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Science / Space Race

[May 30, 1965] Ticket to Ride (May space round-up)

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by Gideon Marcus

It's been another exciting month in the realm of spaceflight.  We're between crewed missions, what with Voskhod 2 and Gemini 3 having flown in March and the next Gemini due in a few days.  Nevertheless, it has been a field day for robotic spacecraft, with a number of civilian and military packages booking passage aboard a plethora of satellites.  Take a look:

The Shape of Things that Came

Yuri Gagarin soared into history in April 1961, becoming the first human space traveler.  His face became known worldwide. His spacecraft, on the other hand, remained shrouded in mystery. For four years, the shape of the Vostok capsule remained a secret, with only a few dubious artists' conceptions offering any clues to its configuration.

That changed suddenly last month when the Soviets displayed the complete Vostok spacecraft at an exhibition in Moscow.  Now we know that the fanciful cylinders and bullet-shaped craft were completely off the mark — Vostok was spherical.

This is significant.  A sphere is a simple shape, mathematically, and it is not hard to weight a ball such that one end always points down.  In the Vostok, that point is where its heat shield was mounted.  A similar concept was employed with America's Mercury capsule, but the back end of the Mercury is only a small arc of a circle.  That's because American rockets were too weak to loft a full sphere.  Vostok is clearly a much heavier spacecraft than Mercury, and this suggests that the Soviet Vostok rocket was much more powerful than the Atlas and certainly the Redstone that lofted the first astronauts.

The unveiling of Vostok affords us a look into a completely different space program, too.  Earlier in the year, American intelligence determined that the Vostok had been turned into a spy satellite.  Instead of cosmonauts, the new Vostok carries a camera.  After a week snapping pictures in orbit, the capsule parachutes to Earth, and the film is developed.  It's an elegant repurposing, though it has to be more expensive than the American analog, Discoverer.

While the Soviets do not announce their spy missions, it's not too hard to figure out which of their Kosmos "science satellites" are probably spy Vostoks.  Their orbits, sweeping them over Western targets of interest, and their short lifespans on the order of a week give them away.  In just the last two months, it's likely that Kosmoses 64, 65, and 66 were all spy satellites.  In a few days, we'll know if Kosmos 67, launched on May 25, is also a space shutterbug.

Softly, softly

Another probe about which the Soviets are being less than forthcoming is Luna 5.  Launched on May 9, the ton-and-a-half spacecraft was headed for the Moon.  Reportedly, it conducted a mid-course maneuver on May 10, directing it toward the Sea of Clouds — which it hit at 10:10 PM, Moscow time.  Per TASS, "During the flight and the approach of the station to the moon a great deal of information was obtained which is necessary for the further elaboration of a system for soft landing on the moon’s surface."

That might lead one to the conclusion that Luna 5 was the Soviet version of Ranger, a TV probe designed to take pictures until it crashed.  However, Western observers using telescopes saw the plume of dust that one would expect accompanying an attempt at a soft landing.  That such a landing did not occur suggests that Luna 5 was supposed to be an equivalent of our Surveyor, set to launch next year, and that things did not go as planned.  The lunar race thus remains neck and neck.

Exploring, Communicating

The last month saw two more entries into the Explorer series: Explorer 27, launched April 29, is a windmill-shaped little satellite that will measure irregularities in the Earth's shape; a secondary mission is probing the ionosphere.

Meanwhile, Explorer 28 was launched on May 28, and is the latest in the Interplanetary Monitoring Probe series, along with Explorers 18 and 21.  All three craft have high, eccentric orbits that allow them to thoroughly map Earth's magnetic field, though Explorer 18 went kaput earlier this month.

As we saw with last month's flight of Intelsat 1, space-based communications are now a fact of everyday life.  The USSR has now gotten in on the act, following up the flight of Early Bird with their own first satellite called Molniya, launched April 22, 1965.  It has a high, 12-hour orbit, not quite geosynchronous, designed to service the high latitude residents of the Soviet Union during the daytime.  European nations have already requested use of the Molniyas; they feel that the "international" Intelsat corporation too strongly favors the United States.


Finally, the Air Force's second "Lincoln Experimental Satellite," launched May 6, has been a success.  This next-generation communications satellite tests new technologies that will allow it to service hundreds of users at a time.  Its predecessor, LES-1 launched February 11, failed to fire its onboard engine that would kick it from its initial low orbit.  LES-2 had no such problems, and its orbit takes it more than 9000 miles above the surface of the Earth.

Of course, being a military satellite (as opposed to Telstar, Relay, and Syncom), it is possible that we civilians won't see immediate benefits, but I suspect they will trickle down in good time.

Another step Moonward

May 25 marked the ninth successful launch of the Saturn rocket, possibly the biggest rocket on Earth.  At its tip were boilerplates of the Apollo Command and Service Modules.  But these mock spacecraft weren't the stars of the show: inside the cylindrical Service Module was a giant satellite, the second Pegasus.  Appropriately adorned with a pair of enormous wings, Pegasus will stay in orbit for years measuring how many micrometeoroids our astronauts are likely to encounter on their way to the Moon.

The reliability of the Saturn is truly remarkable.  Remember the early days of the Space Race?  Chances were 50/50 then that any given rocket, Atlas, Juno, or Vanguard, would blow up on the launch pad, tilt off course, or otherwise fail.  We're now in an age of maturing space travel.  If Gemini's Titan rocket continues to do as well as the Saturn, I do believe that, by the 1970s, everyday citizens like you and me will be able to get tickets to ride into space. 

