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Science / Space Race

[April 8, 1968] Ups, Downs and Tragedy: An Eventful Month in Space (Gagarin's crash, Zond-4, OGO-5, Apollo-6)

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by Kaye Dee

Despite the continued hiatus in human spaceflight on both sides of the Iron Curtin, March and early April have been a busy time in space exploration. But, sadly, I have to commence this review with the tragic news that Colonel Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space, was killed in a plane crash during a training flight on 27 March. Very little is currently known about the circumstances surrounding Gagarin’s death, which has occurred just one month shy of the first anniversary of the loss of Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov in the Soyuz-1 accident.

Loss of a Space Hero
There have long been rumours that the Soviet leadership refused to allow Gagarin to fly high performance jets or make another spaceflight due to his invaluable propaganda status as Cosmonaut No. 1. However, it seems that since Gagarin completed an engineering degree in February, he had finally been allowed to resume flight status and was undertaking training flights to regain his lapsed jet pilot qualifications.

According to an official government commission investigating the crash, Col. Gagarin was flying a two seat MiG-15 trainer with Colonel Vladimir Seryogin, 46, described as an experienced test pilot and instructor on the training flight. Taking off at 10 a.m., Gagarin and Seryogin apparently flew east 70 miles from Moscow. After completing the training flight, around 10.30, Gagarin radioed that he was returning to base. The plane was then at 13,000 feet. A minute later ground control could not establish contact.

A MiG-15UTI, the same type as the aircraft Gagarin was flying at the time of the crash

An air search began, and a helicopter found the wreckage in a forest. The plane had dived into the ground at an angle of 65 to 70 degrees and was destroyed, killing both men. No information as to the cause of the crash has so far been forthcoming, but a story has been circulated that Gagarin heroically sacrificed himself, refusing to bail out of his stricken aircraft to guide it away from crashing in a populated area. How much truth there is to this, or whether it is pure propaganda, cannot be determined at this time.

Cosmonaut No. 1 is “flying through space forever”
Following an autopsy, the bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated the day after the crash and the ashes returned to Moscow, where the urns lay in state for 19 hours in the Red Banner Hall of the Soviet Army. Thousands are reported to have filed past to pay their respects to the world’s first space traveller. Thousands more lined the streets as the flower-covered urns, borne on a caisson drawn by an armoured troop carrier, moved slowly to Red Square along a 2½-mile route. The funeral procession included the Gagarin and Seryogin families and the highest leaders of the Soviet state and Communist Party.

The funeral procession for Gagarin and Seryogin making its way towards Red Square

Gagarin and Seryogin were both interred in the Kremlin Wall, behind Lenin's Tomb in Red Square. In what is said to be a rare honour, car horns, factory whistles and church bells sounded in unison as the urn bearing Gagarin's ashes was inserted into a niche in the red brick wall. Then the nation fell still for a minute of silence, followed by a final salvo of cannon fire. A day of national mourning was also declared, the first time this has ever been done in the USSR for someone not a national leader. President Johnson, UN Secretary General U Thant and other world leaders sent messages of condolence. John Glenn sent a personal letter of sympathy to Col. Gagarin’s wife Valentina.

Seryogin and Gagarin buried side by side in the Kremlin Wall. Their various honours and awards are displayed before their portraits

Gagarin was just 34 years old when he died, leaving two young daughters, aged nine and seven. He was based at the cosmonaut training centre near Moscow, involved in training other cosmonauts when not engaged in official duties as a public figure. Little is known about Col. Seryogin, but he has been described as a Hero of Soviet Union and the commander of an air unit. It is unknown if he is also a member of the Soviet cosmonaut corps or has any other role in the Russian space programme.

Gagarin’s words upon landing after his space flight were “I could have gone on flying through space forever”. Though he never returned to space in this life, his spirit surely resides in the cosmos now.

Making up Lost Ground?
The somewhat mysterious Zond-4 unmanned spacecraft was launched on 2 March. A TASS news agency announcement of the launch described Zond-4 as an “automatic station”, “designed to study the outlying regions of near-earth space.”

Thanks to my friends at the Weapons Research Establishment, here is a photo of a Proton rocket, rumoured to be the type used to launch Zond-4.

TASS reported that Zond-4 was put into an initial 170-mile parking orbit, before being sent on a “planned flight” further into space, apparently reaching the environs of the Moon. According to my contacts at the WRE, Zond 4’s flightpath reached an apogee of 240,000 miles, “comparable to lunar altitude”.

No further information was released by TASS about the mission, which has occurred several years after previous launches in the Zond series: Zond-1 was launched in April 1964, Zond-2 in November that year, and Zond-3 in July 1965. “Zond” is the Russian word for “probe” and these earlier spacecraft were apparently planetary or lunar missions. Could Zond-4 actually have been an attempt by the Soviet Union to make up lost ground with a test of the new Soyuz spacecraft, presumably redesigned or modified following the failed Soyuz-1 mission last year?

Does this cutaway illustration represent mysterious Zond-4? My WRE friends think it might!

It would hardly be the first time that the Soviet Union has concealed real purpose of a space mission behind the name of a different spacecraft series. (paging Mr. Kosmos/Cosmos!). As the Soyuz vehicle is believed to be the USSR’s answer to Apollo, a test of an improved spacecraft out to lunar distance would certainly make sense at this time, with the Apollo 6 mission (see below) testing out the Apollo Command and Service Modules just a few days ago.

Whatever its mission, Zond-4 returned to Earth on 9 March, but there was no official communique on the conclusion of the flight. This silence suggests that the re-entry failed in some way and that the spacecraft was either destroyed on re-entry or crashed on landing. If Zond-4 was a test of the Soyuz vehicle, could its loss have been due to a repeat of the parachute failure that doomed Soyuz-1 last year? If this was the case, it does not bode well for the USSR getting its lunar programme back on track in time to challenge the United States in the race for the Moon.

Go, OGO-5!
Just two days after the launch of Zond-4, the United States launched the latest satellite in its Orbiting Geophysical Observatory (OGO) series of scientific satellites. OGO-5 soared aloft on 4 March, establishing itself in a highly elliptical orbit with a 170 mile perigee and a 92,105 mile apogee. The orbital inclination was 31.1 degrees, with the satellite taking 3796 minutes to complete one orbit. The 1,347 lb satellite carries more experiments than any other automated spacecraft to date.

OGO-5 First day Cover and informational insert, courtesy of my Uncle Ernie, the philatelic collector

OGO-5 is primarily devoted to observation of the Earth’s upper atmosphere and its interaction with conditions in the space environment. Like earlier OGO satellites, it carries instruments for studying solar flares (which can also detect cosmic X-ray bursts) and a gamma-ray detector. This will enable it to examine the hazards and mysteries of Earth's space environment at a time when radiation-producing flares on the Sun are intensifying. It will also chart magnetic and electric forces in space, measure gases in Earth's upper atmosphere, investigate the Aurora Borealis over the North Pole and listen for the puzzling radio noises that have been detected from the planet Jupiter.  Each of OGO-5’s predecessors is still operational at this time, so let’s hope the latest Orbiting Geophysical Observatory also has a long life ahead of it.

Apollo 6: NASA Keeps Moving Forward
If Zond-4 has been an un-announced trial of the USSR’s Soyuz lunar spacecraft, Apollo-6 has been NASA’s very public test flight of the Saturn-5 rocket and some of the modifications to the Apollo Command Module.

Launched on 4 April, Apollo-6 marked the second test flight of the massive Saturn-5 launch vehicle, crucial for reaching Moon. The primary objective of the mission was to test the performance of the Saturn-5 and the Apollo spacecraft, the first time that the Command and Service Modules (CSM) would be fully tested in space. In particular, the mission was intended to demonstrate that the Saturn-5’s S-IVB third stage could send the entire Apollo spacecraft (CSM and Lunar Module) out to lunar distances. Although things didn’t go quite to plan, Apollo-6 did accomplish its basic objectives.

An All-Up Test Flight
The Apollo 6 launch vehicle was the second flight-capable Saturn-5, AS-502, its simulated payload equal to about 80% of a full Apollo lunar spacecraft. The CSM it carried was a Block I (Earth-orbit mission) type, with some Block II (lunar mission) modifications. According to NASA “more than 140 tests since last October showed modifications of the Apollo spacecraft since the 1967 disaster had drastically reduced the hazard to life”.

Possibly the most important modification was a new crew hatch, intended to be tested under lunar return conditions. This new hatch incorporated the heat shield and crew compartment hatches of the original Apollo design into a single hatch, called the "unified" design. This has been in response to the Apollo-1 investigation board finding that the dual hatches were too difficult to open in case of emergency and had contributed to the deaths of the crew.

Apollo-6's redesigned unified hatch, photographed during a post-flight inspection of the Commend Module

Like the earlier Apollo-5 test flight, Apollo-6 carried a simulated Lunar Module (LM) which lacked the descent-stage landing gear. It also had no flight systems, and its fuel and oxidiser tanks were liquid-ballasted. While the LM remained inside the Spacecraft-Lunar Module Adapter throughout the flight, its ascent stage was instrumented to determine the craft’s structural integrity and the vibration and acoustic stresses to which it was subjected.

Apollo-6's "legless Lunar Module", formally called the Lunar Test Article LTA-2R

A few weeks prior to launch, NASA announced that, to further reduce fire hazards that contributed to the deaths of Apollo-1 astronauts, it intended to change to a mixture of 60% oxygen and 40% cent nitrogen in the Command Module, while the spacecraft and its crew are on the ground and during launch. Once their spacecraft left the launch pad, the astronauts would switch to pure oxygen. Since the gas mixture will be used in the spacecraft only during ground operations, NASA has not planned any change in the existing environmental control system, so the decision did not affect the Apollo 6 mission.

Apollo 6: What Was Planned
The original Apollo 6 mission plan intended to send the CSM and simulated lunar module into a trans-lunar trajectory. (That trajectory, although passing beyond lunar orbit distance, would not encounter the Moon, which was in another part of its orbit at the time.) The Saturn-5’s S-IVB third stage would be fired for trans-lunar injection, with the CSM separating from the S-IVB soon after. The Service Module engine would then fire to slow the CSM, reducing its apogee to 11,989 nmi.

NASA illustration showing the CSM and LM inside the Spacecraft-Lunar Module Adapter, as they would be at trans-lunar injection

The CSM would then return to Earth as if it had experienced “direct-return” abort during a Moon mission. As it returned, the SM engine would fire again, accelerating the CSM to simulate the conditions that an Apollo spacecraft would encounter on its return from the Moon: a re-entry angle of −6.5 degrees and velocity of 36,500 ft/s. The entire test flight was planned with a duration of about 10 hours.

Not Quite Going to Plan
After the launch was delayed for some days due to problems with guidance system equipment and fuelling, Apollo 6 made a smooth lift-off from Kennedy Space Centre. However, during the last ten seconds of first stage firing, the vehicle severely experienced a type of longitudinal oscillation known as “pogo”. Pogo occurs when a partial vacuum in a rocket’s fuel and oxidiser feed lines reaches the engine firing chamber, causing the engine to “skip”. The pogo phenomenon is well-known, since rockets have experienced it since the early days of spaceflight, and it occurred in launchers such as Thor and Titan II (used for the Gemini program).

