Tag Archives: science fact

Science / Space Race

[February 28, 1961] Strings of Success… and Failure (Transit 3B, Venera)

3 Comments

Before we move on to the latest Space Race update, why don't you mosey on down to your local record store and pick up a copy of Wheels, by the String-a-longs?  It's a swinging tune, and it's been on the radio a lot lately.  It'll keep a smile on your face even when the news threatens to be a drag.

There are good weeks and there are bad weeks.  For the Space Race, this wasn't the best week.

It's been several months since the Navy got one of their Transit navigational satellites up into orbit.  Last year, I raved about these little marvels that make it possible to determine one's position just by listening to the satellite's whistle (and doing a little math).  Two were launched in quick succession, and it seemed a constellation would be established in short order. 

But the third Transit (and its piggyback Solrad probe) failed to launch last November, and its replacement, Transit 3B, had a booster malfunction that stuck it in an eccentric, relatively useless orbit.  In attendance at the ill-fated launch were two of the three Mercury astronauts who have been chosen to make the first manned flights: Alan Shepard and John Glenn (Gus Grissom was in Bermuda).  When asked for their opinions on the botched mission, they voiced their confidence in NASA's rockets. 

The launch may not have been a complete bust.  This Transit had a piggyback, too—the LOw Frequency Transmission through the Ionosphere (LOFTI) satellite.  It will test the ability of submarines to use the VLF band (below the bottom of your AM dial) for communications.  Maybe.  At last report, LOFTI had not detached from Transit 3B as planned, and I don't know if either satellite will work in a Siamese configuration.

The Soviets aren't having a great time of it, either.  Their Venus probe, launched two weeks ago, fizzled out some time before February 26, when it failed to respond to ground-based radio queries.  Venera may not be dead, but it is certainly giving us the silent treatment.  It's a shame—we will have to wait another 11 months for Venus and Earth to be favorably aligned before we see Venera 2 or its American counterpart.

To take the taste out of failure out of our mouths, let's ponder Things to Come.  The Air Force has announced that its next Discoverer capsule-return probe will carry a monkey; look for that launch late next month.  Also, NASA is hard at work developing the next generation lunar probe.  It is called Ranger, and as its "mother" is Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, it will have an entirely different configuration from Space Technology Laboratories' ill-fated Pioneer-Atlas series. 

Fingers crossed!

3 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[Feb. 21, 1961] Trading up (Mercury Atlas 2, Discoverer 21)

4 Comments

I'm starting to enjoy these musical interludes.  Indulge me while I flip on my hi-fi to play my new favorite pop tune, Del Shannon's Runaway.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm often still as square as a lot of the slightly older set, and I still tap my toes to Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and Count Basie, but I enjoy the new stuff, too.

Now, on to the news.  With all of the talk about Mercury capsules on Redstone rockets, it's easy to forget that the main mission is to get a person into orbit–and you just can't do that without a bigger booster.

It appears that bigger booster, in the form of the Atlas ICBM, is ready to roll.

I actually missed the first flight of Mercury Atlas, back on July 29, 1960, as I was traveling Japan and didn't have easy access to English newspapers.  In that flight, the Atlas' payload was a boilerplate Mercury.  There was also no ejection system or passenger.  The goal was to test the Atlas as well as to plunge the Mercury in a steep reentry angle, simulating an abort situation.

Unfortunately, MA-1 broke up 58 seconds after lift-off.  It was a cloudy day, so no one saw it occur, but when the telemetry stopped and pieces of the craft fell from the sky, it was pretty clear the mission was over.  The culprit was later identified as the junction between the capsule and booster.

MA-2, launched this morning, was a far happier flight.  The sky was perfectly clear, and the mission was a complete success.  It was a short flight, just 17-and-a-half minutes, and it didn't go any farther than Ham's flight last month, but the results were gratifying, nonetheless.  NASA now knows that the Mercury can survive a serious abort situation, and the rocket is ready for an unmanned orbital test.  After that, it we'll just be a chimp away from a fellow in orbit; this could happen as soon as the end of the year, I reckon.