This week's Journey Show is a special Space Race episode!  Don't miss it!




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Science / Space Race

[February 18, 1965] OSO Exciting!  (February 1965 Space Roundup)

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by Gideon Marcus

Remember the early days of the Space Race, when launches came about once a month, and there was plenty of time to ruminate over the significance of each one?

Those days are long past, my friends.  Like every other aspect of this crazy modern world we live in, the pace of space missions is only accelerating.  Just look at this grab bag of space headlines, any one of which might have been front page news just a few years ago:

Staring at the Sun

Three years ago, NASA launched the first of its "Observatory Class" satellites, the 200 kg Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO).  Its mission was unprecedented: to get the first long-term observations of the Sun in all of the frequencies of the electro-magnetic spectrum, not just the narrow windows visible from the Earth's surface.

For two years, OSO gazed at the Sun with its thirteen instruments, dutifully reporting its findings to the ground.  The observatory revolutionized our understanding of our neighborhood star, particularly in finding the correlation between solar flares and the little microflares that precede them. 

OSO 1 went silent last May.  Like nature, NASA abhors a vacuum — at least one without satellites floating through it!  So on February 3, 1965, OSO 2 sailed into orbit to pick up where its predecessor had left off.

The new observatory only has eight instruments, but given that the weight of the craft is similar to that of OSO 1, I have to believe the new load-out is intentional.  Moreover, OSO 2 has some neat developments.  Its Ultraviolet spectrometer, Solar x-ray and UV telescope, and White-light coronagraph are all mounted on the "sail" of the spacecraft, and they can scan the disk of the sun from end to end, like a TV camera.  That should allow for more precision in the measurements.

Also, OSO 2 has a digital telemetry system rather than the analog FM system of OSO 1.  Digital systems are far less prone to error, and more information can be sent over any given length of time.  The new system can dump 3 million bits of data in just 5.5 minutes.

Finally, OSO 2 is smarter — it can accept some 70 commands from the ground instead of just 8.  Just what NASA scientists do with those commands, I don't know.  Maybe OSO brews great coffee.

The most important thing about OSO 2 is the timing of its launch.  Every 11 years, the Sun completes an output cycle, warbling from active to inactive status.  1965 is the Solar minimum, and this year marks a concerted international effort to watch the Sun from many different vantage points to take advantage of the opportunity.

You can bet OSO 2 will have some interesting data for us come 1966!

Requiem for a Vanguard

Hands over hearts, folks.  On February 12, NASA announced that Vanguard 1 had gone silent, and the agency was finally turning off its 108 Mhz ground transceivers, set up during the International Geophysical Year.  The grapefruit-sized satellite, launched March 17, 1958, was the fourth satellite to be orbited.  It had been designed as a minimum space probe and, had its rocket worked in December 1957, would have been America's first satellite rather than its second.  Nevertheless, rugged little Vanguard 1 beat all of its successors for lifespan.  Sputniks and Explorers came and went.  Vanguards 2 and 3 shut off long ago.  Yet the grapefruit that the Naval Research Laboratory made kept going beep-beep, helping scientists on the ground measure the shape of the Earth from the wiggle and decay of Vanguard's orbit.

The satellite's cry had slowly become weaker as its solar cell-charged batteries failed.  Finally, some time last year, Vanguard could be heard no more, though NASA kept listening for several more months.  It's not all sad news, however: Vanguard 1 will remain in orbit for hundreds of years more, and it can still be optically tracked.  That means it still has a long, useful life ahead of it, even now that it is mute.

Whole World in its Eyes

Here's a little TIROS tidbit.  Remember TIROS 9?  The first weather satellite launched into a polar orbit so it can see the whole Earth once a day as the planet rotates underneath?

We now have the very first picture of the world's weather.  It won't be the last:

The joys of being regular

There was a time when space was a hit-and-miss affair.  Seemed every time I opened the paper, there was news of yet another rocket blowing up.  These days, we can practically take success for granted.  Ranger 7 broke a six mission losing streak, the first two Gemini launches went swimmingly, TIROS has gone nine for nine.

Similarly, the Saturn 1 rocket, the biggest booster ever made, has had an impeccable launch record.  The lift-off on February 16 kept the streak going; the eight engine monstrosity delivered what I believe is the biggest satellite ever to be put into orbit.

Called Pegasus, it is an enormous cylinder with giant panels affixed to either side.  The panels occupy some 2300 square feet, and their job is to measure the density of micrometeoroids in orbit over the course of a many-year lifespan.

It sounds pretty mundane when you reduce the mission to its bare essentials.  Pegasus is like a big fly-catcher, spending its orbit running into space rocks.  But it's not the experiment that's so exciting, but the idea that we can now loft giant structures with a single launch.  Imagine that Pegasus was actually a space station module, and that it's wings were solar panels.  Now imagine assembling a few of them together using a maneuverable spacecraft, perhaps a Gemini derivative…

Yes, America is just on the edge of being in the space construction business.

Scenes to Come

Yesterday (February 17, 1965), the eighth Ranger blasted off from Cape Kennedy, destination: Moon.  If we've truly reached an era of reliability, we can expect the craft to hit its target on the morning of the 20th.  Stay tuned — you'll read about it here first!




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Science / Space Race

[May 30, 1964] Every journey begins… (Apollo's first flight!)

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by Gideon Marcus

One Step

Humanity took its first halting steps toward the Moon with the (mostly) successful launch of the first Apollo spacecraft into orbit on May 28, 1964.  Blasting off from Cape Kennedy's Pad 37B, the sixth Saturn I, biggest rocket in existence, carried a boilerplate, non-functional spacecraft. 

