be shown – only an external view of the house where the conference was being held was televised.

New Babies and their World
The broadcast crossed countries, seas and time zones, and was presented as fusing “yesterday”, “today” and “tomorrow” (by dint of the different time zones around the world) into a globe-encircling “now”. The birth of several babies across the world opened the program, which was presented in a sense as a “survey” of the world into which these newborns are entering.

A baby in Mexico, born live on television for all the world to see!

The babies are introduced to their new world through several themes: This Moment's World (what people were doing are doing at that moment around the world); the Hungry World (what scientists are doing to attempt to solve or alleviate the hunger problem); the Crowded World (looking at proposed solutions to the population explosion); Aspiration to Physical Excellence (the continual attempt to develop physical skill); Aspiration to Artistic Excellence (the drive to excel in the arts); and the World Beyond (focussed on astronomy and space travel. Within these themes, vignettes of life and activity from around the world formed the tapestry of the program. Even if some of the actual presentation was, quite frankly, dull and pedestrian (the excitement was, after all, the fact that we were seeing something live from another part of the globe), I thought the concept was an interesting way to approach telling the story of our planet. If an extra-terrestrial civilisation one day happens to intercept this program as its signals travel through space, they'll learn a lot more about the reality of the Earth and its people from Our World than they will get from episodes of I love Lucy.

Everyday Life

The theme This Moment's World presented a panorama of people and activities in various parts of the globe, moving through evening in Europe to afternoon in New York City, with a visit to Tunis along the way. I loved the views of old and new parts of the city. We saw Marshall McLuhan being interviewed in a Toronto television control room, people swimming at the beach at lunchtime in Vancouver, Canada (making us Aussies all envious on a cold winter's morning) and workmen digging a subway at 4am in Japan. Since the program took place between 5.00 am and 7.00 am Australian Eastern time, our first contribution commenced at 5:22 am local time, with a visit to the Hammer Street Tram Depot in Melbourne, where the first tram of the day was departing to service Monday morning commuters. 

This segment was the first cross to the Southern Hemisphere and came directly after the broadcast from Japan. The switch from Japan to Australia was apparently the most technically complicated of the program, as the Japanese and Australian satellite stations had to switch immediately from transmission to receiving mode and back again. The material coming into Australia also had to be converted from the 525-line system to our 625-line format for local broadcast, while the segment going out of Australia had to be converted from 625 to 525-line in order to be sent back to the US and then on to London!

Sweden gave us the first – and almost the only – female presenter in the program!

Global Concerns
Australia also featured in the Hungry World theme, which concentrated on food production and the issues of feeding an ever-growing world population. In addition to items from the United States and a shrimp farm in Takamatsu, Japan, we visited the Canberra phytotron, a laboratory run by the national scientific research agency, CSIRO. In the phytotron, plants can be grown under a wide range of closely controlled climatic conditions. It’s claimed to be one of the world's finest and most up-to-date facilities for plant research, and a number of international scientists work there alongside local researchers.

The CSIRO phytotron's Director, Dr. Lloyd Evans, at work in his plant laboratory. Apparently, he often starts his workday at 5am, so he didn't have to get up earlier than usual for the show!

A couple of segments that were of interest to me in The Crowded World theme were a visit to Cumbernauld (near my father’s home town of Glasgow, Scotland), which was the recipient of an international award for best planning in a new town, and a glimpse of Habitat, a new concept of living accommodation, on display at Expo '67.

Human Achievement
In Aspiration to Physical Excellence, there were contributions from Rome, Sweden, France (where a parachutist made a dizzying free fall with a camera strapped to him), and Winnipeg, Canada, where a 16-year-old Butterfly champion attempted to beat her own world indoor swimming record.


We get to watch live as actors rehearse the wedding scenes from Italian director Franco Zefferelli's next film, Romeo and Juliet
Aspiration to Artistic Excellence included a visit to the Maeght Foundation museum of modern art in France, with artists Marc Chagall and Joan Miro, Leonard Bernstein and pianist Van Cliburn rehearsing Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto. Opera singer Maria Callas, and painter Pablo Picasso also featured. In the context of this theme, it’s interesting to note that the Our World anthem, which accompanied the opening montage was composed by Frenchman Georges Delerue, whose musical score credits includes the recent Academy Award winning motion picture, A Man for All Seasons. He wrote the melody based on the rhythm established by the words “Our World”, sung in 22 different languages by the Vienna Boys’ Choir.

