All posts by Kaye Dee

Science / Space Race

[April 6, 1965] The Early Bird Catches the Worm (INTELSAT 1)

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by Kaye Dee

Later today, the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, better known as INTELSAT is going to launch its first satellite, INTELSAT-1, which goes by the nickname of ‘Early Bird’. This satellite is intended to be the beginning of a global satellite telecommunications network, which INTELSAT hopes to have in operation by about mid-1967.


INTELSAT aims to connect us all via satellite – starting with the US and Europe

INTELSAT: Connecting the World with Space Technology

I wrote about INTELSAT last year, when the organization was first established in August 1964, with Australia as one of its 11 founding members. Around 45 countries have now joined the INTELSAT consortium and I’m certain that the creation of a world-wide telecommunications system that offers equitable access to all nations will improve international understanding and the prospects for world peace. Satellite communications will certainly prove a boon for countries with poorly-developed internal communications networks, as well as allowing major Southern Hemisphere nations like South Africa and Australia to have more rapid connections to Britain, Europe and North America.


One of the United States' first space stamps recognised the potential for satellite communications to promote world peace

Assuming all goes well with the launch this evening, INTELSAT-1 will be placed in a geostationary orbit at 22,300 miles above the equator, east of the Brazilian coast. Once the satellite has been thoroughly checked out to be sure it’s in full working order, it will go into operation, around the beginning of June, as the first commercial satellite providing regular telecommunications and broadcasting services between North America and Europe.

Soaring to New Heights

Of course, satellite communications between the Unites States and Europe isn’t completely new: Telstar and Relay 1 both provided this service back in 1962. But both satellites were only in low Earth orbit, so they could only provide intermittent service. When Syncom 2 and 3, were launched in 1963 and ’64, respectively, these experimental spacecraft built by the Hughes Aircraft Company demonstrated the feasibility of using satellites in geosynchronous and geostationary orbit to provide a world-wide communications system. They were so successful in connecting America with countries from Japan to Nigeria, that Syncom 3 was the prototype on which Early Bird has been modelled, and you can see the similarity in design.


Syncom 3 above and Early Bird undergoing tests below

Like Syncom 3, INTELSAT-1 is spin stabilised, which is the reason for its cylindrical shape. It has two 6-Watt transponders that enable it to carry 240 two-way voice circuits and one television channel, although not simultaneously: in order to transmit television, all the telephone voice channels have to be shut down.  An important difference between the two satellites, though, is that INTELSAT-1 uses commercial rather than military frequencies for its communications to and from the ground.

INTELSAT-1 weighs just 85-lb which, amazingly for its capabilities, is less than half that of Sputnik 1’s 184 pounds. It is covered with 6,000 solar cells that generate 45 Watts of power to operate the satellite. Early Bird’s capabilities are so advanced that it will actually be more economical to operate than international undersea cables, which carry fewer channels and cost nearly 10 times as much!

Getting into Position

Early Bird is being launched by a Thrust-Augmented Delta, the same type of rocket that was used to put Syncom 3 into orbit. This vehicle, also known as the Delta D, is essentially the same as its predecessor, the Delta C, but with the addition of three Castor-1 solid rocket boosters attached to the first stage. The launch is taking place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 17A, which was also used for Syncom 3’s launch. The Delta will boost Early Bird into an elliptical orbit, taking it from 830 to 22,950 miles out in space. After 40 hours a series of delicate manoeuvres will place the satellite in its permanent orbital position.


Early Bird's launch vehicle being assembled. The Castor-1 solid boosters are being hoisted into position while the Delta rocket core waits in the background. It will soon be brought forward for mating with the boosters

Demonstrating the Future

Although it will operate as a commercial service, Early Bird will also be used to demonstrate that international satellite telecommunication is commercially viable in the long-term. While its main ground stations will be the huge horn antennae originally built for Telstar, it will also use ground stations with large parabolic ground antennae with diameters of over 85 feet, like the one at Goonhilly in England, and perhaps smaller antennae as well.


The Telstar horn antenna at Pleumeur-Bodou, France, is now being used as an INTELSAT-1 ground station

From my friends at WRE who are involved with the NASA Gemini tracking station at Carnarvon, Western Australia, I understand that if the Early Bird experience goes well, the antennae for the INTELSAT-2 satellites, that are being contracted by NASA to support the Apollo programme, will be an unusual Cassegrain feed-horn design that is already being nicknamed the “sugar scoop”! I’m fascinated to see what this antenna will actually look like, with a nickname like that!

The other thing that INTELSAT-1 will be determining is whether or not the end to end signal delay of 250 milliseconds, while the signal goes up to the satellite and returns to the ground, will be acceptable to customers. Syncom 3 demonstrated that geostationary orbit is so high that, even at the speed of light, there is a perceptible time-lag between comment and response when communicating internationally. Whether people will find this too disconcerting for use with international satellite phone calls could have a significant influence on how future communications satellite systems are developed.


240 phones for 240 conversations simultaneously carried on via Early Bird. But will people accept the time-lag that comes with geostationary satellite communications?

So, my friends in the Northern Hemisphere, enjoy the convenience of satellite telecommunication that will soon be available to you-I can’t wait for it to come to Australia as well.

We had so much success with our first episode of The Journey Show (you can watch the kinescope rerun; check local listings for details) that we're going to have another one on April 11 at 1PM PDT with The Young Traveler as the special musical guest.  As the kids say, be there or be square!

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Science / Space Race

[March 24, 1965] New Leaps Forward in Space (Voskhod 2, Europa F-3, Ranger 9, and Gemini 3)

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by Kaye Dee

Returning to university kept me pretty busy in February, so I knew I wouldn’t have time to write, but this past month has seen yet more leaps forward in space exploration with the world’s first spacewalk and the launch of NASA’s first manned Gemini mission.

Soviet Space Achievements

It’s hard to believe that it’s just under four years since Yuri Gagarin rocketed into orbit as the first man in space. In that short time we’ve seen six flights in the Soviet Union’s Vostok program, including the first dual missions with two space capsules in orbit at the same time, and the first woman in space (how I’d love to meet Valentina Tereshkova!)


The first man and the first woman in space, Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova

Just last year, the USSR gave us the first flight of its new Voskhod spacecraft, carrying a crew of three. At that time, my fellow writer, Gideon Marcus asked, what would the Soviets follow it up with? (see October 1964 entry)

Now we know. On March 18, the USSR launched a new Voskhod mission that has once again denied the United States a significant space first. This time, the Voskhod 2 mission included the world’s first spacewalk – about a year ahead of when NASA has anticipated accomplishing the same feat.

A Mystery Spacecraft


One of the few Voskhod images released so far, showing the inside of Voskhod 1. The orange cladding may be covering up many of the spacecraft's instruments

We don’t know a lot about the Voskhod spacecraft as the Soviet Union has released few pictures of it or statistics about it. It clearly must be substantially larger than the Vostok, since it has proved capable of carrying three people on its first flight, and two cosmonauts plus an airlock device on the recent spacewalking mission. We do know that, according to official figures, Voskhod 1 weighed 11,728lb, while Voskhod 2 weighed in at 12, 527lb – presumably because of the extra weight of the airlock it carried.