While the Apollo-4 Saturn-5 also experienced a mild form of pogo, Apollo-6 was subjected to extreme pogo vibrations. It appears that these oscillations, travelling along the length of the huge Moon rocket, caused multiple problems with the vehicle. Two engines in the second stage shut down early, although the vehicle's onboard guidance system was able to compensate by burning the remaining three engines for 58 seconds longer than planned. The S-IVB engine also experienced a slight performance loss and had to burn for 29 seconds longer than usual. Intense vibrations were felt in the Command Module that could have caused injuries had a crew been onboard. There was also some superficial structural damage to the Spacecraft Lunar Module Adaptor (SLA). A chase plane image of the Apollo-6 launch, taken at approximately the time of the pogo oscillations. It shows an area of discoloration on the SLA indicative of superficial damage and what appears to be falling pieces of debris, perhaps a panel or two shaken lose by the pogo vibrations

The underperformance of the apparently pogo-damaged engines resulted in the third stage being inserted into an elliptical parking orbit, rather than the planned 100 nmi circular orbit. Although Mission Control decided that this did not prevent the mission from continuing, when the vehicle was ready for trans-lunar injection, the apparently damaged S-IVB engine failed to restart.

Repeating Apollo-4
Without the ability to continue with the original flight plan, Mission Control decided to complete some of the mission objectives by adopting a flight plan similar to that of Apollo-4. The SM's Service Propulsion System (SPS) was used to raise the spacecraft into an orbit with a 11,989 nmi apogee, from which it would re-enter. However, the SPS engine did not have enough fuel for a second burn to accelerate the atmospheric re-entry and the spacecraft was only able to enter the atmosphere with a velocity of 33,000 ft/s, instead of the planned 36,500 ft/s that would simulate a lunar return.

With the SM was jettisoned just before atmospheric re-entry, the CM splashed down 43 nmi from the planned landing site north of Hawaii, ten hours after launch. It was recovered by the USS Okinawa.

A Rocket's Eye View
Unlike earlier unmanned missions, the Apollo-6 Saturn-5 was fitted with several cameras intended to be ejected and later recovered. Three of the four cameras on the first stage failed to eject and were lost and only one of the two cameras on the second stage was recovered. Fortunately, this camera provided spectacular views of the separation of the first and second stages.

Two spectacular views of the interstage between the first and second stages falling away, taken from Apollo-6's second stage camera. How amazing that we can now see events happening during a launch that cannot be observed from the ground!

The CM also carried two cameras: a motion picture camera, intended to be activated during launch and re-entry and a 70mm still camera. Unfortunately, as the technical issues meant that the mission took about ten minutes longer than planned, the re-entry events were not filmed. However, the still camera, pointed at the Earth through the hatch window provided impressive photos of parts of the United States, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, and the western Pacific Ocean. Advanced film and filters, improved colour balance and higher resolution have provided images that are a significant improvement on the photographs taken on previous American crewed missions and demonstrated that future imagery from space will be useful for cartographic, topographic, and geographic studies.

A view of the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas, taken from the Command Module's 70mm still camera. Special thanks to the Australian NASA representative for providing me with rush copies of these incredible Apollo-6 images for this article

What’s Next for Apollo?
NASA announced in mid-March that its first Earth-orbiting Apollo mission will be launched on a Saturn 1 vehicle and spend as long as ten days in orbit. The flight, which could come as early as mid-August, will be crewed by astronauts Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham. If that mission goes well and the Saturn-5 is cleared for manned launchings, astronauts James McDivitt, David Scott and Russell Schweickart will ride a Saturn-5 into Earth orbit two or three months later to conduct flight test of the lunar module.

Following the return of Apollo-6, Apollo Programme Director Samuel C. Phillips said, “there's no question that it's less than a perfect mission”, although the Saturn-5’s demonstration of its ability to reach orbit despite the loss of two engines, was “a major unplanned accomplishment”. However, Marshall Space Flight Centre Director Wernher von Braun has recognised that the “flight clearly left a lot to be desired. … We just cannot go to the Moon [with this problem],” referring to the extreme pogo experienced on the flight. This means that solving the pogo phenomenon is now a major priority for NASA in order to keep the Apollo program on track and bolster confidence in the Saturn-5 vehicle. Can they do it? 








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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 26, 1968] Stormy Weather (March 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

There's no sun up in the sky

Out in the vastness of space, a constellation of man-made moons keeps watch on the Earth below.  Unlike their brethren, the military sentinels that look out for rocket plumes and atomic blasts, these benign probes monitor the planet's weather with a vantage and a vigilance that would make a 19th Century meteorologist green with envy.

In addition to the wealth of daily data we get from TIROS, ESSA, and Nimbus, the West is now getting aid from an unlikely, but no less welcome, source: behind the Iron Curtain.

Two years ago, the Soviets rebuffed the idea of exchanging weather satellite imagery.  "No need," was what they said; "no sats," was probably the real story.  For in August of 1966, all of a sudden, the USSR activated the "Cold Line" link between Moscow and Washington for the exchange of meteorological data.  This action coincided with the recent launch of Cosmos 122, revealed to be a weather satellite.

This constituted a late start in the weather race–after all, TIROS had been broadcasting since 1960.  Nevertheless, better late than never.  Unfortunately, the Soviets first sent only basic weather charts with limited cloud analysis.  Not much good without the raw picture data.  When we finally got the pictures, starting September 11, 1966, the quality was lousy–the communications link is just too long and lossy.  Our ESSA photos probably didn't look any better to them.

By March 1967, however, the lines had been improved, and Kosmos 122 was returning photos with excellent clarity.

We also got infrared data.  The resolution was much worse, but the Soviets maintained they did first discover a pair of typhoons bearing down on Japan.

Since then, the USSR has orbited at least two more weather satellites, Kosmos 144 and Kosmos 184, both returning the same useful data, often from different orbital perspectives than we can easily reach.  For instance, the Soviet pictures offer particularly good views of the poles and northern Eurasia.

It's a little thing, perhaps, this trading of weather data between the superpowers.  But anything that promotes peaceful exchange and keeps the connections between East and West ready and friendly is something to appreciate.  Sometimes the Space Race is more of a torch relay!

Raining all the time


by Kelly Freas

In sharp contrast, Analog remains an island unto itself, and like all inbred families, often produces challenged offspring.  Such is the case with the March 1968 issue, which ranges from middlin' to awful.

The Alien Rulers, by Piers Anthony


by Kelly Freas

We start with the awful.

Fifteen years ago, the blue-skinned Kaozo engaged our space fleet, destroyed it utterly, and became the benevolent masters of Earth.  They created a working socialist society, implementing tremendous public works projects, and humanity proved remarkably complacent under their rule.  Nevertheless, a revolution of sorts has been hatched, and Richard Henrys is tasked with the stickiest assignment–assassinate the Kazo leader, Bitool.

Henrys is quickly captured, but instead of facing execution, Bitool offers him a deal: protect Seren, the first female Kazo on Earth, during the next three days of the revolution, and he can go free.

Sounds like a decent setup.  It's actually a terrible story.  For one thing, the author of Chthon has all of his off-putting tics on display.  Seren is a straw woman, whose vocabulary is largely limited to "Yes, Richard," and "No, Richard."  The social attitudes of this far future world seem rooted in the Victorian times, with passages like this:

"You'll pose as my wife.  Hang on to my arm and–"

"Pose?" she inquired.  "I do not comprehend this, Richard."

Damn the forthright Kazo manner!  He had five minutes to explain human ethics, or lack of them, to a person who had been born to another manner.  Pretense was not a concept in the alien repertoire, it seemed.

He chose another approach.  "For the time being, you are my wife, then.  Call it a marriage of convenience."  She began to speak, but he cut her off.  "My companion, my female.  On Earth we pair off two by two.  This means you must defer to my wishes, expressed and implied, and avoid bringing shame upon me.  Only in this manner are you permitted to accompany me in public places.  Is this clear?"

And this one:

"I promised to explain why this subterfuge was necessary.  I didn't mean to place you in a compromising situation, but–"

"Compromising, Richard?"

"Ordinarily a man and a woman do not share a room unless they are married."

And then, there's the scene where the feminine disguise Richard puts together for Seren falls apart because her body lacks mammalian contours.  Why doesn't he then dress her in male clothes?  And when her stockings start to fall off her legs, I couldn't help wondering how they'd somehow uninvented Panty Hose in the 21st Century.

But then, I'm not sure if Piers Anthony has actually ever talked to a woman, much less seen her in her underthings.

On top of that, the final revelation that the Earth fleet was never destroyed, but instead went on to conquer Kazo, and the two planets have swapped overlords (both governments populated only by the very best technocrats) is so ridiculous as to beggar belief.  That Henrys is invited to become one of the ruling class largely for his novel ideas on how to cut a cake fairly, well, takes the cake.

One star.

Uplift the Savage, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Members of an interstellar agency learn that the best way to increase the technological sophistication of a primitive race is not to give them expertise, but allow them to steal it.  The two-page point is hammered in using fourteen pages of digs at women, higher education, and educated women.

One star.

The Inevitable Weapon, by Poul Anderson


by Harry Bennett

A scientist discovers teleportation.  Useless for interstellar travel, at least for a while, it's great for beaming in concentrated starlight–as a weapon at first, but potentially, to provide energy.

This would be a decent, one-page Theodore L. Thomas piece in F&SF.  Instead, it's fourteen pages of bog-standard detective/secret agent thriller.

Two stars.

Birth of a Salesman, by James Tiptree, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

Jim Tiptee's freshman story is an Anvilesque tale of breakneck pace and nonstop patter.  T. Benedict of the Xeno-Cultural Gestalt Clearance (XCGC) has got a tough job: making sure the trade goods of the galaxy not only take into account the taboos or allergies of alien customers, but also the transhipment longshorebeings. 

Tedium sets in by page two, which, coincidentally, is how many stars I rate it.

The Horse Barbarians (Part 2 of 3), by Harry Harrison


by Kelly Freas

A lot and very little happen in this installment of Jason dinAlt's latest adventure.  Last time on Deathworld III, Jason offered up his fellow Pyrrans as mercenaries to wipe out the horse barbarians on the planet Felicity.  It's fair play, after all, since these barbarians (absolutely not the Mongols, because they have red hair!) slaughtered the last attempt at a mining camp on their frozen plateau.

So, Jason accompanies "Temuchin", the warlord, on an expedition down a cliffside to the technologically advanced civilization on the plains below.  There, they steal some gunpowder, kill a lot of innocent people, and come back–in time to link up with the rest of the Pyrrans for a raid on the Weasel clan.  More slaughter ensues.

Jason feels kind of bad about his part in the killing, but it's all a part of a master plan to someday, eventually, pacify the warriors with by opening up a trade route with the south (as opposed to setting up off-world trade, since the barbarians hate off-worlders).  So whaddaya gonna do?