But the highlight of this theme has to be a ‘fly on the wall’ visit to a recording studio where the fabulous Beatles were recording their latest anthem “All You Need is Love”, which was specially written for the Our World broadcast! You can see them below, surrounded by their many friends in the music world, who came to the recording party and became informal backing singers. The black and white shot shows how we saw the FAB Four in the live broadcast, while the colour photo was taken just before the televised performance. 

 
Reaching for the Stars
The World Beyond theme took us to the heart of the Space Race, with a visit to Cape Kennedy to see a Saturn V Moon rocket on the pad being readied for its first flight. The telecast also came to a close on the theme of outer space, with a visit to Australia’s Parkes radio telescope – at 210 ft. the largest fully-steerable radio telescope in the world. Here we sat in on an observation of the most distant object currently known – a mysterious quasar only discovered last year by the Parkes telescope's director, Dr. John Bolton. It’s so far away that its light and radio signals take 13,000 million years to reach us!

An ABC cameraman, wearing a heavy jacket in the early morning winter cold, prepares for filming the Our World segment at the Parkes Radio Telescope.

So that was Our World. A fascinating mix of banality and creativity, made magical by the technology of the Space Age, and the knowledge that everyone watching was sharing the experience simultaneously with millions of others across our planet in a way that has never before been possible. With a worldwide audience estimated between 350 and 700 million, the broadcast was a potent demonstration of the potential reach of satellite television. I'm sure that before too long, satellite television from around the world will be a regular occurrence, bringing us news, sport, entertainment and major world events – and we here in Australia will have to get used to being up at all hours of the night to watch! But I wonder what will top this broadcast's incredible audience reach? The first manned landing on the Moon, perhaps?



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Science / Space Race

[August 30, 1965] 8 Days or Bust! (Gemini 5's epic space mission)

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by Kaye Dee

Mr. Barry McGuire should have waited another month to record his hit song Eve of Destruction. Why? Because then his telling line “You may leave Earth for four days in space, but when you return it’s the same old place” could have been made an even punchier by updating it with the latest space flight record of eight days, set by the crew of Gemini 5.


The Gemini 5 crew, Charles "Pete" Conrad (left) and mission commander Gordon "Gordo" Cooper (right), ready to set a new space endurance record

One for the Record Books

The safe return of the Gemini 5 crew yesterday, at the end of a mission dogged by technical problems, not only captured the record for the longest spaceflight to date, it has catapulted the United States into the lead ahead of the Soviet Union for the first time in the Space Race! From the outset, NASA planned for this mission to last eight days, to demonstrate that astronauts could live and work in space for the duration of an Apollo mission to the Moon and back. That this flight time beat the Soviet record of just under five days set by cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky in Vostok 5 in 1963, is a welcome added bonus. Other objectives of the mission included: demonstrating the guidance and control systems; evaluating the new fuel cell system and rendezvous radar; and testing the ability of the astronauts to manoeuvre close to another object.

A Mission Patch: the Start of a New Tradition?

For this crucial mission, NASA paired veteran Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, who flew America’s last and longest Mercury mission, with rookie Charles “Pete” Conrad, a member of the second group of astronauts selected in 1962. Because astronauts have been prohibited from naming their spacecraft (following NASA’s displeasure with the name Gus Grissom selected for Gemini 3), Cooper wanted to wear a mission insignia that would symbolise the purpose of their flight. He and Conrad designed a “mission patch”, along the lines of those worn by military units, showing a Conestoga wagon, the type of vehicle used by many of the pioneering families heading into the American West.


The Gemini 5 mission patch as Cooper and Conrad originally designed it, with its pioneer inspired motto (left), alongside the NASA-modified flight version on the right.

On their original design, the wagon carried a motto that was also derived from pioneering times: “8 Days or Bust”. But according to a rumour I’ve heard from my former WRE colleagues, NASA felt that this might leave the agency open to ridicule if the mission didn’t last that long. Because of this, the embroidered patches that Cooper and Conrad wore on their spacesuits during the flight had the ambitious slogan covered by a piece of cloth. But I like the idea of each mission having its own symbolic insignia, so I hope that mission patches become a tradition for future spaceflights.