Newly Revealed Cosmonauts

The crew for this historic space flight were two cosmonauts whose names were previously unknown to us in the West: Colonel Pavel Belyayev, the mission Commander, and Lt. Colonel Alexei Leonov, who performed the actual spacewalk, or Extravehicular Activity (EVA) as NASA terms it. Leonov’s name will now go down in the history books as the first person ever to step outside a spacecraft into open space. Soviet cosmonaut biographies don’t really tell us very much, but both men are apparently Air Force fighter pilots, and are married with children. At 39, Col. Belyayev is the oldest person so far to make a space flight; he is also the oldest and highest ranking of the cosmonauts we know about.


Official TASS photo of Belyayev (left) and Leonov (right) with Yuri Gagarin at a radio interview after their historic flight

Onboard Airlock

Voskhod 2 was launched at 07.00GMT (5pm Australian Eastern Standard Time) and it was just 90 minutes later, on the second orbit, that the spacewalk took place. At the time, Voskhod 2 was about 300 miles above the earth – the highest orbit by a manned spaceflight to date. Soviet sources describe the airlock that Leonov used to exit the ship as being mounted on the outside of the spacecraft and entered from the Voskhod cabin via a hatch. After the completion of the spacewalk, the airlock was jettisoned before the ship returned to Earth. Because the spacewalk would expose the crew to the vacuum of space if the airlock malfunctioned, both cosmonauts wore spacesuits for the duration of the mission, unlike the Voskhod 1 crew, who made their space flight in lightweight suits, which would seem to be an indication of Soviet confidence in the performance of the spacecraft.


Belyayev (left) and Leonov (right) in their spacesuits on the way to the launch site. Voskhod 1 cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is between them

Stepping into the Void

According to the TASS news agency, Lt. Col. Leonov spent 20 minutes “in conditions of outer space”. Since his actual spacewalk lasted about 10 minutes, the rest of the time must have been spent in the airlock. I’ve heard a rumour from my friends at the WRE that the spacewalk did not go as smoothly as the Soviets would like us to believe, and that Leonov actually had some difficulty re-entering the airlock, which might explain the times reported by TASS. But stories of Soviet coverups of problems with their cosmonaut program occur after every mission, so it’s hard to know quite where the truth lies in this instance.


Lt Colonel Alexei Leonov floating in the void of space during the historic first spacewalk, seen in frames from the film taken by a camera mounted on Voskhod 2

Whether he had a problem or not, Leonov spent about 10 minutes floating in the void, attached to Voskhod 2 by a long umbilicus, to prevent him drifting away. His breathing oxygen was supplied from a tank on his back. Leonov said that he could look down and see from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Caspian Sea. The spacewalk was filmed and photographed from the Voskhod and I imagine that very few of the readers of this article will not have seen the breathtaking footage of Leonov somersaulting and making swimming movements as he floats in space with the Earth behind him (actually below, of course).

Problems in Orbit?

Voskhod 2 completed 17 orbits before returning to the Earth on 19 March, but there was a mysterious silence from Moscow about the mission after the 13th orbit, which has led to some speculation that there was a problem with the spacecraft, especially as it was not until about five hours after the crew had landed in the vicinity of Perm, west of the Ural Mountains, that their safe return was reported. Belyayev is reported to have brought the Voskhod back to Earth using manual controls. Although official statements said that this was part of the planned research programme, it might also be a hint that the mission experienced problems.


Official TASS photo of Leonov (right) and Belyayev (left) after their return from the Voskhod 2 mission. Leonov is holding folders containing congratulatory messages

But whatever problems the mission may have encountered cannot detract from Lt. Col. Leonov’s historic achievement in making the first spacewalk, a technique that will be needed to advance future space activities. I wonder what new surprises Voskhod 3 will bring….

The Latest ELDO Test Flight

On 22 March, the ELDO program at Woomera also took another step forward with the third successful flight of the Blue Streak first stage of the Europa launcher. Launched at 8.30am local time, the rocket flew 985 miles, reaching a maximum altitude of 150 miles. This flight completes the first phase of the launcher development program: the next phase will begin with an all-up test of a live first stage with dummy upper stages.


The Blue Streak first stage for the ELDO Europa vehicle on the pad awaiting launch

America hits a Double


by Gideon Marcus

Three for Three

Despite the clear success represented by Voskhod 2, it would be folly to overlook the fact that it has been a tremendous week for NASA.  The Ranger program, once the most ill-starred of NASA endeavors, has just completed its third successful mission in a row.  Less than six hours ago, at 3:08 AM PDT, Ranger 9 crashed into the crater Alphonsus in the lunar highlands.

The prior two successful Rangers, 7 and 8, were largely handmaidens to the Project Apollo.  They returned thousands of photographs of potential landing sites for the crewed lunar program.  Ranger 9, on the other hand, was the first mission with a primarily scientific aim.  In order for us to understand the Moon, its construction, and its history, we need close-up information on as many different types of terrain as possible — and no two regions of the Moon are more distinct from each other than the mountains of the lunar highlands and the relatively flat Maria or "seas".  Alphonsus is particularly interesting as it has a large central peak that may be evidence of lunar vulcanism from an ancient period.

Launched at 1:37 PM PDT on March 21, the Atlas Agena carrying Ranger 9 quickly disappeared into the cloudy sky.  The reliable booster's aim was true, propelling the spacecraft first into Earth orbit, and then off toward its final destination.  The next day, Ranger fired its own engines, correcting its course to mathematical perfection. 

Today, at Impact -20 Minutes, Ranger 9 warmed up its television cameras.  Images began appearing at the JPL auditorium…and around the nation, broadcast to anyone who was up to see it (and who had an online TV station to tune into!) This was the first time a robotic mission had been simulcast, and it was very exciting.  Now if only they could time their missions to be more accommodating to the aged thirty-nine year old science writers who cover them…

There were originally supposed to be 12, or even 15 Rangers, but because it took so long for them to work properly, there are now more advanced missions that are superseding them, namely Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor.  This is just as well.  While Ranger has been a triumph of engineering and science, bearing unexpected dividends in the successful spinoff spacecraft, Mariner 2, there is only so much one can learn from TV pictures.  Indeed, initial reports suggest that while Ranger 9's photos discovered new craters within Alphonsus that might be evidence for vulcanism, as Dr. Harold Urey quipped, it won't be until we have chemists on the Moon that we can draw solid conclusions.

In any event, bravo NASA, and bravo Ranger. 

Two in Three

After the spectacular mission of Comrades Tereshkova and Bykovsky in June 1963, there was a long pause in crewed spaceflight.  The Mercury program had ended in May '63 with the day-long mission of Gordo Cooper in Faith 7.  Talk of extending Mercury was poopooed (though you can get an idea of what might have happened if you read the excellent novel, Marooned).  For more than a year, as Mercury's 2-seat successor, Gemini, suffered delay after delay, we waited for Khruschev's shoe to drop.

And the Soviets did beat us back to space with their three-man flight last October, though the success of that mission was somewhat eclipsed by the Soviet coup that took place just a couple hundred miles beneath the orbiting space capsule.  Voskhod 2, with its remarkable space walk, only seems to further the Soviet lead.