Speaking of chimps, here's Ham enduring the rigors of reentry.  He had to go through an unplanned 17gs of gravity for a few seconds on the way down, poor thing.  He's all right, though, NASA vets assure.

There's a new Discoverer in orbit, Number 21, launched on the 18th.  I don't know why the Air Force launched it so fast on the heels of Number 20, which was sent up just the day before.  It may be because their missions are so different.  #20 is a simple capsule-return mission, differing from prior ones in just the length of the planned mission–four days.  #21 will test an in-orbit engine fire, presumably to test its ability to change photographic targets while over the Soviet Union (assuming it's a spy sat, of course!).  The latter probe also carries more equipment planned for use on the official spy sat, Midas.  It's all a little sketchy; the Air Force is increasingly clamping down on its press releases.

By the way, #20's mission was a bust.  The capsule was supposed to come down yesterday, but it's still in orbit.  Perhaps it was smitten by #21 and decided it just could bear to be apart…

Meanwhile, the Soviet probe to Venus, Venera, continues to sail along.  It is around 4 million kilometers away, and the Russians have confirmed at least three transfers of data.  Like Pioneer 5, it will return science on the interstellar medium all the way to Venus.  In fact, this may be all we get out of it.  Sadly, the probe will miss the mark, ending up perhaps 200,000 kilometers away at closest approach.  That may not be near enough to get much useful information, though you never know.

Still no clarification of the February 4 launch, by the way.  An article in the Feb. 13 Aviation Weekly advances all kinds of theories, one of which is similar to the "spy sat" explanation my daughter advanced.  But in the latest (Feb. 20) issue, it seems the hypothesis I advanced,that Sputnik 7 had the same mission as Sputkin 8 and simply fizzled out, is gaining favor.  The twin launches of Sputniks 7 and 8 (the latter being the rocket from which Venera was launched) have apparently galvanized the American government into action.  Or, at least, a lot of talking…

Finally, Happy Birthday to me!  Like Dr. Asimov, I am a little past 30 (a status I've enjoyed for some time).  A fan nominated me for the Hugo this year.  I'm flattered beyond words; it's a great present.

4 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[Feb. 18, 1961] Lost and Found (Explorer 9 and Discoverer 20)

Leave a comment

February is definitely making up for January's relative paucity of space flights; this week, in particular, has been noteworthy. 

I'd held off reporting on NASA's February 16 launch of Explorer 9 since, well, NASA lost it.  You see, the satellite's beacon was tracked through half an orbit, but then the signal was lost, and no one could confirm that the thing was still up there.  Yesterday, the vehicle was tracked optically, and it looks as if the probe will be able to fulfill its mission.

'What mission?' you ask.  Explorer 9 is a big, polka-dot balloon.  Unlike Echo, whose main purpose is to bounce communications signals across continents, Explorer 9 is an incredibly simple experiment.  By tracking the path of the balloon, scientists can tell a great deal about the air density of the upper atmosphere and the effect of the sun and solar wind thereon.  They will also be able to refine their gravity maps of the world by tracing the satellite's dips and rises as it travels.  It is the very simplicity of this satellite that allows it to function even without a functioning beacon.  As for the polka-dots, they are designed to help regulate the temperature of the 11-foot wide aluminum/mylar sphere.

Perhaps more exciting than the satellite itself is the rocket that launched it.  It was a cheap, civilian-made, four-stage, solid-fuel rocket called Scout.  The exciting bit is that it's the first purpose-built booster that isn't a knock-off of a missile (technically, that honor might go to Vanguard, but it traces its origins to the Viking sounding rocket, itself an evolution of the V2).  It's cheaper than the military missiles, too.  This launch is actually the second try of the Scout and balloon sat, the first ending in failure during ascent back in December.  The mission also marks the christening of a new orbital launch facility at Wallops Island, Virginia.  That base has been a sounding rocket pad for a long time, but now it joins Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base as an origin for true spaceflight missions.