Launching into History

Gemini 5 was originally supposed to launch on 19 August, but problems with the telemetry programmer and deteriorating weather delayed the lift-off until 21 August. Like previous Gemini missions, Cooper and Conrad lifted off from Launch Complex 39 at the Cape Kennedy Air Force Station. I understand that NASA will continue to use it for the rest of the Gemini programme while its new John F. Kennedy Space Centre is being constructed nearby for the Apollo missions.

During the launch, the astronauts experienced a type of vibration known as “pogo” (as in pogo stick!) which seems to have momentarily impaired their speech and vision. This will need to be further investigated to determine if it poses a threat to crew health and safety on future flights. After the launch, part of the Titan II launch vehicle's first stage was found floating on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean and retrieved; I expect it will go on display in a museum after it has been thoroughly studied.


Recovering the upper half of the Titan II launch vehicle first stage from the Atlantic Ocean

Dr. Rendezvous to the Rescue!

Just over 2 hours after launch, the Rendezvous Evaluation Pod (REP, nicknamed Little Rascal, I’m told) was ejected into orbit from Gemini 5. The crew were supposed to practice rendezvous techniques with this mini satellite. However, about 4 hours into the flight, very low oxygen pressure in one of the spacecraft’s fuel cells that provide onboard power led to a decision to shut both fuel cells down. Gemini 5 is the first mission to use this new method of generating onboard power, but without the fuel cells, the spacecraft has only a limited battery power reserve. As a result, Gemini 5 was powered down, drifting along in "chimp mode," without active control by the crew. It looked for a while as if the mission might be “2 days and bust”, but ground tests showed that the faulty fuel cell should work even with low oxygen pressure and both fuel cells were gradually put back into operation, enabling the mission to continue.


An artist's impression of the Gemini 5 Rendezvous Evaluation Pod, as the mission should have unfolded. Unfortunately, the battery on its flashing beacon, which helped the astronauts to see it against the blackness of space, died before the fuel cell issues were resolved.

The fuel cell failure meant that the REP experiment, and others, had to be scrapped. However, astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin devised a rendezvous simulation to test the Gemini 5 crew, which would require them to rendezvous with a specific point in space. The other astronauts don’t call Aldrin “Dr. Rendezvous” for nothing: he has a doctorate in Astronautics, specialising in orbital mechanics, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology! The “phantom rendezvous” test took place on the third day of the mission. Cooper and Conrad proved that precision manoeuvres could be successfully accomplished, carrying out four different rendezvous manoeuvres using the Gemini’s Orbit Attitude and Manoeuvring System (OAMS).

On August 24 Cooper reached a cumulative total of 98 hours in space, over his two flights, taking the record for the longest time spent in space by an American astronaut. By the end of the mission he was the world record holder for time spent in space, leaving Bykovsky’s endurance record well behind!

Fuel Cells for Survival


A diagram showing the fuel cells installed on Gemini 5. Despite their problems on this mission, NASA expects to use fuel cells to provide electrical power and water on future space flights.

Another fuel cell problem surfaced on day four of the mission, but this was relatively minor, which was fortunate as the fuel cells not only produce electrical power for the Gemini spacecraft, but also provide the water supply for the crew. Like a battery, a fuel cell uses a chemical reaction to create an electric current. The Gemini fuel cell uses liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to generate electricity, which creates water as a by-product. Cooper and Conrad reported that the water had a lot of gas bubbles in it (with a predictable intestinal result!) and that it also had a taste they didn’t like. However, it was drinkable when mixed with Tang powdered orange drink, so I think that this will become a staple on future missions (a good advertising opportunity there!).

A plentiful supply of water also means that NASA will be able to provide the astronauts with more rehydratable foods from now on, although the Gemini 5 crew apparently did not have much of an appetite during the mission, only consuming about 1000 calories a day, instead of the planned 2700 calories.


Thanks to fuel cell-produced water, future NASA missions will have more rehydratable foods available. This sample Gemini meal includes a beef sandwich, strawberry cereal cubes, peaches, and beef and gravy. Astronauts use the water gun to reconstitute the food and scissors to open the packages

More Problems to Endure

The fifth day of the mission saw a major problem develop when one set of OAMS thrusters began to malfunction. This meant that all experiments where the thrusters needed to be used were cancelled. One cancellation was a great disappointment for us here in Australia. The Visual Acuity Test was designed to gauge the acuity of an astronaut’s vision from space, by observing patterns laid out on the ground.