Yet the American turtle still has ambitions to beat the Red Hare.  The third Gemini mission (the first and second were uncrewed test flights) had been planned for this month for some time, and yesterday morning, Gemini 3 took off from Cape Canaveral carrying astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young for a three-orbit test flight. 

A lot has changed since John Glenn's pioneering three-orbit flight in Friendship 7, just three years ago.  Both Grissom and Young were kept busy with a slew of biological experiments to conduct in orbit.  Grissom got to conduct the very first spacecraft maneuver, firing the ship's engines once per orbit to change its altitude and velocity.  Neither Mercury nor Vostok had this capability, and I haven't read anything that suggests Voskhod has it, either.  Score one for the home team!

In addition to the ordinary drama that attaches to every space mission, the astronauts created some of their own.  A couple of hours into the flight, as Gemini drifted along its second orbit, it was time for the astronauts to sample their carefully prepared space food.  This meal was lavishly prepared by NASA scientists to be nutritious, compact, and resistant to creating crumbs that could drift into and short vital ship components. 

Whereupon astronaut John Young pulled out a corned beef sandwich from his pocket, ate a bite, and offered it to his commander.  Grissom took a polite nibble, commenting on the sandwich's inability to stay together, and quickly put the thing in his pocket.  Apparently, this was all the brainchild of Schirra, the most renowned prankster of the Mercury 7. 

Beyond this incident, the very name Grissom chose for the first crewed Gemini was something of a scandal.  Christening a spacecraft has always been the privilege of its commander, and Grissom, sensitive to the fate of his last ship, chose an appropriate name: "Molly Brown."  This, of course, was the name of the eponymous character from The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a popular broadway musical about a survivor of the Titanic disaster.

NASA felt that the name lacked dignity and insisted on a change.  Grissom dug in his heels, insisting that if he had to change the name, it would be to Titanic.  NASA gave in.

Gemini 3 completed its three orbits without incident and reentered the atmosphere four and a half hours after leaving it.  Unfortunately, Molly Brown plunged back into the atmosphere somewhat off course.  Grissom tried to steer the capsule (such as it is possible to maneuver a shuttle-cock shaped craft) closer to the Atlantic recovery fleet, but the craft ultimately splashed down some 84 kilometers short.  It took a good half hour for the carrier, U.S.S. Intrepid, to arrive.  In the interim, Grissom and Young sweltered, the commander unwilling to open the capsule and risk another swamped spacecraft.  It is my understanding that Molly Brown is still decorated with Schirra's sandwich…

Minor issues aside, Gemini 3 was a fully successful flight, officially man-rating the Gemini spacecraft.  The next mission, currently scheduled for late spring, will feature the American version of the vacuum shuffle.  The first American spacewalk was originally planned for next year, but Leonov's jaunt changed all that.  Sometimes the rabbit gives the turtle a little goose…

(If you're wondering why the second Mercury astronaut got the honor of commanding the mission, it's because Alan Shepard, the first Mercury astronaut, has been taken off flight status due to an inner ear disease, and astronaut Slayton, the only Mercury astronaut who hasn't flown a mission, was grounded earlier for a heart condition.  I'd assumed that Wally Schirra would command Gemini 4 (Glenn retired to go into politics; Carpenter retired to become an aquanaut), and that Cooper would take Gemini 5.  Apparently, however, Ed White of the second group of astronauts so impressed his peers that he will command the next Gemini mission.  Because of the shifting Gemini schedules, Cooper is still taking Gemini 5, but Schirra is going after him, commanding Gemini 6.)

The Score

So there you have it.  In the last six months, the Soviets have orbited five men, one of whom stepped into Outer Space.  The Americans orbited just two, but they autonomously drove their own spacecraft.  Meanwhile, Ranger 9 raised the total of close-up pictures of the Moon to nearly 20,000 whereas the Russians still haven't added to the handful provided by Luna 3 more than five years ago!

I guess we'll see what happens.  Will the next flight be Gemini 4 or Voskhod 3?

We'll be talking about these space flights and more at a special presentation of our "Come Time Travel with Me" panel, the one we normally do at conventions, on March 27 at 6PM PDT.  Come register to join us!  It's free and fun…and you might win a prize!




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 20, 1965] The T.A.R.D.I.S. Lands Down Under and Japan Invades Australia (Doctor Who and The Samurai)

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by Kaye Dee

I’ve been reading Jessica Holmes’ insightful articles about the British science fiction television series Doctor Who since she first started commenting on this show (see December 1963 entry) and I’ve been looking forward for some time to actually seeing it air in Australia. At last my wish has been granted! The T.A.R.D.I.S. has finally landed here, with Doctor Who commencing on the Australian Broadcasting Commission (the ABC is the Australian equivalent of the BBC) just in the past week, mesmerising me with those incredible opening credits.


Doctor Who's ethereal and abstract opening credits perfectly suggest travelling along the corridors of time

Not Just Kid Stuff

I heard from a friend who works at the ABC that Australia has been one of the first countries to buy Doctor Who from the BBC. In fact, I was really excited when he told me in March last year that the ABC had purchased the show and intended to debut it last May, but then delays arose due to censorship issues. Yes, although Doctor Who is classed as a family show in Britain, the Australian censors (who view and classify every overseas television show that comes into the country) have deemed the first thirteen episodes to be not suitable for children and classified them as “Adult”! This means that the ABC must schedule these episodes for screening after 7pm and couldn’t show Doctor Who in the Sunday night 6.30pm timeslot it originally planned. But at last Doctor Who has found a home on Friday night at 7.30pm (at least in Sydney). I just hope the censors aren’t going to decide one day that some stories are too scary to be screened at all!

Doing the Rounds

A funny thing about the ABC is that sometimes when it buys a show from overseas it only purchases one film copy of each episode. This film reel then has to be sent around from state to state so that it can be screened by the ABC broadcaster in each capital city. So, the first Australian screening of Doctor Who was actually in Perth on Tuesday, 12 January. Sydney and Canberra (linked by cable) were next on 15 January. Brisbane will get to see Doctor Who next Friday 22 January, but Melbourne will have to wait until Saturday 20 February and Adelaide won’t see the first episode until Monday 15 March! I’m glad I live in Sydney now.


Anthony Coburn (left) and Ron Grainer (right) may be virtually unknown in Australia, but they've had successful careers in Britain and have made important contributions to the creation of Doctor Who

The Australian Connection

It’s great to see that some Australians are involved with the production of Doctor Who. The premiere story, “An Unearthly Child” has been written by Anthony Coburn. I’d never really heard of him before, but according to a few newspaper articles reviewing the first episode he was born in Melbourne and has been working in England for many years as a staff writer for the BBC. Ron Grainer, who composed the wonderfully eerie and evocative theme music, has also spent most of his professional career composing music in Britain, although he grew up in a small mining town in far north Queensland. Vicki Lucas’ fascinating article on the music of Doctor Who (see December 1963 entry) tells me that an obviously talented lady named Delia Derbyshire at the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop created the amazing sound of Grainer’s composition: all I can say is that I’m in awe of her skill at creating electronic music, now that I have actually heard the theme tune for myself.