Well, personally?  Pick a different career path.  Even if the nomads are the biggest savages since the Whimsies, Growleywogs, and Phantasms, what right do the Pyrrans have to kill…anyone? 

Setting aside the moral concerns, Harrison is still an effective writer.  I wasn't bored, just a bit disgusted.

Three stars.

Practice!, by Verge Foray


by Kelly Freas

A shabby little private school for problem children is suddenly the subject of a set of accreditation inspectors.  There's nothing wrong with the kids or the staff–the problem is that the snoops might discover it's really a training ground for junior ESPers!  Luckily, the tykes are on the side of management, and the inspectors are snowed.

I went back and forth on whether this very Analogian tale deserved two or three stars.  On the one hand, I'm getting a little tired of psi stories (the headmaster in the story even says there's no such thing as something for nothing–and that's what psi is), and I resented the smug digs at public school.

But what swayed me toward the positive end of the ledger (aside from the unique and lovely art) was the bit at the end whereby it's suggested that the reason for the school, and the reason psi is so unreliable, is because, like music or language, it's something that needs to be practiced from an early age.  It's a new angle, and pretty neat.

So, three stars.

Can't go on…

Wow.  2.1 stars is bottom-of-Amazing territory, and it easily makes this month's Analog the worst magazine of the month.  Compare it to Fantastic (2.2), IF (3), New Worlds (3.3), and the excellent Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.6), and the contrast is even stronger.

Because of the paucity of magazines, you could fit all the really good stuff into, say, one issue of Galaxy.  On the other hand, women wrote 12% of new fiction this month, which is decent for the times (not to mention the episodes of Star Trek D. C. Fontana has been penning).

It's 1968, an election year.  Maybe this is the year Campbell hands the reins over to someone else.  It certainly couldn't hurt the tarnished old mag.

And then, maybe the sun will come out again!

Speaking of election news, there's plenty of it and more on today's KGJ Weekly report.  You give us four minutes, and we'll give you the world:



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 30, 1967] One door closes… (December 1967 Analog and Australia joins the Space Race!)

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by Gideon Marcus

Mags or paperbacks?

The latest issue of Yandro has got a nice piece from Ted White reviewing the latest (and best?) tome on science fiction by Alexei Panshin.  The best part of White's article is his gentle but lengthy disagreement over the status of magazines versus paperbacks.  Both White and Panshin agree that the paperback novel format is The Next Big Thing (indeed, it's already here), but they disagreed on their role and prospects.

Panshin sees the science fiction digests as a continuation of the pulps, with all the negative connotations attached thereto.  He thinks they will eventually die.  White strongly disagrees.  Firstly, he notes that pulp does not equal bad–many extremely talented authors got their start cranking out a half million words for the old mags.  Indeed, White says magazines are now populated by a stable of established writers who have perfected their trade while the paperbacks, since they are a buyer's market, will publish anything.  Essentially, the books have taken the role the magazines had in the glut days of the early '50s.

White goes on to say that paperbacks are great, but 1) mags are the main outlet for short stories, and some authors are just better at the short form, and 2) editors keep mags going for the love of it.  This means they are likely to survive longer than purely economic considerations would suggest.

It's a good piece.  I'd give it a read.

The issue at hand

Speaking of which, should you give the strikingly covered latest issue of Analog a read?  Well, if you're one of the 30,000 subscribers who gets it delivered, sure go ahead.  If you're eyeing it at a newsstand, you'll want to read further…


by John Schoenherr

Dragonrider (Part 1 of 2), by Anne McCaffrey

In Weyr Search, the first installment of this serial-in-all-but-name, we were introduced to planet Pern.  It is a fraught former Earth colony, severed from its homeworld for thousands of years and ravaged periodically by rhizomic attacks from a nearby world.  The only defense against the "threads" are fire breathing dragons ridden by telepathically connected humans.

The problem is it's been four centuries since the last attack and the "weyrs" of dragronriders have been allowed to go fallow.  Only Benden Weyr is left, and it is woefully undermanned and underdragoned.

This latest installment in the saga of Pern opens up sometime after the last.  Lessa, heir to the Hold of Ruatha and now Weyrlady by virtue of her communion with the dragon queen Ramoth, has shacked up with the F'lar, head of the dragonriders.  Not because the two like each other, but because that's the law: Weyrladies and Weyrleaders must get hitched.

The thread has begun to fall, and the dragons are sorely taxed to meet the challenge, teleporting in and out of the frigid between to intercept the alien spores.

(Note: What do you call it when a dragon relieves itself between?  An ICBM!)

Despite the perseverence of F'lar's crew, the thread has the upper hand–until Lessa accidentally discovers that dragons not only can teleport and telepath, but they can also time travel, too!  (telechron?) As one might expect, this changes the whole equation…but maybe not for the better.


by John Schoenherr

I dunno.  I was expecting a rousing Battle of Britain story, with never so much being owed by so many to so few.  The thread would start gradually, the brave fighters would fight to their limits, and through ingenuity and tenacity, eventually win.  The story would get extra points for being by and from the viewpoint of woman, a rare thing in science fiction, particularly in the mag that Campbell built.

Instead, the story is badly paced, lurching from scene to scene.  There is no build-up to the thread strike, no mounting of tension; it is just suddenly upon them.  McCaffrey throws psionic conceits against the wall to see which ones stick (Lessa not only discovers time travel, but she is the only one who can communicate with all of the dragons–unlike the other riders, who can only communicate with their bonded dragon).

Beyond that, the two main characters are thoroughly unlikeable, by turns yelling and sardonically sniping at each other.  An element of violence suffuses their interactions, with F'lar and Lessa's couplings being referred to as not less than rape.  It all feels very Marion Zimmer Bradley.  I've said before that Lessa feels like a wish-fulfillment character for the author.  This hypothesis is only becoming more concerning.

What's frustrating is I feel there could be an interesting story here in the hands of someone else.  Jack Vance has already written a thematically similar tale with his The Dragon Masters.  It's clear that Campbell wants Pern to be the next Dune, complete with striking Schoenherr covers.  Thus far, I'd say McCaffrey isn't up to the task.

I was originally going to give the installment a bare three stars, but I think I've talked myself out of it.

Two stars.

The Destiny of Milton Gomrath, by Alexei Panshin

In this short short, an orphaned garbage collector spends his life convinced that his existence of drudgery is a mistake, and that someone, somehow, will rectify the mistake some day.

Turns out he's right, but that may not be a good thing.

This could be the start of a mildly entertaining Laumer novel.  Instead, it ends right after the first punchline.

Blink and you'll miss it: three stars.

Whosawhatsa?, by Jack Wodhams


by Kelly Freas

Picture a world where a sex change is as complete and easy as an appendectomy…and reversible, to boot!  Now picture the most complicated legal case possible involving a married couple seeking a divorce, both parties of which have swapped genders.  And there are children involved, multiple paramours, probate issues, and a Strong Public Interest.

On the one hand, this story is a drag.  The attempts to make it "funny", mostly consisting of endless scenes in which the judge assigned the case contemplates suicide rather than attempt presiding, are a flop.  Also, one gets the feeling that if women's lib had advanced in the story as much as medical science, most of the legal issues and many of the social ones would be irrelevant.  Particularly if 1) we could extend the legal rights currently afforded women in the federal government to all women, and 2) we could approach homosexuality with a less than medieval attitude.

That said…

There is very interesting exploration of what it means to change genders and the motivations that underly the desire to make such a transition.  While the situation is made as ludicrous as possible, the subjects, for the most part, are taken seriously.  I actually found the piece remarkably progressive, especially for Analog.  Certainly, I've never read anything like it before.

Three stars.

Beak by Beak, by Piers Anthony


by Kelly Freas

An alien spacecraft orbits the Earth, neither communicating nor responding to communications.  Meanwhile, a red parrakeet arrives at the home of a bird-keeper and joins his avian pet family for a time.

This is a pleasant pastoral piece that tries a little too hard to get its message across.  Still, I'll read something like this a thousand times before I'll read Chthon again.

Three stars.

Venus and Mercury—Locked Planets? by R. S. Richardson

Dr. Richardson writes so-so science fiction, but I generally quite like his science fact articles.  This one talks about the newly discovered rotation rates of Venus and Mercury, as well as what they might mean in relation to the history of the solar system.

On the one hand, I learned a bit, and that's significant given that I know a lot of astronomy.  On the other, I felt the pictures were worth a thousand words, and I found myself skimming a lot of the text.  In other words, maybe 20 pages wasn't necessary to make the point (God help us–next month's science article will be 10,000 words!).

Still, four stars.

A Question of Attitude, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

A recruit for the interstellar patrol finds himself in an increasingly difficult series of imaginary tests, ones that stick him in mortal peril in a simulated alien planet environment.  He seems to fail each one, ending up "dead", yet the Lt. Colonel in charge of training seems to think he has promise.

Normally, Anvil and Campbell are a toxic combination.  This time around, the story is kind of interesting.  I also rather enjoyed the nihilistic suggestion that the recruit's success is measured in the degree of his failure, and also that passing the tests only means his life is about to get worse.  It fits with the whole zeitgeist of our current engagement in Vietnam.  Even if Joseph Heller did it better.

Three stars.

Psi Assassin, by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

Lastly, yet another of Reynolds' tales of Section G, the interstellar agency whose job is to make sure no human planet ends up too backwards, lest the race become prey to an ominous but yet unmet alien menace.  This time, a psionic assassin is sent to kill the head of a Latin dictatorship.  The problem: agent Ronny Bronston has already dispatched said leader and taken his identity!

We have all the hallmarks of a Reynolds Section G story: endless historical lectures (that never seem to have any object lessons beyond the mid-20th Century), flippant personalities that leach the story of any gravitas, the lone female agent (Reynolds never lets us forget her sex), and a happy ending.

Reynolds has done decent work with this series, but less often than not.

Two stars.

Doing the math

So who's right?  Alex or Ted?  Based on this month, I'd give the nod to Ted.  While Analog was on the mediocre side, managing just 2.8 stars, other magazines fared much better.  Both Galaxy and New Worlds scored 3.2 stars.  Fantasy and Science Fiction was also pretty good (3.1).  If was a bit tired, but par for the course (2.8), and while Amazing's 2.7 score puts it at the bottom of the pack, it actually is on an upward trend.

You could fill two magazines with all the superior stuff that came out this month, which is a good crop.  Sadly, McCaffrey wrote the only woman-penned piece, and it wasn't very good (though it was better than Poul Anderson's novella in Galaxy).

I give magazines at least a few more years…

But that's not all we have for today.  All the way from Australia comes this exciting stop press in the world of space news!:


by Kaye Dee

“Australia Joins the Space Club!”

Although Australia has supported American and British/European space efforts over the past decade, just yesterday, on 29 November we finally gained our own membership of the Space Club by placing our first satellite, WRESAT-1, into orbit. I’ve written articles previously about the first satellites of France and Italy, so it gives me great pride to report on Australia’s own satellite launch.