Two test sites were prepared for this Gemini 5 experiment: one at Laredo, Texas and the other on Woodleigh sheep station (ranch), located about 90 miles south of Carnarvon, Western Australia. Carnarvon is the site of NASA’s largest tracking station outside the United States, combining both a Manned Space Flight Network facility and a Space Tracking and Data Acquisition Network station. At Woodleigh, piles of white sea-shells were bulldozed into carefully chosen patterns to determine the smallest pattern the astronauts could discern through the window of their spacecraft.


The Visual Acuity Test patterns at Woodleigh station seen from the air. Though they were composed of very white shells from a nearby beach, I think they might have been difficult to spot from space even under ideal conditions.

However, when this experiment should have been performed on 26 August, Gemini 5 was again drifting along powered down, due to the fuel cell and OAMS problems and could not maintain a stable view of the ground. The astronauts could see the smoke markers identifying the Woodleigh site but not the experimental patterns themselves due to the spacecraft's attitude. Attempts to view the site on later orbits were, unfortunately, no more successful, although the crew could see the lights of Carnarvon and Perth on night-time orbits.

During this powered-down period, Cooper and Conrad became quite cold and experienced feelings of disorientation caused by stars drifting past the windows as their capsule slowly rotated. Eventually, Cooper put covers on the windows to shut out the sight. Not only did they have difficulty sleeping, the crew also had to contend with persistent dandruff, apparently due to the low cabin humidity. The dry, flaky skin they shed settled everywhere, making for an unpleasant cabin environment. Even the instrument panels became partially obscured by dandruff!


No wonder the Gemini 5 crew found it difficult to sleep, when they were crowded together in a space about the same size as the front seat of a VW Beetle! Sleeping in alternate shifts was was not successful, but even sleeping at the same time did not make for a restful "night".

Although the mission’s technical problems caused some experiments to be cancelled, many others were still successfully carried out, including medical and photographic experiments. Among the crew's space science pictures were the first photographs of the zodiacal light and the gegenschein taken from orbit. Photographs of the Earth taken from space are also expected to produce detailed images that will have scientific, military and intelligence value once the films taken in flight are processed. I'm really looking forward to seeing them.

100 Orbits

On 28 August, Gemini 5 became the first manned spacecraft to complete 100 orbits of the Earth. In recognition of the achievement, Mission Control in Houston relayed 15 minutes of Dixieland music to the two astronauts, making Capcom Jim McDivitt the first space disc jockey! Because of the cancellation of experiments during the mission, Conrad had previously said he wished he had brought a book to read, or some music to listen to, and both Cooper and Conrad had expressed a preference for Dixieland music. Later that day, the Capcom at Houston also read up to the crew a little poem that Conrad’s wife, Jane, had written.

From Space to Shining Sea

A few hours before Gemini 5 returned to Earth yesterday, Gordon Cooper made a very special long-distance call – to fellow Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, who is living and working aboard the US Navy’s Sealab II facility, 205 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean near La Jolla, California. This radio call was apparently made to test the effectiveness of an undersea electronics lab installed on Sealab II, but it was also a nice piece of publicity for NASA and the Navy.


Mercury astronaut turned aquanaut Scott Carpenter, inside Sealab II, talks to Gordon Cooper aboard Gemini 5. Don't ask me how I got this photo!

Eight Days Without Busting!

Finally, on 29 August, at 190 hours, 27 minutes, and 43 seconds into the mission, retrofire commenced and Gemini 5 was on its way home. To demonstrate the level of control provided by the Gemini spacecraft design, the astronauts controlled their re-entry, rotating the capsule to create drag and lift. Unfortunately, due to an error by a computer programmer, Gemini 5 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean 80 miles short of its target landing site, but the crew were quickly located and retrieved. Gemini 5 ended just a few hours short of the planned eight days, but the epic mission had come to a successful conclusion and lived up to its motto – it was most definitely not a bust!


Safely home! The crew of Gemini 5 look tired, but elated, after what what Conrad has described as "“eight days in a garbage can”. Notice those "censored" mission patches, whose motto was right after all!




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