The mysterious Doctor Who and his granddaughter Susan. I wonder when we'll find out where they really come from and why they are exiles from their home world

A Family Viewing Experience

And that’s what I’ve discovered with the first episode of Doctor Who: it’s one thing to read about the show and look forward to seeing it, but it’s a whole new experience to actually watch it on television. My sister Faye and her kids watched “Unearthly Child” with me and we were all caught up in the mystery of Susan and her grandfather and what's going to happen to the two school teachers now that they've been whisked away somewhere in time and space in the Doctor’s T.A.R.D.I.S. Vickie and David certainly didn’t think that Doctor Who was just for adults, no matter what the censors said! We’re all looking forward to the next episode and enjoying the adventures that those of you in Britain have been watching for over a year.


Promotional image for The Samurai, showing Shintaro wielding a longsword that is the traditional weapon of a samurai warrior. The title character is played by actor Koichi Ose

Japanese Television Arrives in Australia

Doctor Who isn’t the only new television import to catch my attention lately. Despite the animosity that many Australians have felt towards Japan since the War, last year’s Tokyo Olympic Games, where our young swimmer Dawn Fraser did so well, sparked a lot of interest and curiosity about Japan and its culture. So much so, in fact, that TCN-9 in Sydney started showing the first ever Japanese television series on Australian screens at the end of December. It’s an action adventure series called The Samurai, set in feudal Japan three centuries ago. Channel 9 is taking a gamble with this show, which I guess is why they’ve put it on in the doldrums period of the Summer holidays.


Shintaro narrowly avoids a brace of 'star knives' (a weapon used by the ninjas). I've heard that Dads are now making home-made ones for their kids, snipped from used tin lids. It'll be fun to play samurai and ninjas until someone gets hurt with one of these!

A "Western", Japanese Style

The Samurai tells the story of a master swordsman named Shintaro (the “samurai” of the title), a half-brother of Japan’s young ruler, the Shogun, who travels around Japan putting down plots against his brother’s government, usually by the villainous gangs of a semi-magical secret society known as ninjas: you could say that Shintaro is a medieval Japanese cross between James Bond, a Western gunslinger and Robin Hood! Channel 9 has been showing The Samurai five days a week at 3.30pm and with its exotic setting, supernatural action and endearingly bad dubbing with broad American accents, it’s fast becoming very popular – and not just with the kids. Faye’s husband, Bruce, has been absorbed in the show while he’s on holidays and I’ve taken to this fascinating curiosity of a show as well. Mind you, so many ninjas get killed in each episode, I’m surprised the censors haven’t labelled The Samurai as “Adult”, alongside Doctor Who!

Japan Invades the Top 40, Too

Another bit of Japanese culture has also been making its presence felt in the Top 40 charts. In August last year, the lovely Noeleen Batley, Australia’s first female pop singer to have a national hit song, released an English version of a song that was a huge hit in Japan in 1963. “Little Treasure from Japan” charted in Sydney and Brisbane and even made it all the way to #16 in Melbourne last October. It really is a sweet little song, with one of those tunes you can’t get out of your head. My niece Vickie’s dance teacher is already creating a dance routine for her class to perform to the song for their mid-year concert. Now we just have to figure out where we can find a kimono for her costume.


Australia's "Little Miss Sweetheart" Noeleen Batley has had a hit with "Little Treasure from Japan". You can see by the wear on the cover that Faye's copy of the record has already been played quite a bit

Australia International

The fact that Channel 9 took a risk on screening The Samurai is an indication of how much Australians have broadened their worldview since the end of the War. The large influx of European migrants has introduced us to delicious new foods, good coffee (thank you!) and a more cosmopolitan outlook. Our TV might be dominated by British, American and (a long way third) Australian shows now, but hopefully we'll soon see more international programmes. Perhaps someday we'll even see a television channel offering programmes from around the world: I can't wait to see what fun and entertainment we've been missing out on!

[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine! We work for egoboo…]




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Science / Space Race

[January 8, 1965] The Skylark of Space (Britain's Skylark Sounding Rocket)

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by Kaye Dee

Hopefully Doc Smith will forgive me for borrowing the title of his famous story for my article, but I couldn’t resist because it fits so well. Since I began writing here, I’ve been wanting to talk about the Skylark sounding rocket, the first British rocket capable of reaching space (whether you go by the US Air Force and NASA definition of space beginning at 50 miles, or accept the Federation Aeronautique Internationale definition, based on the work of Theodore von Karman, of 100 kilometres/62 miles).


A different kind of Skylark reaching for the stars!

Hatching the Skylark

Sounding rockets, which can carry payloads into space, but do not have enough thrust to put them into orbit, are often neglected when discussing the Space Race. But they are perhaps more important (and certainly more often launched!) than satellites.

These suborbital rockets were still a relatively new technology a decade ago, and even by the end of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) only a handful of countries (including Australia, I’m proud to say) had developed a national sounding rocket capability. First announced in 1955, the Skylark sounding rocket was developed for the IGY by the UK Ministry of Defence’s Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), in collaboration with the Royal Society’s Gassiot Committee, which focuses on meteorology and upper atmosphere research.


Diagram showing the original design for the Skylark rocket. The design has been evolving ever since, improving the capabilities of the vehicle

The new rocket was originally called the Gassiot High Altitude Vehicle, which is a bit of a mouthful, and the story is that, in 1956, one of the engineers working on the rocket’s design at the RAE decided that he would like to see it named “Skylark”. I don't know if he was a fan of Doc Smith's work, but a class of UK rocket motors is named after British birds, so that was more likely his inspiration for the name. In any case, he apparently put up a paper to his superiors suggesting that the rocket should be renamed to something that would simpler and more memorable for public relations and offered a list of alternatives, none of which were particularly appealing except, very deliberately, Skylark. The plan worked, and the name Skylark was approved for the rocket.

Flying to Australia

Sounding rockets, like test missiles, need a lot of empty land on which to fall back to Earth; Woomera was the obvious place for Britain’s new scientific rocket to be launched. Skylark components and payloads are made in the UK and then flown to Australia by transport planes. These include a special dedicated “explosives” transport plane that carries the rocket engines to Australia fully-loaded with their solid propellant. The rocket motors are delivered directly to Woomera, while the payload parts arrive at the Weapons Research Establishment’s (WRE) Salisbury facility, near Adelaide (see June entry), where they are assembled by WRE technicians and British payload specialists and then transported to Woomera to be fitted to the launch rocket.


A Skylark instrument bay and nosecone being tested in a workshop at the WRE's facility in Salisbury, South Australia

Because of its slow acceleration, the Skylark needs a very long launch rail to ensure its stability in flight and this massive tower dominates Range E at Woomera, where the sounding rocket launches take place. It’s 80 feet tall and weighs 35 tons, so transporting it to Australia was quite a task. Interestingly, because of steel shortages in Britain when the tower was being designed, it’s actually made out of war surplus Bailey bridge segments!