The mission marked firsts in several ways.  Whereas the previous five Saturns had been topped with Jupiter-C nosecones, SA-6 was the first to prove the actual Apollo structure.  Less auspiciously, the flight also marked the first malfunction of the Saturn rocket: 122 seconds into its mission, 24 seconds before planned cut-off, engine #8 prematurely shut down. 

But out of the jaws of failure came ultimate success.  The other engines continued to fire an additional two seconds, the four inboards shutting down shutting off 142 seconds into flight, the remaining three outboards going dark at Launch + 148.  Despite these compensations, AS-101 (the name for the spacecraft) was still flying "low and slow"; the second stage then ignited and compensated for the balky first stage, ultimately delivering the Apollo spacecraft almost perfectly into its planned orbit. 


That's Wernher von Braun in the middle; next to him, with the glasses, is George Mueller, who used to run the Pioneer lunar project at STL

Thus, the failure of engine #8 actually proved a blessing in disguise — we now know that the Saturn guidance system works quite nicely.  Moreover, given the excellent track record of the first stage's H-1 engines, I suspect the causes of the shutdown will be determined and remedied in short order.

AS-101 will be in orbit about one more day before it plunges into the atmosphere.  Like the first Gemini mission (last month), the spacecraft will not be recovered. 

SA-7/AS-102 will be a largely identical mission that will test the escape tower, the little rocket that will rescue Apollo astronauts in the event of a launch failure.  It is due to go up at the end of August.  Crewed spaceflights should happen as early as 1966!

No News is…

In other news, there isn't much news.  Since our last update, the Soviets launched Kosmoses 29 and 30 (April 25 and May 18), both of which landed just a week after launch, which suggests they were really spy satellites a la our Discoverer program.  Meanwhile, the United States Air Force lofted two birds of its own, a small one on April 27, and a big one on May 19.  I'd bet the first one was some a traditional film-return spy satellite (the kind that snaps photos in space and then sends the shots down to Earth for development in a little capsule).  As for the second, either it carries multiple canisters, or it's some kind of advanced system — maybe a real-time TV eye in orbit?

By the way, on April 21, I understand an Air Force rocket went boom, and the satellite it was carrying, a navigational Transit was on board.  That'd be no big deal…except this Transit was powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238.  I haven't heard much reporting on the subject, but I sure hope the flyboys are more careful next time!

The Soviets did launch Polyot-2 on April 12.  This is a special satellite that is able to change orbits.  That could mean that it's a precursor to the next Communist space vehicle (that's the thought advanced in Martin Caidin's recent novel, Marooned) or it could be a spacecraft designed to intercept missiles or other vehicles in space.  We won't know for a while, if ever.

Coming Attractions

As we head into the summer, it looks like things will remain pretty calm, unless the Russians pull another surprise out of their hats.  The only big event on the horizon is the launch of Ranger 7 in July.  After ten straight failures on the way to the Moon, I can't imagine the betting is particularly good for this flight.

But hope springs eternal…  See you then!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Science / Space Race

[February 5, 1964] That was the Month that Was (January's Space Roundup)

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by Gideon Marcus

Another Lunar Black Eye

NASA's Project Ranger, which is basically a projectile aimed at the moon, has logged failure after failure since it started back in 1961.  The first ones in the series, Rangers 1 and 2, were just Earth-orbiting satellites designed to test the engineering and return scientific data.  Both of their missions were busts due to fault Agena second stages on their Atlas-Agena boosters.

Rangers 3 to 5 were bona-fide moon missions with giant pimples on their noses to do a bit of lunar geology (or selenology).  None of them completed their missions: Ranger 3 missed its target and was pointed the wrong way to boot, Ranger 4 hit the moon but was brain-dead from orbit onward, and Ranger 5 both missed and stopped working long before it got near the moon.

With five cracked eggs' experience to draw from, NASA tried again in January 30, 1964, with the first of the TV-armed Rangers, #6.  Aside from an odd voltage spike early on, Ranger 6 seemed to be working fine.  The spacecraft made a textbook-perfect flight all the way to its target, Mare Tranquillitas, impacting on schedule. 

But its TV camera never turned on.

I've been told that the fellow who announced the flight in real-time to the press has resigned from this duty, unable to go through such a harrowing experience again.  Who can blame him?  This is the sixth Ranger and the tenth failed (counting Pioneer Atlas Able) moon mission in a row.  On the other hand, and this is probably weak comfort at best, Ranger 6 did perform perfectly all the way until the end.  I'm sure Our American Cousin was a fine play, too.

There are three more third edition Rangers left to launch.  Let's hope at least one of them will be successful.  Right now, this program is making Project Vanguard look like an unalloyed success.

Stillborn Quintuplets

Speaking of Vanguard, on January 24, 1964, the Air Force launched another of its multi-satellite missions, attempting to orbit an unprecedented five spacecraft at once.  "Composite 1" comprised LOFTI 2, which was to study the ionosphere, Secor and Surcal, which would have helped the Army and Navy (respectively) calibrate their tracking radars, and Injun 2, a radiation satellite made by the University of Iowa (the same folks who discovered the Van Allen Belts.

Composite 1 also included SOLRAD (Solar Radiation) 4, and this is the Vanguard tie-in.  You see, the spottily successful Vanguard, which was America's first space project, was originally designed to study the sun's output of X-rays and ultraviolet light.  Unfortunately, the last of the Vanguards, number 3, was swamped with radiation from the Van Allen Belts, and its sun-pointed experiments were made useless.  End of story, right?