WRESAT-1 under construction in at the WRE

WRESAT-1 (WRE Satellite) has been a joint project of the Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) and the University of Adelaide, with significant support from the United States. In 1966, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) offered Australia a spare Redstone rocket from the ARPA-led Project Sparta programme at Woomera as a satellite launcher. Sparta has been the final phase of a US/UK/Australian re-entry physics research programme commenced in 1960, investigating radar-echo phenomena created by re-entering missile warheads. The Sparta team even offered to prepare and fire the Redstone for the WRE.

“A Rush Job!”

The scientists and engineers involved in the Australian upper atmosphere research programme took advantage of the proposal to move their instruments from sounding rockets to satellite. However, the Sparta launch offer placed the satellite project on a very tight schedule, as the spacecraft would have to be ready for launch by the end of 1967, when the Sparta project would be complete and the Americans returning home. So, in just 11 months Australia’s, WRESAT has been designed, constructed, tested and was finally launched on 29 November. Its development has been an example of local “make-do” ingenuity, as much of the testing equipment needed was not available in the country.

Australia’s first satellite has been designated WRESAT-1 because my WRE colleagues hope that it will have many successors. Australia doesn’t yet have a space agency like NASA, but the WRE is putting a proposal to the Australian Government for a national space programme, and we hope that it will be funded, with the WRE formally designated as the Australian national space agency.


Diagram showing the internal layout of WRESAT’s systems and scientific instruments

Given the short development period, WRESAT’s scientific payload consists of instruments similar to those already flown in the Australian sounding rocket programme conducted in conjunction with the University of Adelaide Physics Department. The university team has developed a suite of instruments to study solar and ultra-violet radiation, atmospheric ozone and molecular oxygen density, as well as measuring the temperature of the solar atmosphere.

“Going Up From Down Under”

After an aborted launch attempt on the 28th, the Redstone lifted-off flawlessly on the 29th to place WRESAT into a polar orbit, where it is being tracked, and its telemetry signals recorded, by NASA’s Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition Network – a service also generously provided free to Australia.


WRESAT soars on its way to orbit from Launch Area 8 at Woomera

Because of its short development time, a solar array could not be designed for WRESAT, and the satellite is only battery-powered. This means it will have a very short operational lifespan, but we expect it to gather a large amount of data on the upper atmosphere that will provide a check on the data already gathered by sounding rockets.

Let’s hope that WRESAT-1 marks the start of Australia’s true Space Age, and that this country will soon “shine as brightly as the Southern Cross”, as President Johnson has put it in his congratulatory telegram on our first national launch!




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Science / Space Race

[November 12, 1967] Still in the Race! (Apollo-4, Surveyor-6, OSO-4 and Cosmos-186-188)

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by Kaye Dee

As I noted in my previous article, October was such a busy month for space activity that I had to hold over several items for this month. But November has already provided us with plenty of space news as well. Even though both American and Soviet manned spaceflight is currently on hold while the investigations into their respective accidents continue, preparations for putting astronauts and cosmonauts on the Moon are ongoing and the Moon race is still on!

“Oh, it’s terrific, the building’s shaking!”

Opening the door to human lunar exploration needs an immensely powerful booster, and the successful launch of Apollo-4 a few days ago on 9 November has demonstrated that NASA has a rocket that is up to the task. Although the Saturn 1B rocket intended to loft Apollo Earth-orbiting missions has already been tested, Apollo-4 (also designated SA-501) marked the first flight of a complete Saturn V lunar launcher.

The sheer power of the massive rocket took everyone by surprise. When Apollo-4 took off from Pad 39A at the John F. Kennedy Space Centre, the sound pressure waves it generated rattled the new Launch Control Centre, three miles from the launch pad, causing dust to fall from the ceiling onto the launch controllers’ consoles. At the nearby Press Centre, ceiling tiles fell from the roof. Reporting live from the site, Walter Cronkite described the experience: “… our building’s shaking here. Our building’s shaking! Oh, it’s terrific, the building’s shaking! This big blast window is shaking! We’re holding it with our hands! Look at that rocket go into the clouds at 3000 feet! … You can see it… you can see it… oh the roar is terrific!”

Firing Room 1 in the Launch Control Centre at Kennedy Space Centre, under construction in early 1966. The Apollo-4 launch was controlled from here

Could it be that the sound of a Saturn V launch is one of the loudest noises, natural or artificial, ever heard by human beings? (Apart, perhaps, from the explosion of an atomic bomb?) I hope I’ll get the opportunity to hear, and see, a Saturn V launch for myself at some point in the future.

The Power for the Glory

Developed by Dr. Wernher von Braun’s team at NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Centre, everything about the Saturn V is impressive. The 363-foot vehicle weighs 3,000-tons and the thrust of its first-stage motors alone is 71 million pounds! No wonder it rattled buildings miles away at liftoff!

The F-1 rocket motor, five of which power the Saturn V’s S1-C first stage, is the most powerful single combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine so far developed (at least as far as we know, since whatever vehicle the USSR is developing for its lunar program could have even more powerful motors).

The launcher consists of three stages. The Boeing-built S1-C first stage, when fully fuelled with RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen, has a total mass of 4,881,000 pounds. Its five F-1 engines are arranged so that the four outer engines are gimballed, enabling them to turn so they can steer the rocket, while the fifth is fixed in position in the centre. Constructed by North American Aviation and weighing 1,060,000 pounds, the S-II second stage has five Rocketdyne-built cryogenic J-2 engines, powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. They are arranged in a similar manner to the first stage engines, and also used for steering. The Saturn V’s S-IVB third stage has been built by the Douglas Aircraft Company and has a single J-2 engine using the same cryogenic fuel as the second stage. Fully fuelled, it weighs approximately 262,000 pounds. Guidance and telemetry systems for the rocket are contained within an instrument unit located on top of the third stage.

Soaring into the Future

This first Saturn V test flight has been tremendously important to the ultimate success of the Apollo programme, marking several necessary first steps: the first launch from Complex 39 at Cape Kennedy, built especially for Apollo; the first flight of the complete Apollo/Saturn V space vehicle; and the first test of Apollo Command Module’s performance re-entering the Earth's atmosphere at a velocity approximating that expected when returning from a lunar mission. In addition, the flight enabled testing of many modifications made to the Command Module in the wake of the January fire. This included the functioning of the thermal seals used in the new quick-release spacecraft hatch design.

 
Up, Up and Away!

Apollo-4 lifted off on schedule at 7am US Eastern time. Just 12 minutes later it successfully placed a Command and Service Module (CSM), weighing a record 278,885 pounds, into orbit 115 miles above the Earth. This is equivalent to the parking orbit that will be used during lunar missions to check out the spacecraft before it embarks for the Moon.

After two orbits, the third stage engine was re-ignited (itself another space first) to simulate the trans-lunar injection burn that will be used to send Apollo missions on their way to the Moon. This sent the spacecraft into an elliptical orbit with an apogee of 10,700 miles. Shortly afterwards, the CSM separated from the S-IVB stage and, after passing apogee, the Service Module engine was fired for 281 seconds to increase the re-entry speed to 36,639 feet per second, bringing the CSM into conditions simulating a return from the Moon.


An image of the Earth taken from an automatic camera on the Apollo-4 Command Module

After a successful re-entry, the Command Module splashed down approximately 10 miles from its target landing site in the North Pacific Ocean and was recovered by the aircraft carrier USS Bennington. The mission lasted just eight hours 36 minutes and 54 seconds (four minutes six seconds ahead of schedule!), but it successfully demonstrated all the major components of an Apollo mission, apart from the Lunar Module (which is still in development) that will make the actual landing on the Moon’s surface. In a special message of congratulations to the NASA team, President Johnson said the flight “symbolises the power this nation is harnessing for the peaceful exploration of space”.

Goodbye Lunar Orbiters…

While Apollo’s chariot was readied for its first test flight, NASA has continued its unmanned exploration of the Moon, to ensure a safe landing for the astronauts. In August, Gideon gave us an excellent summary of NASA’s Lunar Orbiter programme, the first three missions of which were designed to study potential Apollo landing sites. Lunar Orbiter-3, launched back in February this year, met its fate last month when the spacecraft was intentionally crashed into the lunar surface on 9 October. Despite the failure of its imaging system in March, Lunar Orbiter-3 was tracked from Earth for several months for lunar geodesy research and communication experiments. On 30 August, commands were sent to the spacecraft to circularise its orbit to 99 miles in order to simulate an Apollo trajectory.

Lunar Orbiter-3 image of the Moon's far side, showing the crater Tsiolkovski

Each Lunar Orbiter mission has been de-orbited so that it will not become a navigation hazard to future manned Apollo spacecraft. Consequently, before its manoeuvring thrusters were depleted, Lunar Orbiter 3 was commanded on 9 October to impact on the Moon, hitting the lunar surface at 14 degrees 36 minutes North latitude and 91 degrees 42 minutes West longitude. Co-incidentally, Lunar Orbiter-4, which failed back in July and could not be controlled, decayed naturally from orbit and impacted on the Moon on 6 October. Lunar Orbiter-5, launched in August, remains in orbit.

…Hello Surveyor 6

A month after the demise of the Lunar Orbiters, NASA’s Surveyor-6 probe has made a much softer landing on the lunar surface, achieving a “spot on” touchdown in the rugged Sinus Medii (Central Bay – it’s in the centre of the Moon's visible hemisphere) on 10 November (Australian time; 9 November in the US). This region is a potential site for the first Apollo landing, but since it appeared to be cratered and rocky, mission planners needed to know if its geological structure (different to the ‘plains’ areas where earlier Surveyor missions have landed) could support the weight of a manned Lunar Module.

Only an hour after landing safely, Surveyor-6 was operational and sent back pictures of a lunar cliff about a mile from its landing point, which has been described as “the most rugged feature we have yet seen on the Moon”. The first panoramas from Surveyor indicate that the landing site is not as rough as anticipated, and seems suitable for an Apollo landing.

Deep Space Network stations in Australia are helping to support the Surveyor-6 mission, as well as Surveyor-5, that landed in the Mare Tranquilitatis (Sea of Tranquillity) in September and is still operational. Hopefully both spacecraft will survive the next lunar night, commencing two weeks from now. NASA plans to send one more Surveyor probe to the Moon, in January, so look out for a review of the completed Surveyor programme early next year.

Watching the Sun for Astronaut Safety

With the Sun moving towards its maximum activity late next year or early in 1969, and likely to still be very active when the Apollo landing missions are occurring (assuming that the programme resumes some time within the next 12 months), NASA has wasted no time in launching another spacecraft in its Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO) series, to help characterise the effects of solar activity in deep space. A NASA spokesman was recently quoted as saying that “A study of solar activity and its effect on Earth, aside from basic scientific interest, is necessary for a greater understanding of the space environment prior to manned flights to the Moon”.

OSO-4 under construction

Launched on 18 October, OSO-4 (also known as OSO-D) is the latest satellite developed under the leadership of Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first female executive, who is Chief of Astronomy and Solar Physics. The satellite is equipped to measure the direction and intensity of Ultraviolet, X-ray and Gamma radiation, not just from the Sun, but across the entire celestial sphere.