View of Range E at Woomera where sounding rockets are launched. The massive Skylark launch tower dwarfs everything around it. Australia's first sounding rocket, Long Tom, also used this launcher initially

Skylark Acsending


An unusual philatelic cover from Uncle Ernie's collection marking a Skylark launch in 1958 – and British nuclear tests at the Maralinga range, adjacent to Woomera

The first Skylark launch took place in February 1957, before the official start of the IGY in July that year, with the first three flights being performance-proving flights. On its fourth flight, in November 1957, the Skylark showed that it could reach the space environment, soaring to an altitude of 79.5 miles. This flight was also the first to carry a suite of scientific instruments provided by British universities, including two experiments that have since been flown on many Skylarks: a ‘grenade’ experiment and a ‘window’ experiment. In the grenade experiments, grenades are ejected from the rocket during its flight and the explosions detected on the ground by microphones and flash detectors. From these measurements, temperatures and wind velocities at different altitudes can be determined. In the ‘window’ experiment, strips of radar chaff (also known as ‘window’) made from aluminium are ejected into the atmosphere to be tracked by radar, which provides velocity measurements of upper atmosphere winds.


I love this timelapse photo of a Skylark night launch, taken in 1958. SL04, the first Skylark to reach space, was also launched at night, although it seems that no-one thought to take a picture of that historic launch!

Of course, since 1957, the number and range of scientific experiments being flown on Skylarks has steadily increased, helping to provide a new understanding of the conditions in the upper atmosphere and the fringes of space. When the first experiment releasing sodium vapour into the atmosphere to study atmospheric density and winds flew in late 1958, people in areas hundreds of miles from Woomera thought that the strange sight of a reddish-yellow cloud might be associated with Sputnik III, the massive Soviet satellite that was in orbit at the time!


Clouds over South Australia, taken from above by a Skylark rocket in 1962, as part of a meteorological experiment

Skylark Improving

The original design of the Skylark rocket used a single Raven solid rocket motor. To increase its altitude and payload carrying capacity, different variants of the Raven have been used, and in 1960 the Skylark became a two-stage launcher, with the use of a Cuckoo motor for an additional boost on some flights. There have also been experiments with a parachute system, to try to recover some instruments or photographic plates intact, but so far these have not been very successful.


A Skylark rocket enhanced with a Cuckoo boost motor soaring into the stratosphere

Until very recently all Skylark flights were unstabilised, but just last year there were two experimental flights using Sun sensors to provide stabilisation. The development of this technique will make the Skylark more suitable for taking astronomical observations at high altitude, above the thickness of the atmosphere, and I’ve heard that there are plans for small X-ray and Ultra-violet telescopes and other astronomy payloads to be flown on future launches.

A Century of Skylarks


The Research Vehicles Group and others involved with Skylark at Woomera celebrate the 100th Skylark launch

At the end of September the Skylark notched up its 100th flight, which is perhaps not surprising as the launch rate has been steadily increasing. There were 19 flights in both 1963 and 64, and this year looks as if it will be even busier. The WRE has a section that manages the Skylark launches – the Research Vehicles Group: because of the high rate of firings and the time it takes to prepare each rocket for launch, there are four Skylark launch teams within the Group, each one dedicated to a specific Skylark flight.


Technicians from a WRE Skylark launch team preparing a rocket for firing in 1961

1964 also saw another new step for the Skylark, with two launches taking place for the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) at Italy’s Salto di Quirra Range on Sardinia. This range was established in 1956 under the management of Luigi Broglio, who I mentioned last month as the mastermind behind Italy’s first satellite (see December entry). This Range is providing facilities to ESRO until its own sounding rocket facility near Kiruna in Sweden is completed.

Skylark looks set to become the workhorse of the European sounding rocket program, just as it is for Britain. NASA has even launched Skylarks out of Woomera: as part of a co-operative Ultra-violet astronomy programme with Australia, four ‘NASA’ Skylarks were launched at Woomera in 1961

Skylark in Orbit

Skylark rockets have also played a role in Britain’s Ariel satellite programme, helping to test out instrumentation and experiments before they were included in the satellites. Like Canada , Britain launched its first satellite, Ariel 1, in 1962 (see September entry), with help from the United States, which provided the satellite body in which the British experiments were installed, as well as the launch. In March last year, Ariel 2 was launched for Britain by NASA. In advance of both these flights, so much of the equipment was checked out beforehand on Skylark flights that I’ve heard that some wit described the satellites as “Skylark in orbit”!

Ariel 1

Britain's Ariel 1 and 2 satellites are almost identical. The scientific instruments on both were tested out on Skylark flights before being launched into space

It's been exciting to watch the progress of the Skylark programme and I expect that this versatile sounding rocket will be operational for many years to come. Australia has it's own sounding rocket program that has been designed to complement the Skylark research in many ways. I'll have to devote an article to it in the not too distant future

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Science / Space Race

[December 21, 1964] Italy Joins the Space Race! (San Marco 1 and Explorer 26)

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by Kaye Dee

The biggest news in space this month is that Italy has joined the Space Race, with the launch of its first satellite San Marco 1. Named in honour of Saint Mark the Evangelist, the patron saint of Venice and protector of Venetian sailors, the San Marco launch is the first mission in a programme that began in 1961.

The Italian von Braun

The San Marco satellite programme is the brainchild of Luigo Broglio, an Italian military officer and aerospace engineer who’s already earned himself the nickname “the Italian von Braun”. Broglio established the Salto di Quirra missile test range on Sardinia in 1956, which is now also being used to launch British Skylark rockets (like those being used for upper atmosphere research at Woomera) for the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO). ESRO is the sister program to ELDO (see June entry), developing the satellites that will fly on ELDO’s Europa rockets. Convinced by Italian physicist Prof. Edoardo Amaldi (a co-founder of ESRO) that Italy should have its own space program, Broglio persuaded the Italian Prime Minister in early 1961 that Italy should develop a national satellite program and its own satellite launching facility.


Luigi Broglio was both an officer in the Italian Air Force and the Dean of Aerospace Engineering at La Sapienza University

As it happened, the international Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) was meeting in Florence in April that year, so Broglio took the opportunity of discussing with NASA Italy’s participation in the same program that has already enabled Canada and Britain to launch their satellites on NASA rockets (see September entry)

San Marco Approved

The Italian Government approved the San Marco programme in October 1961 with the task of building the San Marco satellites allocated to the Commissione per le Ricerche Spaziali (CRS), or Commission for Space Research. This group of distinguished Italian scientists and engineers was initially formed by Amaldi and Broglio within the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), the Italian National Research Council, to canvass support for an Italian space programme.

A formal Memorandum of Understanding between the CRS (represented by Broglio) and NASA (represented by Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden) was signed on 31 May 1962. Under this MOU, the United States agreed to provide Scout rockets to Italy and train the Italian launch crew, while Italy developed its satellites and built a national launch facility. NASA also agreed to provide two sub-orbital test flights from its Wallops island launch facility, using Shotput sounding rockets, so that the Italian launch crew could gain experience in launch procedures and the CRS could test instruments for the first satellite. These two test flights took place in 1963.


A philatelic cover issued to mark the first of the two San Marco Shotput test flights in 1963

Italy decided that its national launch facility would be a modified mobile oil rig platform, that would be towed to an equatorial location off the coast of Kenya. This would enable the Scout rockets to be fired to the east and take advantage of the boost provided by the Earth’s rotation. The Italian oil company Eni was contracted to provide the mobile launch platform, but the construction has been delayed and the offshore facility will not be ready until sometime next year.