In other news, the Air Force launched its twentieth Discoverer yesterday atop a Thor Agena rocket of decidedly military origin.  Once again, the capsule-return probe went into polar orbit, the kind that is best for espying global weather conditions…or enemy army bases.  The flyboys plan to wait an unprecedented four days to recover the capsule, which reportedly contains emulsions for detecting radiation, and probably also for catching a glimpse of Khruschev's new Model A.  More on that as it crosses my desk.

In the meantime, I'm finishing up this month's IF, and picked up a recent reprint of A.E.Van Vogt's The War against the Rull.  We'll see if I get those reviews done before the next space spectacular.

No comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[February 13, 1961] Venus Plus USSR (Venera)

4 Comments

Look out, Venus!  The Russians are coming to open your shell.

Venus, forever shrouded in a protective layer of clouds, may soon be compelled to give up her secrets to a 1400 pound probe.  Launched by the Soviet Union on the 11th, it is the first mission from Earth specifically designed to investigate "Earth's Twin."

The solar-powered ship is armed with a panoply of scientific instruments, from cameras to spectrometers to magnetometers.  It's also got a cargo of Soviet pennants and medals to deposit on the Venusian surface a la Luna 2.  It will reach the vicinity of Venus in three months; a full report might not be forthcoming until 1962.  That may seem a long while to wait for results, but one should remember that science takes time—even for nearby probes.  For instance, NASA is only just now processing the data from Explorer 8 (launched into Earth orbit last November, it fell silent just after Christmas.)

The Soviet probe (some reports call it 'Venera'–Russian for Venus) is not the first deep space mission.  That honor goes to the American Pioneer 5).  Venera is the first ship to be launched from an orbital rocket; the Soviets report that they launched a larger vehicle into orbit, and that Venera took off from there.

This is very interesting given last week's mystery launch, dubbed Sputnik 7.  As you may recall, the USSR launched a seven ton craft into orbit on the 4th, reportedly to do some near Earth space science.  No beep-beeps have been detected from the vehicle (though its presence has been confirmed by Western astronomers), and the Russians have been unusually quiet about the launch.  That usually indicates some kind of failed mission.

Now, my daughter has an interesting theory.  She believes that it is actually a spy satellite, and that the Soviet caginess is a ploy to lull the West into thinking the mission had been a bust. 

On the other hand, the Venera plus rocket plus fuel combination must have weighed far more than three quarters of a ton.  Is it possible that Sputnik 7 was really Venera 0, and the Venus probe never detached from its mothership? 

Maybe the Russians will tell us…in about a hundred years.

4 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race, TV

[February 4, 1961] Sputniks and Supercars!

4 Comments

A bit of a grab bag while I finish up the March 1961 Analog:

There was a rather unusual Soviet launch yesterday.  We're calling it Sputnik 7 for lack of a better term, but it is still unclear just what the seven-ton satellite is supposed to be doing.  It is bigger than the capsules it has orbited before, the ones that carried dogs and mannequins.  It is also, apparently, not designed to reenter.  At least, it hasn't, and the Russians have not indicated that they plan to retrieve it.

Per Professor Yevgeny Klinov of the International Committee for Meteoric Studies of the World Geophysical Association, the probe was designed “to study the earth as a planet and to make a study of its nearest environment, including that of meteoric dangers. 

That would suggest it is an orbital laboratory in the vein of Sputnik 3, but who needs seven tons to do that?  In any event, aside from Klinov's reported comments and a bit of muted praise from TASS (the Soviet news agency), there's been hardly a peep about the flight, which some observers are interpreting as a sign that the mission hasn't gone as planned.  Usually, Moscow Radio gives lurid details of the cities Soviet probes will fly over and the radio frequencies on which one can pick up their beep-beeps.  This time, it's zilch-ville.

Maybe we'll know more in a week or so.

In other news, an exciting scifi kids show had debuted across the pond in Jolly Old England.  Supercar came out on January 28 (if ITC stuck to the schedule I read in the trade magazine I got from overseas), and it looks like a hoot.  The eponymous vehicle, piloted by American “Mike Mercury” can drive, fly, and even submerge.  Mike and his Supercar will be involved in a number of adventures, rescuing folks in distress, fighting bad guys, and helping the progress of science.  Interestingly, the world of Supercar is populated entirely by marionettes, using a newly developed technique called “Supermarionation.” It looks a little creepy, if you ask me, but perhaps one gets used to it.