The OSO-4 spacecraft, like its predecessors, consists of a solar-cell covered “sail” section and a “wheel” section that spins about an axis perpendicular to the pointing direction of the sail. The sail carries a 75 pound payload of two instruments that are kept pointing on the centre of the Sun. The wheel carries a 100 pound payload of seven instruments and rotates once every two seconds. This rotation enables the instruments to scan the solar disc and atmosphere as well as other parts of the galaxy. The satellite’s extended arms give it greater axial stability.

Hopefully, OSO-4 will have a long lifespan, producing data as solar activity increases across the Sun’s cycle, and enhancing safety for the Apollo and Soviet crews who will venture beyond the protection of the van Allen belts on their way to the Moon.

What are the Soviets Up To?

The USSR has been remarkably quiet about its manned lunar programme. One could almost think that they had given up racing Apollo to the Moon, if not for the rumours and hints that constantly swirl around. Rumours abounded at the time of the tragically lost Soyuz-1 mission that it was intended to be a space spectacular, debuting in the Soyuz a new, much larger spacecraft which would participate in multiple rendezvous and docking manoeuvres, and possibly even crew transfers, with one or more other manned spacecraft.

Such a space feat has yet to occur, but the mysterious recent space missions of Cosmos-186 and 188 suggest that the Soviets have something of the sort in mind for the future, and are still quietly working to develop the techniques that they will need for lunar landing missions and/or a space station programme.

It Takes Two to Rendezvous

On 27 October, Cosmos-186 was launched into a low Earth orbit, with a perigee of 129 miles and an apogee of 146 miles and an orbital period of 88.7 minutes. Cosmos-187 was launched the following day, and there has been speculation that it was intended to be part of a rendezvous and docking demonstration with Cosmos-186 but was placed into an incorrect orbit. However, as is so often the case with Cosmos satellites, the Soviet authorities only described their missions as continuing studies of outer space and testing new systems, so the actual purpose of this mission remains a mystery.


A rare Soviet illustration of what is believed to be the Cosmos-186-188 docking

However, Cosmos-186 was joined by a companion on 30 October, when Cosmos-188 was placed into a very similar orbit with a separation of just 15 miles. This clearly demonstrates the precision with which the USSR can insert satellites into orbit. The two spacecraft then proceeded to perform the first fully automated space docking (unlike the manual dockings performed by Gemini missions from Gemini-8 onwards), just an hour after Cosmos-188 was launched. Soviet sources, and some electronic eavesdropping by the now-famous science class at Kettering Grammar School in England, using surprisingly unsophisticated equipment, indicate that Cosmos-186 was the ‘active’ partner in the docking. It used its onboard radar system to locate, approach and dock with the ‘passive’ Cosmos-188.

While the two spacecraft were mechanically docked, it seems that an electrical connection could not be made between them, and no other manoeuvres appear to have been carried out while Cosmos-186 and 188 were joined together. Perhaps there were technical issues surrounding the docking, but an onboard camera on Cosmos-186 did provide live (if rather low quality) television images of the rendezvous docking and separation, and some footage was publicly broadcast.

After three and a half hours docked together, the two satellites separated on command from the ground and continued to operate separately in orbit. Cosmos-186 made a soft-landing return to Earth on 31 October, lending credence to the speculations that it was testing out improvements to the Soyuz parachute system, while Cosmos-188 reportedly soft-landed on 2 November.

Speculating on Soviet Space Plans

Was Cosmos-186 a Soyuz-type vehicle, possibly testing out modifications made to prevent a recurrence of the re-entry parachute tangling that apparently led to the loss of Soyuz-1 and the death of Cosmonaut Komarov? Building on speculations from the time of the Soyuz-1 launch, there have even been suggestions that Cosmos-186, while unmanned, was a spacecraft large enough to hold a crew of five cosmonauts. There is also speculation that Cosmos-188 may have been the prototype of a new propulsion system for orbital operations. Does this mean, then, that the USSR is planning some kind of manned spaceflight feat in orbit to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Communist Revolution? Or that it will soon attempt a circumlunar flight, to reach the Moon ahead of the United States?

Whatever their future plans may be, the automated rendezvous and docking of two unmanned spacecraft in Earth orbit shows that the USSR’s space technology is still advancing rapidly. The joint Cosmos 186-188 mission proves that it is possible to launch small components and assemble them in space to make a larger structure, even without the assistance of astronauts. This means that massive rockets like the Saturn V might not be required to construct space stations in orbit, or even undertake lunar missions, if the project is designed around assembling the lunar spacecraft in Earth orbit. Has the Cosmos 186-188 mission therefore been a hint of what the USSR's Moon programme will look like, in contrast to Apollo? Only time will tell…


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Science / Space Race

[October 28, 1967] Unveiling Venus – at Least a Little (Venera-4 and Mariner-5)

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by Kaye Dee

Despite the hiatus in manned spaceflight missions while the Apollo-1 and Soyuz-1 accident investigations continue, October has been a very busy month for space activities – so much so that I’ve had to defer writing about some of this month’s events to an article next month!

Spaceflight Slowdown?

4 October saw the tenth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik-1, the Soviet satellite that surprised the world and ushered in the Space Age and the Space Race. Since that first launch, the pace of space exploration has been breathtaking, far surpassing what even its most ardent proponents in the 1950s anticipated.

In the famous Colliers’ “Man Will Conquer Space Soon” article series, reproduced even here in Australia, Dr Wernher von Braun predicted that the first manned mission to the Moon would not occur until the late 1970s

As part of the USSR’s Sputnik 10th anniversary celebrations, many space-focussed newspaper articles were published.  One of these, written by Voskhod-1 cosmonaut and engineer Dr. Konstantin Feoktistov, strongly hinted that Russia's next major space feat would be the launch of an orbiting space platform. This would certainly be an important development in establishing a permanent human presence in space and put the Soviet Union once again ahead in the Space Race, especially if the US and USSR lunar programmes are faltering.

Earlier this month, the head of the NASA, Mr James Webb, said it was increasingly doubtful that either the United States or the Soviet Union would land people on the Moon in this decade. He delivered a gloomy prognostication for the second decade of the Space Age, saying the entire US programme was “slowing down”. Mr. Webb criticised recent Congressional cuts of 10 per cent to the space-agency budget projected for the year ending next 30 June, saying that NASA was laying off over 100,000 people.

Administrator Webb also cast doubt on some proposed NASA planetary exploration missions. “The serious question is whether or not this country wants to start a Voyager mission to Mars in 1968”, he is reported to have said. The Voyager programme is a 10-year project that envisages sending two spacecraft to Mars (one to orbit around it, the other to land on its surface), with the additional possibility of landing a spacecraft on Venus and exploring Jupiter. These would undoubtedly be exciting missions that would reveal new knowledge about these planets, but Mr Webb said he had virtually no money for the Voyager programme as a result of the budget cut.

Parallel Planetary Probes: Venera-4 and Mariner-5

But possible future downturns in space activity can’t detract from this month’s big news: the safe arrival of two spacecraft at Venus!

Back in June, a suitable launch window meant that both the USSR and NASA sent spacecraft on their way to our closest planetary neighbour. First off the blocks was the Soviet Union, which launched its Venera-4 mission (generally known in the West as Venus-4) on 12 June from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA’s Mariner-5 followed two days later, on 14 June, launched from Cape Kennedy.

Pre-launch photo of Venera-4

Venera-4 is the most recent Soviet attempt to reach the planet after Venera-2 and 3 failed to send back any data in March last year. There is some speculation that, since its previous Venus mission employed twin spacecraft, Russia may have also intended this Venus shot to be a two-spacecraft mission. It’s possible that the short-lived Cosmos 167 spacecraft, launched on 17 June, was Venera-4’s twin that failed to leave orbit, although with the secrecy that surrounds so much of the Soviet space program, who knows if we’ll ever get the truth of it? Venera-4 was itself first put into a parking orbit around the Earth before being launched in the direction of Venus. A course correction was performed on 29 July, to ensure that the probe would not miss its target.


Mariner-5 being prepared for launch

Mariner-5 is NASA’s first Venus probe since Mariner-2 in 1962. Originally constructed as a backup for the Mariner-4 Mars mission, that probe’s success meant that the spacecraft could be repurposed to take advantage of the 1967 Venus launch window. Interestingly, I understand from my friends at the Sydney Observatory that there were initial suggestions to send the Mariner back-up spacecraft to either comet 7P/Pons–Winnecke or comet 10P/Tempel, before the Venus mission was decided upon. While it’s useful to have additional data from Venus, it would have been fascinating to send an exploratory mission to a comet, since we know so little about these transient visitors to our skies. 

At its closest, Venus is just 36 million miles from Earth, but Mariner-5 followed a looping flightpath of 212 million miles, to enable it to fly past Venus at a distance of around 2,500 miles (about 10 times closer than Mariner-2’s flyby). Australia’s Deep Space Network (DSN) stations at Tidbinbilla, near Canberra, and Island Lagoon, near the Woomera Rocket Range, were respectively the prime and back-up monitoring and control stations for Mariner-5’s mid-course correction burn that placed it on its close flyby trajectory. 

Keys to Unlock a Mystery

Venus has always been a planet shrouded in mystery since its thick, cloudy atmosphere prevents any telescopic observation of its surface. For this year’s launch window, one could almost believe that Cold War tensions had been overcome and the USSR and USA had agreed to work together on a Venus exploration program, given that their two spacecraft effectively complement each other.

Venera-4’s mission was announced as “direct atmospheric studies”, with Western scientists speculating that this meant that it would follow Venera-3 in attempting to land on the planet’s surface. The spacecraft’s arrival at Venus has proved this speculation to be correct, and the few images of Venera-4 now available show the 2,436 lb spacecraft to be near-identical to Venera-3. 11 ft high, with its solar panels spanning 13 ft, Venera-4 carried a 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) spherical landing capsule that was released to descend through the atmosphere while the main spacecraft flew past Venus and provided a relay station for its signals.
Soviet models of the Venera-4 spacecraft and its descent capsule

The 844 lb descent capsule was equipped with a heat shield, capable of withstanding temperatures up to 11,000°C (19,800 °F) and had a rechargeable battery providing 100 minutes of power for the instruments and transmitter. During the flight to Venus the battery was kept charged by the solar panels of the carrier spacecraft. Supposedly, the entire Venera-4 probe was sterilised to prevent any biological contamination of Venus, but some Western scientists have cast doubt on this claim. The capsule was pressurized up to 25 atmospheres since the surface pressure on Venus was unknown until Venera-4’s arrival.
Picture of the Venera-4 descent capsule released by the USSR. Western scientists are wondering what that heat shield is made of

Information recently released by the Soviet Academy of Sciences has said that the descent vehicle carried two thermometers, a barometer, a radio altimeter, an atmospheric density gauge, 11 gas analysers, and two radio transmitters. Scientific instruments on the main body of the spacecraft included a magnetometer and charged particle traps, both for measuring Venus' magnetic field and the stellar wind on the way to Venus, an ultraviolet spectrometer to detect hydrogen and oxygen gases in Venus' atmosphere, and cosmic ray detectors.