Liftoff for San Marco 1

Because of the delays with the launch platform development, San Marco 1 (also known as San Marco A) was fired from Wallops Island as a training exercise for the Italian launch crew ahead of future launches in the Indian Ocean, with the successful launch taking place on 15 December (16 December here in Australia).


San Marco 1 on the launchpad. As a joint US-Italian project, the Scout carries the legends "United States" and "Italia"

The battery-powered satellite sat directly on top of the Scout’s fourth stage, with both the rocket motor and satellite contained within the fairing. The spherical satellite has a total mass of 254 lbs. and a diameter of 26 in. Four antennas are spaced around the equator of the satellite, which is painted longitudinally in black and white for thermal control.


Exterior view of San Marco 1, showing its thermal-regulation colour scheme

The main purpose of the San Marco programme is to conduct ionospheric research. However, being essentially a test satellite, San Marco 1 is only carrying a few experiments. Its major scientific instrument is the “Broglio scale”, which is designed to measure the density of the atmosphere at very high altitudes, although lower than the typical orbital altitudes used by other satellites. The CRS hopes that San Marco 1 and future missions will help to create a more precise model of the upper atmosphere in the low orbit environment. This should improve the re-entry predictions for both spacecraft and missiles. San Marco 1’s other main instrument is a radio transmitter, intended to study ionospheric effects on long-range radio communication. Undoubtedly, the future satellites in the series will be more sophisticated.


Cutaway view of San Marco 1

An interesting aspect of San Marco 1’s launch is that, although it took place in the US, the launch was handled by a NASA-trained Italian launch crew. This places Italy in a unique situation: unlike Canada and Britain, which provided their first satellites to NASA for launch on American rockets by American personnel, Italy effectively launched its own satellite. In fact, Italy now considers itself the third country in the world to operate its own satellite, after the Soviet Union and the United States.


Thanks to Uncle Ernie the stamp collector, here is one of the new launch covers for San Marco 1, highlighting its unique status as an Italian-launched satellite

San Marco 2 is scheduled to launch next year, and I’ll look forward to seeing Italy launch that satellite from its new national facility, which should be in place in Kenya by then.

Another Explorer in Orbit

As I write this, I’m delighted to report that another Explorer satellite has just been confirmed as safely in orbit! NASA is certainly committed to this programme, with such a regular series of satellites designed for understanding the space environment surrounding the Earth (see September entry). Explorer 26 is the latest probe in the series, designed to measure the Earth’s magnetic field and trapped high energy particles within it.


Explorer 26 is similar in design to its predecessors in the Energetic Particle Explorer series.

Explorer 26, also known as Energetic Particle Explorer (EPE)-D and S-3C, is a spin-stabilised, solar-cell powered satellite, weighing 101 lbs and carrying five experiments. Four of these instruments — the Solid-State Electron Detector, Omnidirectional and Unidirectional Electron and Proton Fluxes, Fluxgate Magnetometers and Proton-Electron Scintillation Detector — are designed for geomagnetic and high energy particle studies. The fifth experiment, the Solar Cell Damage experiment, is designed to quantify the degradation in solar cell performance due to radiation and evaluate the effectiveness of glass shields at preventing this degradation. I find this experiment particularly interesting, as solar cells are becoming increasingly used on satellites to provide power supplies that will last much longer than batteries.

The Energetic Particle Explorer series began in 1961 with Explorer 12 (EPE-A), launched in August 1961. All the satellites in the series so far have had the same basic design, but with progressively heavier instrumentation weight. They have all been launched from Cape Canaveral by Thor Delta vehicles.

Dreams for Down Under

I'm envious that Italy has been able to get its own space programme underway, while we here in Australia seem to have no immediate prospect of launching a national satellite. But I shouldn't complain too much: 1964 has been a very exciting year for space activities Down Under, with the ELDO programme finally underway. I’m looking forward to even more significant space achievements in 1965!


NASA characterised the first phase of the San Marco program as a joint US-Italian project. Both flags were flown at Wallops Island during the Shotput test and the San Marco 1 launch

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Science / Space Race

[November 23, 1964] Let’s Go Exploring! (NASA’s latest Explorer satellites)

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by Kaye Dee

I’ve written before about how much I love satellite spotting and this month has given me three new ‘man-made moons’ to watch out for, with the latest additions to NASA’s Explorer scientific satellite program. Each of the new Explorer satellites is very different and their research tasks are all of real interest to me, as I’m concentrating on space physics for my Masters degree. But before I talk about them, I’m excited to share the most recent news from Woomera.

A Textbook Test Flight

On October 20, the second test flight of the Blue Streak stage for ELDO’s Europa launch vehicle took place. After the problems that occurred towards the end of the first test flight, which led to the rocket’s flight falling short of its intended landing area (see June entry), this latest launch was a complete success, demonstrating that the fuel sloshing issue has been solved. The engines fired for the 149.1 seconds, fractionally over their anticipated performance, and the Blue Streak impacted almost 1,000 miles down range. Everyone at the WRE is really pleased (and relieved) with this textbook test flight, as it means that the Europa development program can now keep moving forward. Can’t wait for the next test flight!


Blue Streak F-2 prepares to blast off at Woomera’s Launch Area 6.

But what has really captured my attention this month are the new missions in NASA’s Explorer program (which I last covered on September 6 and October 16). This series of scientific satellites continues to study the near space environment around the Earth and the nature of the Sun, as well as contributing to astronomy and space physics. 

Taking a Hit for Science

Explorer 23 was launched on 6 November, using a Scout rocket fired from NASA’s Wallops Island facility in Virginia, from which many satellites in the Explorer series have been launched. Also called S-55C, Explorer 23 is the third in a series of micrometeoroid research satellites. Explorer 13 (launched in August 1961) was the first in the series. It was also known as S-55A, following the failure of its predecessor, the original S-55 satellite (the S standing for Science). Explorer 16 (S-55B) was launched in December 1962. The purpose of the S-55 series is to gather data on the micrometeoroid environment in Earth orbit, so that an accurate estimate of the probability of spacecraft being struck and penetrated by micrometeoroids (very tiny pieces of rocks and dust from space) can be determined.


Explorer 13 was the first micrometeoroid research satellite to take a hit for science.

Each of the S-55 spacecraft is about 24 inches in diameter and 92 inches long, built around the burned out fourth stage of the Scout launch vehicle, which forms part of the orbiting satellite. Explorer 23 carries stainless steel pressurized-cell penetration detectors and impact detectors, to acquire data on the size, number, distribution, and momentum of dust particles in the near-earth environment. Its cadmium sulphide cell detectors were, unfortunately, damaged on lift-off and will not be providing any data. Explorer 23 is also designed to provide data on the effects of the space environment on the operation of capacitor penetration detectors and solar-cell power supplies.


(left) An illustration of Explorer 23 in orbit, showing its modified design compared to its predecessors. (right) Part of the backup Explorer 23 satellite.