Here's hoping the show gets syndicated in the U.S.  I'm still waiting for Danger Man to come over…

4 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[February 1, 1961] Fur and Film (Mercury Redstone 2 and Samos 2)

It's hardly kosher, but it's certainly good news: yesterday, a Redstone rocket launched the first piloted Mercury capsule on a 15-minute flight into space.  No, we didn't put a man in orbit–we sent a three-year old chimpanzee named Ham on a vertical jaunt over the West Atlantic. 

It wasn't a perfect mission by any means.  The rocket fired too hard and too long, subjecting the little pilot to extra "Gs".  Also, the rocket-powered escape tower was triggered about five seconds from main-booster burnount, and poor Ham and his ship were dragged a thousand feet from their Redstone.  These issues are troubling and may result in another test mission before the all-up effort.  On the other hand, they also show that the sturdy capsule can "take a licking and keep on ticking."  The pilot was sturdy too despite the rigors of the journey, Ham dutifully ran through his in-flight routine, flipping switches and levers for the duration of the 15-minute flight.

In other news, the Air Force finally got its "official" spy satellite into orbit.  Samos is the successor to the utterly, completely, unquestionably solely scientific series, "Discoverer", which sent back capsules from space that may or may not have had photographs of the Soviet landscape in them.  Samos 2 (the first one was a dud) was launched into a polar orbit, like Discoverer.  It might also send back film, but its main purpose (I am given to understand) is to broadcast real-time photography from space without having to return film to Earth.  Instead, the pictures are photo-statted in space and then 'faxed down to Earth.  I wondered why the satellite didn't use a TV system, like the weather satellite, TIROS, but I imagine the resolution would be too poor to be useful.  I have also heard some accounts that Samos 2 is testing out an ELINT (Electronic INTelligence) system that will allow us to locate and evaluate Soviet radar systems.  It's hard to get a consistent report on the matter–the Air Force is clamming up on its programs these days.

So there you have it: the civilians are sending up sounding apes, and the missilemen are orbiting eyes in the sky.  No matter how you slice it, 1961 is already an interesting year in Space.

Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[December 31, 1960] Dog Days of Winter (Sputnik 6 and Discoverer 19)

2 Comments

I miss one lousy newspaper…

December is a busy month.  There are holidays to shop for, the tax year is wrapping up, family to visit, etc.  This December has been so crammed with work and domestic concerns such that I missed a very important pair of newspaper articles from the beginning of the month.

I caught up on my 'paper reading over Christmas and was astonished to find that, in my haste to read this month's magazines, resolve a few corporate calamities, and clean the house for company, I had missed the latest Soviet space launch.

And it's a big one.  On December 1, the Soviets launched Sputnik 6, apparently a duplicate of their Sputnik 5 mission.  It was a 5-ton spacecraft, almost assuredly a version of the capsule that will soon carry a man.  Like before, the ship carried two dogs and other biological cargo.  Significantly, our radars lost sight of the vehicle the next day suggesting it re-entered.

However, the Russians have not announced that they recovered the capsule.  Since our rivals in the Space Race never miss an opportunity to trumpet their accomplishments, I think there's a good chance that the landing was not entirely successful.  It's likely the capsule's passengers did not survive the return trip. 

Let's have a moment of silence for our fallen Muttniks. 

I find it interesting that the Soviets felt they needed to duplicate the (to all accounts) successful Sputnik 5 mission.  It had seemed logical that a manned mission would be the next step Perhaps, and the failure of Sputnik 6 certainly points in this direction, the Soviet manned space program has some serious issues to iron out before a human pilot can attempt the journey. 

Which means we might just beat the Communists to the punch.