Much smaller than Venera-4, the 5401b Mariner-5 was designed to flyby Venus taking scientific measurements: it was not equipped with a camera, as NASA considered this un-necessary in view of the planet’s cloud cover. NASA controllers initially planned a distant flyby of Venus, to avoid the possibility of an unsterilised spacecraft crashing into the planet, but the final close flyby was eventually chosen to improve the chances of detecting a magnetic field and any interaction with the solar wind.

As Mariner-4’s backup, Mariner-5 has the same basic body – an octagonal magnesium frame 50 in diagonally across and 18 in high. However, since it was heading to Venus instead of Mars, Mariner-5 had to be modified to cope with the conditions much closer to the Sun. Due to its trajectory, Mariner-5 needed to face away from the Sun to keep its high-gain antenna pointed at Earth. Its solar panels were therefore reversed to face aft, so they could remain pointed at the Sun. They were also reduced in size, since closer proximity to the Sun meant less solar cells were needed to generate the same level of power. Mariner-5's trajectory also required the high-gain antenna to be placed at a different angle and made moveable as part of the radio occultation experiment. A deployable sunshade on the aft of the spacecraft was used for thermal control, and Mariner-5 was fully attitude stabilized, using the sun and Canopus as references.
View from below showing the main components of Mariner-5

Mariner-5’s prime task was to determine the thickness of Venus’ atmosphere, investigate any potential magnetic field and refine the understanding of Venus’ gravity. Its suite of instruments included: an ultraviolet photometer, a two-frequency beacon receiver, a S-Band radio occultation experiment, a helium magnetometer, an interplanetary ion plasma probe and a trapped radiation detector. The spacecraft instruments measured both interplanetary and Venusian magnetic fields, charged particles, and plasmas, as well as the radio refractivity and UV emissions of the Venusian atmosphere.

During its 127-day cruise to Venus, Mariner-5 gathered data on the interplanetary environment. In September and October, observations were co-ordinated with measurements made by Mariner-4, which is on its own extended mission, following its 1965 encounter with Mars. Similar observations were made by Venera-4 during its flight to Venus, which found that the concentration of positive ions in interplanetary space is much lower than expected. 

Missions Accomplished

A few days before it arrived at Venus, the Soviet Academy of Sciences requested assistance from the massive 250 feet radio telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK, asking the facility to track Venera-4 for the final part of its voyage. This has provided Western scientists with some independent verification of Soviet claims about the mission. Jodrell Bank even announced the landing of the Venera-4 descent capsule more than seven hours before it was reported by the Soviet news agency Tass!

On 18 October, Venera-4’s descent vehicle entered the Venusian atmosphere, deploying a parachute to slow its fall onto the night side of the planet. According to a story that one of the Sydney Observatory astronomers picked up from a Soviet colleague at a recent international scientific conference, because there was still the possibility that, beneath its clouds Venus might be largely covered by water (one of the main theories about its surface), the capsule was designed to float if it did land in water. Uniquely, the spacecraft’s designers made the lock of the capsule using sugar, which would dissolve in liquid water and release the transmitter antennae in the event of a water landing.

Although the Venera-4 capsule had 100 minutes of battery power available and sent back valuable data as it fell through the atmosphere, Jodrell Bank observations, and the official announcement from Tass, indicated that the signal cut off around 96 minutes. While it was initially thought that this meant that the capsule had touched down on the surface, and there were even early reports claiming it had detected a rocky terrain, questions are now being raised as to whether it actually reached the surface, or if the spacecraft failed while still descending. Tass has said that the capsule stopped transmitting data because it apparently landed in a way that obstructed its directional antenna. A recording of the last 20 seconds of signal received at Jodrell Bank was delivered to Vostok-5 cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky during a visit to the radio telescope on 26 October. Perhaps once it is fully analysed, the question of the capsule’s fate will be clarified. Of course, if the landing is confirmed, Venera-4 will have made history with the first successful landing and in-situ data gathering on another planet.

Diagram illustrating the major milestones during the Mariner-5 encounter with Venus on 19 October
Mariner-5 swept past Venus on 19 October, making a close approach of 2,480 miles. At 02:49 GMT the Island Lagoon DSN station commanded Mariner 5 to prepare for the encounter sequence and 12 hours later its tape recorder began to store science data. Tracked by the new 200 in antenna at NASA’s Goldstone tracking station, Mariner reached its closest encounter distance at 17:35 GMT, and minutes later entered the “occultation zone” before passed behind Venus as seen from the Earth. 17 minutes later, Mariner-5 emerged from behind Venus and completed its encounter at 18:34 GMT.

The following day, Mariner-5 began to transmit its recorded data back to Earth. Over 72½ hours there were three playbacks of the data to correct for missed bits. Mariner-5's flight path following its Venus encounter is bringing it closer to the Sun than any previous probe and the intention is for to be tracked until its instruments fail.

A Peep Behind the Veil

So what have we learned about Venus from these two successful probes? There has long been controversy among astronomers as to whether Venus is a desert planet, too hot for life, or an ocean world, covered in water. The data from both Venera and Mariner has come down firmly on the side of the desert world hypothesis.
Astronomical artist Mr. Chesley Bonestell's 1947 vision of a desert Venus

The effects of Venus’ atmosphere on radio signals during Mariner-5’s occultation experiment have enabled scientists to calculate temperature and pressure at the planet's surface as 980°F and 75 to 100 Earth atmospheres. These figures disagree with readings from Venera 4 mission, which indicate surface temperatures from 104 to 536°F and 15 Earth atmospheres’ pressure, but both sets of data indicate a hellish world, with little evidence of water and an extremely dense atmosphere.

Venera has established that Venus’ atmosphere consists almost exclusively of carbon dioxide with traces of hydrogen vapour, very little oxygen, and no nitrogen. Mariner-5's data indicates that the atmosphere of Venus ranges from 52 to 87 per cent carbon dioxide, with both hydrogen and oxygen in the upper atmosphere: it found no trace of nitrogen. It detected about as much hydrogen proportionately as there is in the Earth's atmosphere. Mariner scientists, however, have pointed out that further analysis and refinements of both Russian and American data could clear up the apparent discrepancies.

Although Mariner’s instruments could not penetrate deeply enough into Venus’ atmosphere to obtain surface readings, they determined that the outer fringe of the atmosphere, where atoms were excited by direct sunlight, had a temperature of 700°F, below which was a layer close to Zero degrees, lying about 100 miles above the surface. Chemicals in the atmosphere, or electrical storms far more intense than those of Earth, give the night side of the planet an ashen glow.
A view of the Mariner-5 control room at JPL during the Venus encounter

A fascinating finding is that the dense atmosphere acts like a giant lens, bending light waves so they travel around the planet. Both American and Russian researchers agree that astronauts standing on the surface would feel like they were “standing at the bottom of a giant bowl”, with the back of their own heads a shimmering mirage on the horizon. Vision would be so distorted that the sun would appear at sunset to be a long bright line on the horizon: its light could penetrate the atmosphere, but not escape because of scattering, so that it would appear as a bright ball again for a time at sunrise until the atmosphere distorted its rays.

Neither spacecraft found any evidence of radiation belts comparable to the Van Allen belts around the Earth, and both established that Venus has only a very slight magnetic field, less than 1% that of the Earth. Observing how much Venus' gravity changed Mariner 5's trajectory established that Venus’ mass is 81.5 % that of Earth. Tracking of radio signals from Mariner-5 as it swept behind Venus, has shown that the planet is virtually spherical, compared with Earth's slightly pear-shape. (Other celestial mechanics experiments conducted with Mariner-5 obtained improved determinations of the mass of the Moon, of the astronomical unit, and improved ephemerides of Earth and Venus).

Life on Venus?

Although neither spacecraft was equipped to look for life on Venus, their findings will undoubtedly contribute to the growing scientific controversy over whether life does, or can, exist there. Based on its Venera results, the Soviet Union has said that Venus is “too hot for human life”, although Sir Bernard Lovell, the Director of Jodrell Bank Station, has suggested that future probes might find remnants of some early organic development, even if conditions today make life highly unlikely. However, German/American rocket pioneer and space writer Dr Willy Ley, has suggested there might be the possibility of “a very specialised kind of life on Venus”, possibly at the poles, which he believes would be cooler that the currently measured temperatures. The USSR’s Dr Krasilnikov has said that Earth bacteria could withstand the atmospheric pressure on Venus and might even be able to survive the intense heat. 


But just as Mariner-4 demolished fantasies of canals made by intelligent Martians, so the results from Venera-4 and Mariner-5, in allowing us a glimpse behind its cloudy veil, have swept aside any number of science fiction visions of Venus. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ verdant Amtor, with its continents and oceans, and Heinlein’s swampy Venus are no more. They have been replaced by a new vision of a hellish Venus, almost certainly inimical to life, with fiery storms raging in a dense, metal melting atmosphere which traps and bends light waves in a weird manner. I wonder where the SF writers of the future will take it?



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Science / Space Race, Uncategorized

[August 24, 1967] Up and Around (Lunar Orbiter)

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by Gideon Marcus

Wall to Wall Coverage

When President John F. Kennedy, on May 4, 1961, commited the United States to "achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth," he initiated not one, but several parallel endeavors.

To land a man on the Moon requires not just a spaceship, a rocket, and the infrastructure to support them, it requires reconnaissance.  When the President made that speech, the closest photographs of the lunar surface had been taken from 250,000 miles away.  The smallest details our 'scopes could make out at the time were about a quarter mile wide.  This is fundamentally useless when trying to determine whether a given site is flat enough to be suitable for landing a spacecraft.  Guessing the height of lunar mountains from their shadows at such resolution was similarly impossible.  Who knew how many hidden peaks lurked to snag Apollo astronauts on their way down?

Project Ranger was NASA's first major lunar project, each spacecraft taking pictures of the Moon before crashing into it. Three successful missions achieved resolutions as sharp as a foot and a half.  Good enough, resolution-wise, but can you imagine having to send a Ranger for any one of dozens of potential landing sites?  The cost would be prohibitive.  Ranger's follow-up, the soft-landing Surveyor was able to determine if the lunar surface could be landed on, but it was no better at mapping the Moon than Ranger.


Potential Apollo site areas

As early as 1960, NASA knew it would need an orbiting spacecraft if it was ever to thoroughly map the Moon.  There was Earthly precedent — the Discoverer spy satellite was at that time already taking high resolution photographs of the Earth for military surveillance purposes.  But getting a spacecraft all the way to the Moon, and it being able to provide footage of 99% of the lunar surface?  That was another kettle of fish.  That required a big rocket to carry a big satellite that could carry a big imaging system.  TV imaging was quickly discarded as being too bulky and low resolution.

In 1962, Space Technology Laboratories put forth an orbiter proposal that used a film system, with each frame to be imaged and transmitted back to Earth.  This was the first workable design, and combined with elements of an RCA proposal, NASA was able to officially solicit contractors for the project in mid-1963.  Ultimately, Boeing won the contract, in large part because of their design's use of Eastman Kodak's new dry film development system.  Their camera would be more reliable, lighter, and less susceptible to solar flares ruining the photos.