Two Satellites for the Price of One Launch

November 21 saw the Explorer 24 and 25 satellites launched together on a Scout vehicle fired from Vandenberg Air Force base in California, which will put the satellites in a near-polar orbit. These two Explorers have been launched as part of the research program for the International Quiet Sun Years (IQSY). Just as the International Geophysical Year took place in 1957-58, during a period when solar activity was at its height, the IQSY is focusing on the Sun in the least active phase of the solar cycle, across 1964-65. This makes it possible to compare the data from Explorer 24 and 25 with earlier observations made from orbit when the Sun was more active. Having the satellites in dual orbits also makes it possible to compare the atmospheric density data gathered by Explorer 24 directly with the radiation data from Explorer 25.


A stamp from East Germany highlighting satellite-based research into the Van Allen radiation belts and other aspects of the near-space environment during the International Quiet Sun Years.

Explorer 24: A Balloon in Orbit

Although the two satellites work in conjunction with one another, they couldn’t be more different! Explorer 24 is a 12-foot diameter balloon made of alternating layers of aluminium foil and plastic film. It’s covered all over with 2-inch white dots that provide thermal control. Deflated and packaged in a small container, the balloon was packed on top of the Explorer 25 satellite for their joint launch and then inflated in orbit. A timer activated valves that inflated the balloon using compressed nitrogen. This process took about 30 minutes, after which the satellite was pushed away from the carrier rocket by a spring.


Explorer 24 hitched a ride to orbit on top of Explorer 25, before being inflated in space.

Explorer 24 is identical to the previously launched balloon satellites Explorer 9 (launched in February 1961) and 19 (launched in December 1963). Explorer 19 was also known as AD-A (for Air Density) and Explorer 24 is also designated as AD-B.  All three of the balloon satellites have been designed to provide data on atmospheric density near the perigee (lowest point) of their orbit, through a series of sequential observations as they move across the sky.

Like its predecessors, Explorer 24 will be tracked both visually and by radio, as it carries a 136-MHz tracking beacon. Explorer 19’s tracking beacon failed while it was in orbit, and so it could only be tracked visually by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s network of Baker-Nunn telescope cameras. There is one of these stations at Woomera and my former computing colleagues at the WRE’s Satellite Centre in Salisbury, South Australia, assisted with converting its observations into the orbital calculations that the scientific researchers needed. 

Explorer 25: Studying the Ionosphere

Explorer 25’s primary mission is to investigate the Ionosphere, make measurements of the influx of energetic particles into the Earth’s atmosphere, studying atmospheric heating, as well as the Earth’s magnetic field. It will be magnetically stabilised in orbit through the use of a magnet and a magnetic damping rod and carries a magnetometer to measure its alignment with the Earth’s magnetic field. One of its particularly interesting tasks will be to study and compare the artificial radiation belt created by the Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear explosion and the natural Van Allen radiation belts.

Explorer 25 is also known as Injun 4 and Ionosphere Explorer B (IE-B). It is the latest satellites in the Injun series, which have been developed at the University of Iowa under Professor James Van Allen, after whom the Van Allen radiation belts are named. Van Allen himself gave these satellites the name Injun after the character Injun Joe in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The first three Injun satellites were only qualified success and were not actually part of the Explorer program. However, as IE-B, Injun 4/ Explorer 25 extends the research being carried by Explorer 20, that I wrote about in September.


James Van Allen (centre) with a replica of the Explorer 1 satellite, for which he provided the scientific instruments that contributed to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts. With him are William Pickering (left), the Director of the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and (right) Wernher von Braun, whose team developed the Juno rocket that launched Explorer 1.

Explorer 25 is roughly spherical and almost 24 inches in diameter. It has 50 flat surfaces: 30 of them are carrying solar cells that are used to recharge the batteries that power the satellite. The satellite is also equipped with a tape recorder and analogue-to-digital converters, so that it can send digital data directly to a ground station at the University of Iowa.

Science Streaks Across the Sky

It is simply marvelous how rapidly we are expanding our knowledge of the universe above. Just seven years ago, there hadn't been a single Explorer; now there are twenty five! I’m looking forward to spotting all these science gatherers in the evening sky over the coming weeks — and eventually telling you what they find up there!

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Science / Space Race

[October 6, 1964] Up, Up and Away! Supersonic Aircraft Test Flights

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by Kaye Dee

I’m fascinated by supersonic aircraft design, so the end of September gave me plenty to get excited about with the first test flights of some of the West’s most advanced military aircraft. On September 21 in the US, the North American Aviation XB-70 Valkyrie flew for the first time. This prototype has to be one of the most gorgeous aircraft ever designed: with its delta wing and needle nose, it looks like it has flown off the cover of a science fiction magazine! It reminds me a lot of the prototype designs for the Anglo-French Concorde on which the British aircraft industry is pinning its hopes for future aviation industry dominance.


A model of the Concorde prototype design at the Farnborough Airshow in 1962. Delta wings are clearly in fashion for supersonic aircraft

XB-70: Floating on Air

The Valkyrie was designed to be a high-altitude Mach 3 strategic bomber, although the operational B-70 version was cancelled back in 1961 and the aircraft will now be used to test new supersonic aviation technologies. One of the heaviest aircraft in the world, according to Flight magazine, the XB-70 is constructed mostly of stainless steel, sandwiched honeycomb panels, and titanium. Like the Concorde, the Valkyrie boasts a droop-snoot, or lowerable nose, that allows the pilots to view the ground during its nose-high take-off and landing.


The final design drawing for the B-70 bomber, for which the Valkyrie was intended to be the prototype

What I find particularly interesting about the XB-70 is that it uses the technique of compression lift to improve the overall lift of the aircraft and increase its directional stability at supersonic speeds. Only discovered in the 1950s, the compression lift effect is generated by a shock wave that is created when air strikes the sharp leading edge of the central engine air intake splitter plate below the wing, behind which are six General Electric YJ93-GE-3 turbojet engines. This effect is strengthened by the downward folding wingtips that help to trap the shock wave under the wings. Yes, the XB-70 actually has hinged wingtips that tilt down as far as 65 degrees!


The XB-70 Valkyrie ready for its first test flight. Note the hinged wingtips are in the horizontal position for take-off

The Valkyrie’s maiden test flight saw it hop between the manufacturing facility at Palmdale, in California, and Edwards Air Force Base. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though, as one engine had to be shut down shortly after take-off and an undercarriage malfunction warning meant that the flight was flown with the undercarriage down as a precaution. This limited the flight to a speed of 390 mph, which was about half of what had been planned and only a fraction of the XB-70’s 2,000mph maximum speed. Additionally, during landing the rear wheels of the port side main gear locked, causing two tyres to rupture and start a fire. Despite these teething problems I’m looking forward to future test flights of this amazing aircraft—the next one is due in a couple of weeks, so maybe I’ll write more about it next month.


As the Valkyrie lifts off we get a good view of the air intake splitter that generates the shockwave for the compression lift effect. Its six engines are housed behind the air intake

TSR-2: A Cross Between a Bomber and a Missile

Oddly enough, while Britain’s latest RAF prototype is also delta-winged and powered by two Olympus 320 engines, similar to those that will be used on the Concorde, it resembles the Concorde far less than the Valkyrie, though it still looks sleek and deadly! The TSR-2—the name is derived from its role as a “tactical strike and reconnaissance” bomber— took to the skies for a 15-minute test flight on September 27 at the Ministry of Aviation's Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down. The test flight looked to be quite successful, though I’ve heard on the WRE grapevine that the aircraft actually had many problems and was only marginally ready for a test flight.