Well, SOLRAD 1, launched in 1960, was essentially Vanguard 4.  It was made by the same folks (the Naval Research Laboratory), used the same design, and carried the same experiments as Vanguard 3.  The only difference was purpose: the Navy wanted to know if there was a relation between solar flares and radio fade-outs (turns out yes). 

SOLRAD 2 was a dud thanks to a bad rocket, but SOLRAD 3 and Injun 1 returned good data.  The failure of SOLRAD 4 gives the program a .500 average — still pretty good to my mind.  I understand the Air Force will be trying again in a few months.

Five for five

How about some good news for a change?  For the fifth time in three years, the world's largest rocket took to the skies above Florida, January 29, 1964.  The Saturn I rocket, a precursor to the Saturn V behemoth that will take humans to Moon before this decade is out, has completed its run of test flights with a 100% success rate. 

I want that to sink in.  As far as I know, no rocket program has ever been 100% successful.  One would think that a booster as big as the Saturn should be more accident-prone than any other.  And yet, the trim cylindrical stack lifted off from Cape Kennedy, with both stages fueled for the first time, and placed its entire top half into orbit.  This gave Americans another first: world's largest satellite, weighing nearly ten tons!

The timing could not be better.  Apollo's future has been threatened a bit lately, with many in Congress seeking to reduce NASA's funding.  Some question whether there is even value in winning the race to the moon.  The outstanding success of the Saturn I will hopefully be a shot in the program's arm — and maybe for the related Project Ranger.

Now that testing of the rocket is complete, the Saturn I will go on to operational missions, flying full-scale examples of the Apollo spacecraft.  This will be the closest this first Saturn ever gets to the moon, however.  Huge as it is, it is not strong enough to launch Apollo to Earth's nearest neighbor.  It's not even strong enough to loft a fully-fueled Apollo!  But it's bigger brother, the Saturn IB, will be.  Expect its first flights in 1966 or so.

Can you hear me?

Last year, COMSAT corporation started selling publicly traded shares.  COMSAT was President Kennedy's compromise between a public and private satellite communications entity.  COMSAT has not yet developed any comsats, but that hasn't other entities are continuing to build experimental satellites toward the day when COMSAT birds begin to fly.

Relay 2

On January 21, 1964, the RCA-built Relay 2 joined its sister Relay 1, Ma-Bell-made Telstar 2, and the fixed-in-the-sky Syncom 2 in orbit.  With four active comsats in orbit (the kind that can retransmit broadcasts), we'll likely soon see transmissions bounce all over the globe.  The most exciting programming on the schedule?  This summer's Olympic games, live from Tokyo, Japan!

Echo 2

Just four days after the launch of Relay 2, NASA shot up Echo 2, a balloon-type passive reflector satellite — essentially a big mirror in space for bouncing signals.  It's larger than Echo 1, which is still in orbit, and should be visible from the ground when it zooms overhead.  I'm not sure why NASA bothered with this satellite given the sophistication of the active-repeater comsats.  I suspect there won't be many more.

Gavarit pa Ruskii?

Meanwhile, our Communist friends have not been entirely idle.  In addition to their increasing constellation of little Kosmos satellites, which may or may not be civilian in nature (probably not), the Soviets have created the twin "Elektron" orbiting laboratories.  The first two were launched on January 30 into separate orbits, their mission to explore the Van Allen Belts from both below and above!

It's the first time the Soviets have launched multiple satellites on a single rocket (we've been doing it since SOLRAD 1) and the first time since Sputnik 3 that a Russian mission has been verifiably civilian in nature. 

It's about time!

Space for Two

I'll wrap things up with a couple of pieces of news on the Gemini two-seat spacecraft, sort of a bridge between Projects Mercury and Apollo.  Firstly, it looks like the first uncrewed flight will happen as early as March, testing both the capsule and the Titan II rocket.  If this goes well, the first crewed flights may blast off as early as the end of this year.

Fingers crossed!

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Science / Space Race

[Apr. 29, 1963] When a malfunction isn't (the flight of Saturn I #4 and other space tidbits)

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by Gideon Marcus

Baby's first step… Take Four

Out in Huntsville, Alabama, Von Braun's team is busy making the biggest rockets ever conceived.  The three-stage Saturn V, with five of the biggest engines ever made, will take people to the Moon before the decade is out.  But NASA's is justifiably leery of running before walking.  Moreover, there is use for a yet smaller (but still huge!) rocket for orbital Apollo testing and, also, practice building and launching Saturn rocket components.

Enter the two-stage Saturn I, whose first stage has eight engines, like the Nova, but they are much smaller.  Still, altogether, they produce 1.5 million pounds of thrust — that's six times more than the Atlas that will put Gordo Cooper's Mercury into orbit next month.  The Saturn I's second stage will likely also be the third stage on the Saturn V.

The Saturn I has had the most successful testing program of any rocket that I know of.  It's also one of the most maddeningly slow testing programs (I'm not really complaining — methodical is good, and it's not as if Apollo's ready to fly, anyway). 

The fourth in the series lifted off March 28, and they still aren't fueling the second stage.  They've essentially all been tests of stage #1.  This particular test was interesting because they shut off one of the engines on purpose during the flight to see if the other engines could compensate for the loss.  SA-4 continued to work perfectly, zooming to an altitude of 129 kilometers.