Speaking of American flights, yet another Discoverer launched recently.  On December 20, #19 soared into a polar orbit.  As you know, the Discoverer is a capsule-return satellite designed to carry biological samples into orbit and then send them back to Earth..along with a few rolls of film with undeveloped photos of Soviet military bases.  I haven't heard anything about a failure, but nor have I heard about a successful re-entry.  I don't know if this mission was a dud or if it is testing the endurance of some longer-lived technologies.  Since it's a military mission (USAF), we may never know.

Happy New Year!  Coming up shortly, I'll have a review of 1961 F&SF as well as a wrap-up for December and a preview for January of the coming annum.

2 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[Dec. 19, 1960] A Very Good Day (Mercury Redstone 1A)

6 Comments

There are days when everything goes right.

Here we are at the end of a difficult year for space travel.  The Air Force had nearly a dozen failures in a row with its Discoverer proto spy satellite.  The Pioneer Atlas Ables moon shots were all a bust.  Even the successful probes rarely made it into space on the first try, viz. the communications satellites, Echo and Courier.  The American manned space program was dealt a number of setbacks, limping along at a pace that will likely get it to the orbital finish line quite a bit behind the Soviets. 

But Discoverer now has enjoyed a several-mission success streak.  The latest Explorer probe is sending back excellent data on the ionosphere, and its elder sibling is still plugging away in orbit, returning information on the heat budget of the atmosphere.  TIROS 2 provides up-to-date weather photos from overhead.

And this morning, just a few hours ago, Mercury Redstone 1A carried a production model Mercury spacecraft into outer space.  The suborbital mission took only 15 minutes, but it was an exact duplicate of the trip a human astronaut will take in the next few months.  The capsule was retrieved from the Atlantic in short order, and to all accounts, the flight was a complete success.  Just one more mission, crewed by a trained chimpanzee, and after that, America will have a man in space.

It is still unknown just who that person will be.  Any of the "Mercury Seven" are qualified, of course.  Moreover, the group includes representatives all three branches of service that fly jet planes (Air Force, Navy, and Marines) so I don't think that will be a factor.  John Glenn is the most charismatic; Alan Shepard has the most test pilot hours; Scott Carpenter is the handsomest; Donald K. (Deke) Slayton has the most appealing nickname. 

It's probably a good thing I'm not in charge of the selection process!

Speaking of good days, I am currently holed up in The Book Tree, a lovely little book store on Adams in San Diego.  The proprietor is kindly allowing me to bang on the keys of my portable typewriter so I can get this stop-press out.  He has an excellent science fiction selection, including an intriguing new book I picked up by Ben Barzmann: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, which I hadn't seen on the shelves of my normal haunts.  I highly recommend this establishment!

And now, back up Highway 395, the fast way to Escondido from San Diego.  See you soon with a review of this month's Analog…

6 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[Dec. 15, 1960] Booby Prize (Pioneer Atlas Able #4)

6 Comments

Today, NASA made a record–just not one it wanted to.

For the first time, a space program has been a complete failure.  Sure, we've had explosions and flopniks and rockets that veered too high or too low.  We've had capsules that popped their tops and capsules that got lost in the snow.  But never has there been a clean streak of bad missions.

Pioneer Atlas Able, Space Technology Laboratories' sequel to its marginally successful Pioneer (Thor) Able moon probes and its rather triumphant Explorer 6 and Pioneer 5 missions, was supposed to be the capping achievement.  It was the biggest American probe yet, and it carried an unprecedented myriad of instruments.

The problem wasn't the probe, which probably would have worked given the success of its well-tested predecessors.  No, it was the rocket.  We just didn't have anything purpose-built that would throw in the Soviet weight class.  But there were a few Atlas ICBMs lying around, as well as the generally reliable second and third stages used in the Thor Able.  They were married in the ungainly form of the Atlas Able.

None of them worked.  The first one died in September '59 in a static (non-launch) test.  #2 popped its top two months later when the air pressure in the nosecone was insufficiently vented.  #3 weathered Hurricane Donna only to tip fanny over kettle and plunge into the Atlantic.  And #4…

We're still not sure why #4 burst into flames early this morning at a height of 40,000 feet.  What we do know is that's another $40,000,000 down the drain, and it marks an end to the STL space program, at least for now. 