Like Scales Falling from the Eyes

It took more than two years of development, but by 1966, the 850 pound Lunar Orbiter was ready.  Using the same Atlas Agena as Ranger, the first spacecraft roared off to the Moon on August 10.  Despite some navigational failures and a bit of overheating, Lunar Orbiter 1 braked into lunar orbit on August 14.  The next day, the spacecraft began sending back pictures–not of the Moon, but of previously developed images, to test the system.

Issues plagued the high-resolution camera system throughout the mission, smearing many of the photos.  But by August 29, Lunar Orbiter 1 was able to take 205 pictures of the Moon at altitudes ranging from 1000 to just 30 miles (no air means an orbit can be as low as you like), readout of which began August 30 and finished September 16.  All of the major Apollo landing sites were photographed, and at high contrast.  The cherry on top of the lunar sundae was this photograph of the Earth, the first taken from the vicinity of the Moon, and the longest distance snapshot of our home planet:

This did not mark the end of the first Lunar Orbiter's mission.  For the next six weeks, NASA continued to receive telemetry and data from the probe's micrometeor detectors (no hits recorded).  But by October 28, Lunar Orbiter was a sick ship, indeed, running low on stabilizing jet fuel, overheating, and losing power.  It was starting to broadcast erratically, which threatened to interfere with communications with the upcoming Lunar Orbiter 2.  So, on October 29, during its 577th orbit, Lunar Orbiter 1 was directed to impact with the Far Side of the Moon.

Two for Two

Just eight days later, on November 6, Lunar Orbiter 2 headed for the Moon.  Much of it had been painted black, which addressed the navigation issues (glare blotting out the guide star Canopus).  Overheating was avoided by frequent maneuvers to minimize exposure of heat-absorbing surfaces to the sun.  By November 18, the spacecraft was snapping perfect medium resolution (for broad range) and high res (for potential landing site) pictures of the Moon from a 30 mile orbit.  Mapping was done by the 26th and readout by December 7.  Among the most significant shots included one of the Ranger 8 impact site and another dramatic photograph of Copernicus crater:


(C1 is Ranger's impact crater)


Copernicus from the side

817 pictures were taken in all, only six of which were lost due a glitch in an amplifier on the final day of readout.  Lunar Orbiter 2 is still in orbit, returning data.  In fact, it was hit three times by micrometeors back in November, probably by the same cometary fragments that give us our annual Leonids meteor display.

Following Up

Lunar Orbiter 3, launched February 7, 1967, had a more refined mission than its predecessors.  Its job was to focus on promising sites its sisters had found rather than mapping willy nilly.  NASA engineers planned to closely study its orbit around the Moon for gravitational wiggles, thus making a map of the Moon's insides as well as its surface.

Unfortunately, while the spacecraft was shooting pictures, the film advance mechanism started to balk.  NASA terminated photography on February 23 after just 211 pictures.  On March 4, with 72 photos still left to be transmitted back to Earth, the film advance motor burned out.  Still, had NASA not stopped shooting pictures earlier, it is likely they would have lost all of the photos.

The shots they did get were unprecedentedly good, including this shot of the Surveyor 1 landing site:

Gilding the lily

At this point, the Lunar Orbiter program had already fulfilled its main requirement: documenting all possible Apollo landing sites.  Now it was time to push the system to its limits.  Lunar Orbiter 4 went up on May 4, 1967, beginning photography on the 11th.  The spacecraft immediately ran into trouble.  The thermal door that regulated camera temperature wasn't closing properly, letting light leak through.  This led to a scramble to test the problem on the ground.  Engineers were able to keep the door partially open, threading the needle between too much glare and dropping the temperature such that condensation fogged the film.  The readout encoder started going, too.  NASA cut off photography atfter 163 shots, but because the encoder was bleating erroneous signals, engineers had to work out a tedious, manual system for film advance and readout.  Still, they got it done by June 1, resulting in 99% coverage of the Moon's near side at ten times the resolution possible from Earth.  This revealed a bonanza of selenological detail.  Plus, 80% of the Moon's Far Side had now been mapped, too.

The last Lunar Orbiter went up on August 1 with a primarily scientific mission.  Shooting began August 6, and on August 8, the spacecraft took an historic shot of the full Earth:

All of the planned 212 shots were taken by August 18 covering five Apollo sites, 36 science sites, and 23 previously unphotographed sites on the lunar Far Side.  An unqualified success, the spacecraft will enter the next phase of its life this week, returning data on the lunar environment and gravitational field along with the still orbiting Lunar Orbiters 2 and 3 (contact with #4 was lost July 17).

Unprecedented

It was just a few years ago that it seemed the Moon was a curse.  Most of the early Pioneer probes failed, with only Pioneer 4 a real success.  Three our of nine Rangers were duds.  Along comes Lunar Orbiter, every mission of which was more or less a triumph.  The way has been paved for the first human beings to set foot on another world in a year or two.

But beyond that, real science has been done.  A few years back, my sister gave me a lovely 1963 map of the Moon, the most detailed possible at the time.  I can't wait for a new map, based on Lunar Orbiter pictures, to come out.

I know what I want for Hannukah this year!




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Science / Space Race

[July 22, 1967] Getting the mail through (Australia introduces Postcodes)

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by Kaye Dee

In my first article for the Journey, just over three years ago, I talked about rocket mail and flying postmen. Well, we haven’t seen either of them yet – despite continual promises that they are “only a few years away”. This month, though, Australia has taken a step into the future of postal technology with the introduction of Postcode, the new national mail sorting system.

Zipping the Mail Along
Postal codes are not exactly new. They were first developed in large cities like London (where they were introduced in 1857) to help improve the speed of mail sorting and delivery as populations and the size and complexity of cities grew.

Modern postal codes were first introduced in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1932, followed by Germany (1941), Singapore (1950) and Argentina in 1958. Britain began introducing its current postal code system in 1959, while the US Postal Service introduced the five-digit ZIP code in 1963. I was interested to learn as I prepared to write this article that the ZIP part of ZIP code is actually an acronym standing for Zone Improvement Plan. I always thought that it was just a play on the idea of zipping, or speeding, the mail along to its destination. Switzerland was the most recent country to introduce postal codes before Australia, in 1964.

Mechanising Mail Sorting
What made the Postmaster General’s Department (PMG), which manages all Australia’s postal, telephone and telegraph services, decide that we needed to follow suit and speed up our mail by using a postal code system? After all, Australia’s current population is only 11.87 million – less than the population of New York City, which I understand is about 15.6 million.

Until now, mail sorting in this country has primarily been done by skilled human sorters, who have a detailed knowledge of geographical localities, reading the address on each letter. However, there are about 8,000 delivery offices around the country, so getting the mail to its final destnations has required at least two or three stages of sorting.


Mail sorting at the Sydney General Post Office in 1964

Australia has long been a world leader in in postal service mechanisation, and as early as 1958, the PMG decided to introduce large-scale mechanical mail sorting systems across Australia. As the first stage of this plan, the Sydney Mail Exchange opened in the suburb of Redfern in 1965, to automate and centralise the mail sorting facilities for New South Wales. It’s the largest and most advanced mechanised mail centre in the Southern Hemisphere, and the new electronic equipment and technology is attracting Worldwide interest. I’ve even heard that the Mail Exchange’s design concept is being considered as a possible future system by the US Postal Service.


Sydey's ultra-modern new mail exchange, in the inner-city suburb of Redfern

Sydney is our largest city, and New South Wales, the most populous state, so it makes sense to introduce a new Postcode system to work in conjunction with the state-of-the-art electronic mail handling equipment at the Sydney Mail Exchange, through which so much mail passes. Postcodes simplify the sorting process, as the mail sorter is now a coding operator, who enters the postcode using their data entry terminal, enabling the letters to be rapidly sorted electronically and speedily despatched to their delivery offices.


The Sydney Mail Exchange's state-of-the-art data entry system for the new sorting computers. Conveyors drop individual letters in front of the operators, who then type the postcode or suburb identifying the letter’s destination

The computers controlling this process occupy a large amount of space in the Mail Exchange building. Similar mechanised sorting systems will be gradually introduced around the country over the coming years: they’ll be immediately able to take advantage of the Postcode system to speed their mail sorting, without many of the teething problems that have bedevilled the Sydney mail Exchange.

The Australian Postcode System
The Postcode system was introduced on Saturday, 1 July. The new four-digit number system replaces some earlier postal sorting systems, such as Melbourne's letter and number codes (e.g., N3, E5) and a similar system that has been in use in rural and regional New South Wales. Nearly 5,000 postcodes have been allocated across the country, to every city, town, suburb and small regional centre.

Postcodes have been allocated following a broad geographical pattern, with Postcode numbers for capital city suburbs beginning in the west and moving to the north, east and south. A similar pattern is followed for regional country areas. The first digit of the Postcodes in each station corresponds to radio station call signs for that state: 2 (New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory – our equivalent of the District of Columbia), 3 (Victoria), 4 (Queensland), 5 (South Australia), 6 (Western Australia), 7 (Tasmania) and 8 (Northern Territory).

I think this is a good idea because everyone knows the radio callsigns, so it will make it easier to remember Postcodes for their friends locally or interstate. Subscriber Trunk Dialing for telephones, which commenced last year, is also using the state radio call sign number as the basis of the dialing codes for each capital city, so I imagine that will help with remembering the direct dial codes too. 

Getting the Word Out

The first edition of the Postcode booklet, listing every national Postcode, is being distributed free by mail this month to every Australian household and business address. A total of 4.5 million booklets are expected to be distributed, along with a postcard identifying the recipient’s own postcode. Of course, with 5,000 postcodes to include in the booklet, and with some geographical oddities to contend with, it’s not surprising that diligent nit-pickers have already found faults in the booklet to complain about and have been writing carping letters to the editors of local and major state newspapers.

There has been extensive advertising about the new Postcode system in the newspapers and on television and radio, but so far, we have not been treated to a catchy jingle like the one that introduced us to decimal currency last year.

The PMG is hoping that if we all start using the Postcodes properly at the end of addresses, not only will it improve the speed of mail delivery, but that next year it will make it easier to introduce “post office preferred-size envelopes” as well, whose standardised sizes will further improve the speed of mechanised mail sorting! 

And then I can finally get my postcards from the Traveler in a timely manner!



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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

[June 14, 1967] What's Easy for Two (Venus 4 and Mariner 5)

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by Gideon Marcus

Red Venus?

Every 19 months, Venus and Earth reach positions in their trips around the Sun such that travel to the former from the latter uses a minimum of energy. Essentially, a rocket blasts off and thrusts itself toward the Sun just long enough to drift inward and meet Venus after about half an orbit (a direct path would be very costly in terms of fuel use). The less energy used, the bigger the spacecraft can be sent. That means more payload for experiments.