SA-4 was the last of the first-stage-only tests.  Henceforth, we'll get to see what the full stack can do. 

A breath of very thin fresh air

We tend to ignore most of the atmosphere.  After all, the air we breathe and most of the weather are confined to the first few kilometers above the Earth.  But the upper regions of the atmosphere contain the ozone layer, which shields us from deadly radiations; the ionosphere, which bounces radio waves back to Earth; beautiful and mysterious noctilucent clouds, only visible after sunset; and of course, spacecraft have to travel through it on their way up and down.  Knowing the makeup of our atmosphere gives us clues to understand climate, the history of the Earth, the interaction of our planet and the sun, and much more.

And yet, aside from the TIROS weather satellites, which only study the lowest level of the atmosphere, there has never been a dedicated atmospheric study satellite.  Sure, we've launched probes to detect radiation and charged particles and the Earth's magnetosphere.  Some have investigated the propagation of radio waves through the ionosphere.  But none have gone into space just to sample the thin air of the upper atmosphere and find out what's up there and how much.

Until now. 

Explorer 17 is a big, sputnik-looking ball loaded with a bunch of pressure gauges and other instruments.  Its sole purpose is to measure the the pressure and make-up of the upper atmosphere, from about 170 kilometers up. 

Launched on April 3rd, in its first few days of operation, the probe has more than tripled all previous measurements of neutral gases in Earth's upper atmosphere to date.  For instance, the satellite has discovered that the earth is surrounded by a belt of neutral helium at an altitude of from 250 to 1000 miles, a belt no one was sure it existed.  We suspected it, of course — helium, produced in the Earth's crust by the natural radioactive decay of heavy elements, is very light.  Just as helium balloons go up and up, free helium's normal fate is to eventually escape Earth's gravitational influence, leaving behind the heavier gasses. 

This is the first time this hypothesis had a chance to be proven, and by measuring the density of this helium, we should be able to get an idea of how much helium is generated by the Earth each year.  This, in turn, will tell us something about how much radioactive material is left on Earth.  Isn't that neat?  We send a probe far up into space to learn more about what's going on down here.  Your tax dollar hard at work.

The Cosmos opening up for Kosmos

Pop quiz — what did the Soviets accomplish last year in the Space Race?  Right.  The Soviets made big news with the flashy dual mission of Vostoks 3 and 4.  Anything else?  Can you recall a single space accomplishment for the Communists?  In 1962, the United States launched Telstar, the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO), three Explorer science probes, three Ranger moon probes, Mariner 2 to Venus, and a couple dozen military satellites, not to mention the orbital Mercury flights of John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, and Wally Schirra.

This year is a different story.  We Americans haven't slackened our pace, but the Russians have finally picked up theirs.  They've got a probe on its way to Mars, as well as a new series of satellites called Kosmos.  This month, they launched three, getting up to Kosmos 16.  They are touted as science satellites, but there has been precious little data from them made public or that's worked its way into scientific papers.  This suggests that the Kosmos program is really a civilian front for a military program.  That's the fundamental difference between the Western and Eastern space efforts.  While the American military takes up its share of the national space budget, we still make sure there's room for pure science.  The Soviets have chosen between guns and science in favor of the former (though, to be fair, if we could only afford one option, would we have made the same choice?)

So why did it take so long for the Soviets to get into the groove after having such a seemingly commanding lead in the Space Race?  And just what are the Kosmos satellites really doing up there? 

According to a NASA scientist, the lack of announced flights doesn't mean the Russians didn't try.  Our Communist friends are notorious for talking only about their successes.  In fact, the Soviets were trying a new four-stage version of the booster that launched Sputnik and Vostok, and the fourth stage kept failing.  There might have been a few failed moon missions in there, too, that we never heard about.  We probably only learned about Luna 4, launched April 2, because it took off just fine — it just missed its target (the Soviet reporting after lunar flyby was notably subdued). 

As for what Kosmos is, Aviation Weekly and Space Report suggests the series is really two types of satellites based on weight and orbital trajectory.  One is a small class of probe that stays up for months.  They could be akin to our Explorers, but again, they don't produce science (whereas ours have revolutionized our knowledge of near-Earth space).  More likely, they are engineering satellites designed to test various components for future missions: communications, cameras, navigation.

The other class is big — as big as the manned Vostoks.  They only fly a few days, too, and their orbits cover most of the globe.  These could be unmanned tests of the next generation of Soviet manned spacecraft.  But they also could be repurposed Vostoks designed to conduct spy missions.  Perhaps the Soviet Union is sending up cosmonauts with camera in hand (as we have done on the Mercury missions).  Sure, it's more expensive than our Discoverer spy sats, but everything's free in a command economy, right?

In any event, the world once again has two active space superpowers.  What happens next is anyone's guess…




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Science / Space Race

[July 29, 1962] What a Diff'rence a Month Made (July 1962 in spaceflight)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

Sometimes, the future comes so fast, it bewilders.

This rushing feeling I've had all month must be similar to what my grandparents felt when the Wright Brothers first took off.  For millennia, people have dreamed of flight, envying the birds.  Yet flying was always the province of make-believe, of fanciful stories.  Then, on one day in 1903, airplanes became a reality, and the world was transformed.

Ditto space travel.  That dream has been alive since the Ancient Greeks, yet it was entirely a theoretical concern until the Soviets pierced the heavens with their first beeping Sputnik.  It is easy to forget, now that there have been well over one hundred successful orbital missions, that just five years ago, there had been none.