In fact, it marks a rather dramatic end of an entire chapter of spaceflight.  The next set of moon probes, called Ranger, are being developed by a completely different center (Jet Propulsion Laboratories) and along completely different lines.  It won't be launched by an Able derivative but rather a rocket using one of the new second-stage boosters: the Air Force's Agena, or maybe even the powerful Centaur.

Either way, it's likely that the Soviets will score the next success in the lunar/interplanetary race as a result. 

On the other hand, it's not all bad news.  The Air Force's ill-starred Discoverer program, which suffered far more failures than Atlas Able, has had an unbroken streak of success.  #18 flew on Pearl Harbor Day, and its capsule, containing biological specimens (and probably several rolls of film with snapshots of the Russian countryside from orbit), was recovered in mid-air, as planned.  The government is no longer hiding the surveillance purpose of the program, which I suppose is reassuring, somehow.

The next Mercury test is set to go in four days.  Keep your fingers crossed!

6 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[Nov. 30, 1960] Back and Forth (a p/review)

13 Comments

November is done, and the first chill of winter is upon us (for the rest of you, that happened about a month ago—we San Diegans are a happy lot).  As we head into the Christmas shopping season, it's good to take a moment to reflect on where we've been and where we're going.  Then we can dive into 24 commercially hectic days.

November Review

After months of hard campaigning, we have a new president.  The mantle has been returned to the Democrats, who had it for so long before 1952 that Eisenhower seems like a small splice in the tape.  He was practically a compromise candidate anyway—perhaps the Republican party, as we know it, is dead.  Or maybe there's a new movement on the horizon, one that will surprise us. 

There was just one new book out this month, Store of Infinity by Robert Sheckley, and it was his best yet.  You definitely want to get yourself a copy.

On the magazine front, Analog took the prize for the first time since the July issue.  It garnered a solid 3.5 rating, a score it last secured in March.  Galaxy was in the middle of the pack, earning a decent 3 stars.  F&SF, made up of the turgid Rogue Moon and a mixed bag of vignettes barely merited 2.5 stars, a depth to which the normally fine magazine has never sunk (since I started charting it, anyway).  Well, there has to be a first time for anything.  Hopefully there won't be a second!

It was tough selecting a favorite story for this month; both R. A. Lafferty's Snuffles and Poul Anderson's The Long Voyage were quite good.  In the end, I gave the nod to the former, which came out in Galaxy because I felt it was more memorable and unusual.

Finally, out of 22 fiction pieces, only two were written by women.  9% is about par for the course.  Perhaps 1961 will be better.

December Preview

Coming soon, I'll be reviewing the next four episodes of The Twilight Zone–it's gotten better recently.  There are no new movies on the horizon but I did received an advance copy of a new book, Murray Leinster's The Wailing Asteroid, from the publisher in the mail this week.  I've been enjoying it thus far. 

Of course, there will be the Big Three: the January 1961 issues of F&SF, Analog, and IF (Galaxy and IF alternate months).  I'm sure there will also be some noteworthy space shots, too—the Mercury Redstone unmanned mission will likely be tried again, and there's one last Atlas Able moon shot planned.  Fingers and toes crossed!

Speaking of space shots, NASA got up another weather satellite, TIROS 2, on November 23.  I didn't mention it at the time for two reasons: 1) I couldn't figure out how to work it in, thematically, and 2) whether or not it had been a success wasn't known until the next day.  When the probe went up, it was initially pointed in the wrong direction, so all the Weather Bureau got was a lens full of blackness.  TIROS is now properly oriented, but it turns out there is some fuzz on the wide-angle camera blurring its pictures.  The other equipment, including a narrow-angle camera and sensors to measure Earth's heat budget (solar input vs. planetary heat radiation), seem to be working fine, however.  If this new satellite can last until TIROS 3 goes up next Summer, we'll have continuous weather pictures from outer space for the foreseeable future.  That'll be exciting!

13 Comments Leave A Comment