The Soviets have been trying to reach the Planet of Love, Earth's closest neighbor (besides the Moon) for more than six years now. In February 1961, they launched Venera 1 (Venus 1), the first interplanetary probe to fly by another world–but it had gone silent by the time it got there.  Veneras 2 and 3 went up three opportunities later, in November 1965, but fell silent the next spring, just before reaching their target.  Indeed, Venera 3, a soft-lander, is believed to have rammed the cloud-shrouded world, becoming the first artificial object to reach another world.  Either way, no useful data was received.

Why didn't they launch any Veneras in 1962 or 1964?  In fact, it looks like they did.  The Soviets don't herald their failures.  Nevertheless, according to NASA officials, we have a pretty good catalog of them, thanks to careful parsing of Russian news reports as well as radar and telemetry data we've managed to gather.  Three Russkie Venus probes were launched in September 1962 and three more in February 1964.  Getting out of Earth orbit can be tough, requiring a second firing of onboard engines once a spacecraft is circling our planet.  Apparently, these six probes never got away.

But Venera 4, launched on June 12, 1967, has apparently passed that first hurdle.  Moreover, at one and a quarter tons, it is several hundred pounds heavier than any of its predecessors.  We don't know much about what's on the latest Communist probe, but scientists speculate some of the extra weight has been devoted to heat shielding.  Venus is very hot, perhaps 900° Fahrenheit, and it is believed that heat is what caused Venera 3 to fail.  Given that TASS, the Soviet news service, reported that Venera 4 is going to Venus, rather than by, it is assumed the spacecraft will make another landing attempt.

Provided it doesn't go slient like its predecessors.  Communicating across planetary distances is a hurdle the Soviets only recently surmounted with their Zond 3 probe, which tested radio reception at about 150 million kilometers' distance–far enough for a Martian mission.  Essentially, Zond 3 was the Soviet version of Pioneer 5–but five years later.  This is suggestive as to the Soviet level of communications technology, at least.  America would seem to have the clear lead there.

Well, I wish the Soviets luck.  Politics or no, I want to know more about that mysterious, seared world that is Venus!

Yankee Two-dle

If Venera 4 fails, it has a back-up of sorts.  Mariner 5, itself a back-up for the Mars-bound Mariner 4, was launched today early this morning, destination: Venus.

Already several hundred thousand kilometers from Earth, zooming at more than 10,000 kilometers per hour, it should reach Venus in October.  The spacecraft, launched via Atlas-Agena, the same rocket that launched our first Venus probe, Mariner 2, is barely a quarter the mass of Venera 4.  Moreover, Mariner 4's TV camera has been deleted, a decision that likely irks Venus scientist Dr. Carl Sagan, who insists doing so is short-sighted, clouds or no. 

But that removal, along with the reduction in the size of the solar panels (less is needed so close to the sun) means that when Mariner 5's planned flight path brings it within 3000 kilometers of Venus, it will be able to investigate the planet with a wide suite of instruments.  An ultraviolet photometer should not only refine temperature estimates of the Venusian upper atmosphere, it will tell us a bit about what gasses constitute it.  For instance, if there be any water there, perhaps life exists in the cloud tops, above the intense heat at the surface.

The rest of the instruments are likely ho-hum for the general audience, but should return a bonanza for scientists.  They include a magnetometer and various radiation sensing equipment that not only will measure the Venusian version of the Van Allen Belts (if they exist–Mariner 2 couldn't find any), but also tell us a lot about the solar wind on the way to Venus.

I will say, I'm glad we're sending a craft to Venus, and it does seem we did it on the cheap ($35 million), but I think I'm with Sagan on this one: for all the effort, it seems we're not going to find out very much about Venus with Mariner 5.  Another reason to root for Venera 4.

And a good reason to write your Congressman about the importance of planning a bigger Venus shot, perhaps on the more powerful Atlas Centaur rocket, when the next opportunity rolls around in January 1969!

Want to find out what we currently know about Venus?  Come read our previous articles on the planet of love!



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Science / Space Race

[May 28, 1967] Around the World in 80 Months (May 1967 Space Roundup)

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by Gideon Marcus

Between the tragic aftermath of this year's twin space disasters (Apollo 1 and Soyuz 1) as well as the dramatic results from the Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor Moon explorers, it's easy to forget the amazing things being done in Earth orbit.

So here's a little news grab bag of some flights you may have missed over the last several months (and even years, in some cases):

Moscow calling

Two years ago, the Soviets joined the world of comsats with the orbiting of their first Molniya satellite.  Launched into an eccentric orbit that takes them up to geosynchronous altitudes but then swooping down to graze the Earth, they work in pairs to facilitate transmissions across the 11 time zones of the Soviet Union.

It's an impressive system–half a ton of satellite broadcasting at 40w of power, more than twice that of the Intelsat "Early Bird" satellites.  Unfortunately for the Soviets, it's also been a balky system.  Both of the first two satellites stopped working within a year, Molniya 1B failing to keep station in space.  It's a bad thing when your comsat moves out of position!  This is something more likely to happen in an eccentric orbit than in a more-stable geosynchronous orbit where a satellite goes around the Earth once every 24 hours, remaining more or less stationary (except for a little figure eight over the course of the day) from the perspective of the ground observer.  Worse, because the Molniyas scrape so close to the Earth, it doesn't take much to send them careening into the atmosphere, which happened to 1B March 17, 1967.

Still, the Soviets prefer their odd orbit because it's ideal for their purposes (giving coverage to Eurasia) and, I suspect, requires less booster power.  And it still carries the satellites high enough to return photos like this one, shot by Molniya 1A last year–the first all-Earth photo ever:

Molniya 1C was launched on April 25 last year, Molniya 1D on October 20.  They were replacements for their non-functioning companions.  But Molniya 1C may well have given up the ghost, too.  Molniya 1E was launched on May 24, apparently to replace it. 

May they solve their teething problems sooner rather than later!

A Pair of Imps

Out beyond the Earth's magnetic field is the sun's domain.  High energy plasmas (the "solar wind") and our star's magnetic field fill the vacuum of interplanetary space.  Not very densely, to be sure, but with profound effects on the planets and offering clues as to the nature of the stellar furnace that creates them.

It is not surprising that NASA has devoted so many satellites to understanding and mapping this zone given how many spacecraft (including the upcoming Apollos) will travel through it.  Explorer 18, Explorer 21, and Explorer 28 were all part of the "Interplanetary Monitoring Program" (IMP).  The first two have already reentered, and the last just stopped working a couple of weeks ago.  Luckily, virtually uninterrupted service has been maintained thanks to the launches of Explorer 33 and Explorer 34!


Explorer 33

Explorer 33, launched July 1, 1966, was supposed to be the first of the "anchored" IMPs, returning data from the orbit of the Moon (which does not have a magnetic field or radiations of its own).  Unfortunately, the satellite was shot into space a bit too rapidly to safely decelerate into orbit around the Moon.  Instead, it now has an extremely high (270,000 miles perigee!) but eccentric (low apogee) orbit from which it still can return perfectly good science.  Indeed, NASA planned for this eventuality.


Explorer 34

The other Explorer, #34, was just sent up on May 24.  It is a more conventional IMP and will pick up where #28 left off. 

With four years of continuous data, we now have terrific data sets on the Sun through a good portion of its 11-year cycle, including the recent solar minimum.  I look forward to a slew of reports in the Astrophysical Journal over the next few years!

Yes, I read those for fun.  Doesn't everyone?

Bright Future

If the IMPs exist to monitor the Sun's output, the Orbiting Solar Observatories' job is to directly watch the Sun.  Prior to 1967, two of these giant satellites had been orbited: OSO 1 on March 7, 1962, and February 3, 1965.  A third launch was made on August 25 of the same year, but it failed.

Sadly, the OSOs haven't quite provided continuous coverage over the last five years.  Still they have returned the most comprehensive data set of solar measurements to date.  And, as of March 8, the wiggly needles that mark the collection of data are jiggling again: OSO 3 has been returning data from its nine instruments on all manner of solar radiation–including and especially in the ultraviolet, X-Ray, and cosmic ray wavelengths that are blocked from terrestrial measurement by the Earth's atmosphere.

The timing is perfect–the Sun is just entering its period of maximum output.  OSO 3 will not only tell us more about the nearest star, it will report on its interactions with the Earth's magnetic field and the space environment in near orbit.

A Meteoric Rise

The Soviets have been awfully cagey about a lot of their launches.  Every couple of weeks, another unheralded Kosmos heads into orbit, stays there for a week, then lands.  It's an open secret that they are really Vostok-derived spy satellites that snap shots and return to Earth for film development.  This is utterly reprehensible–certainly WE would never do anything like that.

But while many of Communist flights have been hush hush, one subset of their Kosmos series has been pretty open: the weather satellite flights of Kosmoses 122, 144, 149, and 156!

The first of the Soviet meteorological satellites went into space on June 25, 1966, broadcasting for about four months before falling silent.  For a while, it seemed the Russkies were going to keep the pretty weather photos to themselves, but on August 18 of last year, they suddenly started sharing data over the Washingon/Moscow "Cold Line"–both visibile and infrared pictures, too.  It appears the delay was due to the Soviet reluctance to announce a mission until they're sure of its success.  It is entirely possible that some of the unexplained Kosmoses before 122 were failed flights.


Kosmos 122

The picture quality was pretty low at first, probably due to the length of the line the data must be sent over.  Improvements were made, and the new stuff is great.

Since 122, the Soviets have launched Kosmos 144 on February 28, 1967, Kosmos 149 on March 21 (it reentered on April 7–a failure of its weather-related mission, but it successfully tested the first aerodynamic stabilizer in orbit), and the latest Kosmos, #156, just went up on April 27, 1967.  It is my understanding that photos are being regularly shared with the National Environmental Satellite Service (NESS) in Suitland, Maryland.  I don't know if these are revolutionizing our view of the planet given our successful ESSA and NIMBUS programs, but it does give a warm glow of international cooperation.

If the nukes fly, at least we'll know if it's nice weather over their targets…

From the Far East into the Drink

The Japanese have been working their darndest to become the sixth space power (after the USSR, US, UK, France, and Italy).  Unfortunately, all of their efforts have thus far come up a cropper.

Their Lambda 4S rocket is the first one capable of launching a satellite into orbit, specifically an ionospheric probe with a 52 pound science package.  The problem is the vehicle's fourth stage.  The truck-launched Lambda 3 has been pretty much perfected, but when the new engine was put at the top of the stack, everything went to hell.


The successful precursor of the Lambda 4S, the Lambda 3

On September 26, 1966, the first Lambda 4S was lost when the fourth stage attitude control failed.  The fourth stage didn't even ignite the second time around on December 20.  That happened again on April 13 of this year during the third flight.

It looks like Nissan and JAXA engineers will be going back to the drawing board before trying another flight.  Maybe 1968 will be the year the Rising Sun joins the rising sun above the Earth…

What's next?

This summer, our eyes will surely turn beyond the Earth to Earth's twin, the planet Venus, for June marks the latest opportunity to send probes to the second planet at a premium on fuel consumption and payload allowance.  You can bet we'll be covering Mariner 5 and Venera 4 when they launch!


Testing Mariner 5



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