The advances made just this month are tremendous, each one as significant as the breakthroughs I've just detailed.  Let's review:

Ma Bell, Orbital Division

Unless you've been living under a rock the last few weeks, you can't have missed virtually non-stop coverage of the first civilian communications satellite, AT&T's Telstar.  Launched July 10, it circles the Earth every 90 minutes; for 20 minutes of every orbit, North America and Europe are linked via the dappled spheroid.

Now, it's not as if the two continents had been completely cut off before.  However, the only way to communicate was via undersea phone line (expensive, not useful for television), or shortwave radio (no pictures).  If the UK wants to watch reruns of The Twilight Zone, or if we wanted to see airings of Danger Man or Supercar, we have to wait for videotapes to be shipped/airmailed across the Pond.  News from abroad is often days out of date.

That's about to change.  Starting with a fairly humdrum broadcast of a flag in France, Telstar's programming has now included a host of shows including a Presidential address and a sports match.  And everyone can receive them (so long as the local stations rebroadcast the feed).  Over the next few years, expect satellite coverage to become continuous.  Arthur C. Clarke's dream of comsats fixed in the sky, 22,500 miles overhead, will soon become a reality, and the world shall be connected as never before.

Jousting Space Shutterbugs

Since April, the Soviets have been orbiting a series of disparate probes under the unified designation, "Kosmos," the latest being Kosmos 7, which launched yesterday.  Details on these flights have been sketchy, and while they are all billed as scientific missions, it is beyond doubt that some or all of them have been spy satellites.  I infer this based on the fact that at least one of them was deorbited and recovered a few days after launch – the same modus operandi as our Discoverer film-return satellites.

Speaking of which, yesterday we launched the 47th in the Discoverer series.  As usual, the Air Force did not announce the flight, but it was in the papers anyway.  It's really hard to hide a rocket launch in the middle of California.

It is unlikely that the two satellites took pictures of each other, but wouldn't that be a snapshot to develop?

Getting to Space the Old-Fashioned Way

Until this month, the only way into the deep black was at the tip of a rocket, as Messrs. Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Carpenter, Gagarin, and Titov can attest.  But on July 17, Major Robert White flew his X-15 rocket plane to an altitude of 59 miles.  For NASA, that's close enough to outer space to count, and they're giving the Major a pair of astronaut wings to wear on his flight suit. 

White experienced three minutes of weightlessness during his flight, and the stars were brilliant and unwinking at the journey's apex.  While this is close to the highest the X-15 can ever fly, it strongly suggests that, in the not too distant future, the next generation of spaceplanes will zoom into orbit from a conventional runway.

Just try not to live right under the take-off point.  That could get loud.

Bits and Pieces

The Apollo moonship design is moving right along.  One lingering question, however, was how the thing would get to the moon.  After all, it is the heaviest manned spacecraft yet developed.  The original concept involved building a giant version of the already giant Saturn booster.  This eight-engine monster is dubbed Nova, and it would take Apollo directly to the moon.  Appropriately, this mode is called "Direct Ascent."

A cheaper idea involves using two Saturn C-5s (a simpler, 5-engine variant), one carrying the Apollo, and the other carrying the fuel.  The two would meet in Earth orbit before jetting off to the moon.  This mode is called "Earth Orbit Rendezvous."

But it was the plucky underdog idea that was ultimately chosen this month.  Called Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, it requires just one Saturn C-5.  At its tip will be an Apollo, some fuel, and a teeny Lunar Excursion Module (or LEM).  The Apollo, itself, won't land on the moon.  Instead, two astronauts of the three will cram into the LEM for the landing. 

This mode was, at first, deemed too complicated to be practicable.  Computers are getting better these days, however, and the cost savings are significant.  Moreover, there's less to go wrong with one rocket than two.

I'm wholly in favor of this move.  After all, anything with the acronym LEM must be incredible.

Conquered by (the Planet of) Love

The one bit of sad news accompanies the loss of Mariner 1, our first planned mission to Venus.  Launched on July 22, its Atlas Agena rocket, the biggest one we've got right now (save for the still-in-testing Saturn 1), glitched during take-off and had to be destroyed five minutes into the flight.

Unlike Pioneer 5, which two years ago flew to Venus' orbit and demonstrated the possibility of long-range telecommunications, Mariner 1 would have flown by the planet, itself.  It would not have been able to take pictures; the Atlas Agena combination isn't powerful enough to lift a spacecraft with a big enough radio to send scans of photos.  We'll have to wait for the beefier Atlas Centaur for that.

Instead, Mariner 1 is really a retool of the first generation of Ranger moon probes, carrying a slew of particle and electromagnetic wave detectors.  If an "R-type" Mariner makes it to Venus, we won't get a look under the planet's shroud of clouds, but we will, at least, finally know hot the world is and get some information on its magnetic field.

The good news?  Mariner 2 is scheduled for launch next month.  Let's hope that one works – otherwise, we'll have to wait another year and a half for Earth and Venus to be in favorable position for a mission.

Live via Visi-Phone!

Courtesy of Telstar and the miracle of Visi-phone(tm) technology, the Journey had a smashing second Tele-Conference on July 29, covering a wide range of topics: from news of the day, to discussion of the upcoming Hugo Awards, to talking about this Summer's blockbusters.

If you missed the live broadcast, catch the rerun.  Check your local listings for details.

Congratulations go out to Mark Yon and Nathan "Rocky" Anderson for asking the best questions!  You can expect your prizes to arrive over the next few weeks.  And to the rest of our audience, warm thanks from the Galactic Journey staff.  We look forward to seeing you again when we do our third Tele-Conference in 2-3 months.

In the meantime, enjoy this revolutionary new era.  The future is only going to come more quickly, I predict…

—

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Magazine

[Apr. 30, 1962] Common Practice Period (April Spaceflight Round-up)

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by Gideon Marcus

The radio plays Classical music on the FM band now. 

The difference is palpable.  Bach and Mozart on the AM band were tinny and remote.  It was almost as though the centuries separating me and the composers had been attenuating the signal.  This new radio band (well, not so new, but newly utilized) allows transmissions as clear as any Hi-Fi record set could deliver. 

Don't get me wrong; I still listen to the latest pop hits by The Shirelles and The Ventures, but I find myself increasingly tuned into the local classics station.  The sound, and the selections, are just too good to ignore.  The last movement of Robert Schumann's Symphony #1, with its stirring accelerando is playing right now, and it is a fitting accompaniment for the article I am currently composing.

Time was I would write an article on a space mission about once a month.  This wouldn't be a wrap-up, but an article devoted to a single satellite.  But the pace of space launches has increased – there were two successful orbital flights in 1957, nine in 1958, 13 in 1959, 20 in 1960, 38 in 1961.  There were six flights just last week.  Either I'm going to have to start abbreviating my coverage, or I'll need to start a satellite (no pun intended) column. 

But that's a decision for next year.  Right now, with a bit of musical texturing, let me tell you all about the exciting things that happened in spaceflight, April 1962:

Quartet in USAF Minor

Late last year, President Kennedy put a lid on all military space programs, classifying their details.  This was a break from Ike's policy, which was to publicize them (more or less accurately).  I think Eisenhower's idea was that any space shot was good for prestige.  Also, if we were upfront about military flights, maybe the Soviets would follow suit.

The current President has decided that discretion is the better path.  So even though I have it on good authority that four boosters took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California (it being rather hard to hide a blast of that magnitude, and the papers are still reporting on them as best they can), I couldn't tell you exactly what was at the tips of those rockets.  It's a fair bet, however, that three of them were reconnaissance satellites, snapping photos of the USSR from orbit.  The last was probably a nuclear missile launch detector called MIDAS.  That's make it the 5th in the series. 

Quartet in USSR Minor

Meanwhile, the Russians, who had not reported any spaceflights since Comrade Titov's flight last summer, suddenly threw up four probes in about as many weeks.  The missions of "Kosmos" 1-4 were "to study weather, communications, and radiation effects during long space flights in preparation for an eventual manned landing."

That sounds good, but while the first three satellites are still up in orbit returning scientific data, the fourth, launched four days ago, landed three days later – after passing over the United States several times.  All we know about it was it was launched from "a secret base" and "valuable data [was] obtained."  Given that Kosmos 4's mission plan bore a striking resemblance to that of our Discoverer capsule-return spy sats, I suspect the first three Kosmos shots were a flimsy camouflage.  What's interesting here is that the Communists feel it necessary to construct a cover-up.  But the fact is, they just can't hide when they launch things into space, any more than we can. 

Solo for English Horn

The first UK satellite, Ariel 1, was successfully launched on April 26, 1962 atop an American Thor Delta booster.  The little probe will investigate the Earth's ionosphere.  You can read all about this mission in Ashley Pollard's recent article.

Mooncrash Sonata

It's two steps forward, one step back for NASA's ill-starred ("mooned?") Ranger program.  Thrice, the lunar probe failed to fly due to a balky Atlas Agena booster.  This time, Ranger 4, launched April 24, 1962, was hurled on a perfect course for the Earth's celestial companion.  The trajectory was so perfect that the craft didn't even require a mid-course correction.

Of course, it wouldn't have mattered if it had.  Upon leaving the Earth, it quickly became apparent that Ranger 4 was brain-dead.  It issued no telemetry, nor did it respond to commands.  NASA dispiritedly tracked the probe's 64-hour trip to the moon, which ended in its impact on the far side. 

Heart-breaking, but it is a sort of semi-victory: At least the rocket works now, and the United States as finally caught up with the Soviets in another aspect of the Space Race (just two-and-a-half years late…)

Saturn (fortissimo)

Speaking of successful rockets, the tremendous Saturn I had another successful test on April 25, 1962.  Like the first, the upper two stages were inert, filled with water for ballast.  This flight has a twist, however.  After the first stage had exhausted its fuel, the dummy stages were detonated and the ensuing watery explosion observed.  This "Operation Highwater" was designed to demonstrate how far the debris of a booster blast would travel.  I imagine it was also a lot of fun.

I have to wonder about the future of the Saturn I.  It has already been determined that the Apollo moon craft will be launched by the much more powerful and generally unrelated Saturn C-5 and Nova boosters.  It seems that the Saturn I is something of a technological dead end, though I'm sure they are at least perfecting their heavy booster launch techniques.

Prelude, Symphony #2

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is planning another Mercury one-person shot for next month.  It will be an exact duplicate of John Glenn's February flight, down to the three-orbit duration.  To be piloted by Navy aviator Scott Carpenter (the hunkiest of the Mercury 7), the main purpose of the mission is to make sure that the errors that plagued Glenn during his flight are fixed before the little spacecraft takes on longer journeys.  And, of course, then we will have caught up with the Russians in another way – we'll have had two men orbit the planet.

No doubt, Carpenter's flight will be the spaceflight highlight of next month; I have not seen any other missions announced.  Then again, the Reds might have a surprise that'll have us singing a different tune…

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Science / Space Race

[October 28, 1961] Heavy Lifting (Saturn C-1 SA-1)

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by Rosemary Benton

It's a great leap forward for the United States.  This morning, October 28th 1961, one can open the newspaper and learn about yesterday's launch of the Saturn C-1.  Some of us even saw the live coverage of the launch on television, watching as the giant rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida and flew 95 miles into the air before plunging into the Atlantic Ocean.  A rocket this powerful has never been launched before, and I can only imagine that the scientific community must be trembling like the ground beneath Saturn C-1's S-1 first-stage cluster of nine tanks and eight engines. 

It was, quite simply, the biggest rocket ever launched.  By far.

As the world reaches farther and farther past the stratosphere, I wanted to take a look into the recent past in order to better appreciate where we are today.  The development of this impressive rocket was a potent combination of money, ambition, and potential, beginning in December 1957 when renowned rocket scientist Dr.  Wernher von Braun and his team proposed the creation of a booster with one million five hundred thousand pounds of thrust – that's five times that of the Atlas (the rocket that will take an American astronaut into orbit).  The Department of Defense listened, and by August 15, 1958 the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) began work at the Redstone Arsenal to create the vehicle that would culminate in the tower of flame that lifted slowly, inexorably, from its Florida launchpad yesterday.

The initial design of the booster was something of a lash-up, fusing the liquid oxygen and fuel tanks from the Redstone and Jupiter missiles with the tried and true S-3D engine from the Thor and Jupiter missiles.  After significant retooling, the upgraded S-3D engine was clearly a new beast.  So it got a new name: H-1.  As the development of the H-1 continued through 1958, ARPA began to take a more ambitious approach to the aims of the project.  It would not be enough to develop a booster capable of propelling enormous payloads.  Instead they set their sights on creating a multistage carrier vehicle for a long term manned expedition to space.  The result was the October 1958 project tentatively called Juno V, the name indicating the booster's kinship with its predecessor Juno rockets) based on the Jupiter missile.  The project quickly outgrew any resemblance to the Jupiter family.  On February 3, 1959 that the ARPA renamed the project after the next planet out from the Sun: Saturn. 

Saturn's development has been nothing less than breakneck.  Dr.  Von Braun's group at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) delivered the first production H-1 engine on April 28, 1959 and successfully tested it on May 26.  The Department of Defense prioritized the civilian Saturn.  July of that year was a particularly productive month.  At Cape Canaveral there began construction on a blockhouse for the project's Launch Complex 34, and the Redstone Arsenal shops shifted their focus away from Jupiter rockets in favor of the Saturn project.  By the end of July, the Army Ordnance Missile Command (AOMC) was ordered to cease work on the Titan second stage boosters in favor of the Saturn project. 

NASA stepped in to assume direction of the Saturn Project from ARPA on March 16, 1960.  From the start NASA saw the three stage Saturn C-1 as a starting point in the creation of more powerful, larger vehicles.  Through April and March of 1960, success after success met the Saturn project.  As is tradition, private companies were brought on board to design and construct components of the vehicle.  Contracts between NASA, Douglas Aircraft Company, and Pratt & Whitney, were drawn up in July and August of 1960 respectively.  Douglas Aircraft Company would be responsible for the conceptualization and production of the four-engine S-IV stage of Saturn C-1.  Pratt and Whitney would produce the LR-119 engines to be used in the S-IV and S-V stages. 

As forward thinking as he is driven, Dr. von Braun had bigger plans for the Saturn C-1.  In January 1960, shortly after Convair Astronautics submitted a proposal for an S-V upper stage for the Saturn vehicle, Dr. von Braun floated the idea past NASA administration that the developing lunar project “Apollo” did not need a three-stage C-1; two would be sufficient for the early orbital missions planned for the spacecraft.  His proposal was approved, and NASA removed the S-V stage.  But the S-V stage was not completely scrapped.  In May 1961 the S-1 stage of the vehicle was modified to allow the Saturn C-1 to be a two or three-stage vehicle, increasing its versatility. 

Even before its launch on October 27th, the Saturn C-1 design was already being improved upon in the form of the bigger C-2 and C-3 plans.  In March 1961, considerations were well under way to make use of the Centaur's LR-115 engines in Saturn C-2 rather than the more expensive LR-119 engines developed for Saturn C-1.  Fins were added to the C-2 design in order to make it more structurally sound, and the thrust capacities of the S-1 stage were reviewed for improvement.  Work continued to accelerate on the Saturn C-2 design until recently on June 23, 1961, when Dr. von Braun announced that the C-3 would hold priority over the C-2 due to the preferable use of the C-3 for the later stages of the Apollo project.

Even as the first of its family, the Saturn C-1 launch is a milestone of astronautics.  First and foremost it represents a great leap into the future of propulsion.  Developed under the guiding hand of Dr. von Braun, the The Saturn C-1 rocket itself is one hundred sixty two feet tall, four hundred sixty tons in weight, and packs one point three million pounds of thrust.  The payload of this particular rocket is 10 tons — far outstripping that of any previously launched rocket. 

More than anything, however, is the fact that the Saturn C-1 was a success on its first flight (albeit with a dummy 2nd stage — that will get tested next year).  This bodes well for future Saturn projects.  In terms of the evolution of rocket science, the C-1 has broken new ground in all aspects of rocket design, execution and function. 

The Saturn project has brought us one step closer to manned expeditions beyond orbital space. 

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