TSR-2 undergoing an engine test before its first flight. The aircraft was painted 'anti-flash white' to reflect some of the thermal radiation from a nuclear explosion and protect it and the crew

Developed by the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC), the TSR-2 is designed to make its attack run at ground-level, under the control of terrain-following radar. It’s a ‘short take-off and landing’ vehicle that can carry conventional or nuclear weapons and is capable of flying above Mach 2 at 40,000 ft or around Mach 1 during low-level bombing runs. This versatility places the aircraft at the intersection of the capabilities of the manned bomber and the long-range missile. The TSR-2 is similar to the Valkyrie in that it has downturned wingtips, fixed at an angle of 30 degrees, to enhance its stability in high speed flight. However, as its test flight showed, those wing tips generate trailing white vortices, which might make the TSR-2 less than inconspicuous during an attack run!


On a ground attack run, the TSR-2 will be advertising its position with its smoking exhaust and white wing vortices

The TSR-2’s development has been fraught with controversy and more than once threatened with cancellation. Some commentators are calling this test flight the current British Government’s last political act before the upcoming elections in Britain, and I guess only the future will tell whether the TSR-2 goes on to become operational, or whether the next Government will finally cancel the plane and buy a replacement from America instead.


The YF-12A at Edwards Air Force Base before its first public test flight

YF-12A: Fast, Powerful and Just a Bit Mysterious

Another US Air Force prototype has been the most recent test flight to catch my attention, with the Lockheed YF-12A unveiled to the world at a press conference at Edwards Air Force Base on September 30. Claimed to be "the world's fastest military aircraft" (though perhaps the XB-70 would beg to differ), the YF-12A is a prototype interceptor capable of reaching 2,000 miles per hour and an altitude of over 80,000 feet. With its long, sleek fuselage and huge engine nacelles mounted on either side of the body (carrying the two Pratt & Whitney J58 turbojets that power it), the YF-12A is another design that looks like something out of a science fiction film, but it certainly conveys an impression of high speed and I suspect it will be setting new speed and altitude records before too long.


The pressure suits worn by the YF-12A crew don't look much different from an astronaut's spacesuit. It really helps to show how high this bird can fly!

Made mostly of titanium, to handle the heat generated by its high speeds, the YF-12 is painted dead black, to help radiate the heat from its skin. It carries a crew of two: a pilot and a fire control officer, to operate the air-to-air missile system, which includes a powerful radar and four Hughes AIM-47A Falcon air-to-air missiles carried in chine bays within the fuselage. Unlike the Valkyrie and the TSR-2, it uses a skid landing system, rather than a more conventional undercarriage. There isn’t a lot of detail available yet about the YF-12A, and rumour has it that it is the ‘public version’ of an aircraft that is still top secret, but I certainly hope to see more of it in the future.


(Top) A view of the YF-12A showing the twin crew positions (Bottom) The AIM-47 air-to-air missile that forms the YF-12's armament

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Science / Space Race

[September 6, 1964] New Stars in the Sky (Explorer 20, Nimbus, and OGO-1)

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by Kaye Dee

I love watching satellites — and it seems like every week now there are new stars in the sky as more satellites are launched to help us learn more about outer space and the Earth itself. Just in the past two weeks, we’ve seen three new satellites dedicated to discovering more about the Earth’s atmosphere and the way it works.

Explorer-XX: Topside Down

The first of the recent launches was Explorer-XX, finally orbited on 25 August from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California after problems with its Scout X-4 booster that took many months to resolve. Explorer-XX has a string of aliases: it’s also known as Ionosphere Explorer IE-A, Ionosphere 2, Science S-48, Topside-sounder, TOPSI and Beacon Explorer BE-A! Underneath all those monikers, it’s the latest in the series of scientific research satellites that began with America’s first satellite, Explorer-I, back in 1958.


Explorer-XX under construction

Explorer-XX’s main purpose is to act as a topside sounder, which means that it takes measurements of the ion concentration within the ionosphere from orbit above it. This data can then be compared with measurements taken from the ground. Since the ionosphere is what makes global radio communications possible, understanding its composition and characteristics is important to scientific and defence research, as well as international radio telecommunications operators.

Unlike some satellites, Explorer-XX doesn’t have an onboard tape recorder, so it can only transmit data when it’s in range of a ground station. One of those ground stations happens to be just outside the Woomera Rocket Range, at NASA’s Deep Space Instrumentation Facility at Island Lagoon. Island Lagoon is actually a dry salt-lake (and not a bad picnic spot for a nice Sunday outing from Woomera Village), and its shores proved to be an ideal location for NASA’s first deep space tracking station outside America. Last year, the Minitrack radio-interferometry tracking system that was originally installed on Woomera’s Range G to support satellite tracking during the International Geophysical Year, was moved to the Island Lagoon site. Minitrack is part of NASA’s Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition Network and it can receive the Explorer-XX data. Some of the sounding rocket work out at Woomera also involves taking ionospheric soundings for defence and civilian scientific research, so I’m sure my colleagues at WRE will soon be incorporating the data from Explorer-XX into their research as well.


NASA's Minitrack station at Island Lagoon, near Woomera – one of the data receiving stations for Explorer-XX

Following in Canada's Footsteps

Explorer-XX is only the second topside sounder ever launched. The first was Alouette-1, Canada’s first satellite, which went into orbit almost exactly two years ago and is still in operation. Alouette-1, by the way, was part of a program in which the United States generously offered to launch satellites for other countries. Great Britain and Canada have already had their first satellites launched this way, and Italy will soon have a satellite launched by NASA as well. Australia had an invitation to take part in this project, too, but while I was working for the WRE, I heard that our government had rejected the offer on the basis that the country couldn’t afford it — which is pretty short-sighted thinking, if you ask me!

Canadian scientists celebrating the launch of their first satellite-Alouette-1. Wish there was a picture of Australian scientists doing the same.

Nimbus-1: Second-Generation Weather Satellite

Even if the Australian Government lacked the vision to take up America’s offer of a satellite launch, it is interested in taking advantage of the practical ways in which satellite can benefit the country. Last month, I mentioned Australia’s intention to be part of the INTELSAT communications satellite consortium, and our Bureau of Meteorology is fast becoming a major user of weather satellites. Its ground station was one of 47 outside the United States to receive live weather images broadcast directly from space from the TIROS-8 weather satellite launched last December. Some test transmissions were received from TIROS-8 on Christmas Day, just a few days after its launch, and images have been regularly received since January 7 this year.

Now, the first of a new weather type of weather satellite is in orbit, from which Australia is also receiving data. Nimbus-1 (aka Nimbus-A) was launched from Vandenberg just a few days after Explorer-XX, on August 28. It’s now in polar orbit, more eccentric than desired because of a short second-stage burn, but all its instruments are functioning and ground stations are receiving regular data.


Some people think Nimbus-1 looks like a butterfly, though it reminds me of an ocean buoy with solar panels attached either side!

Like TIROS-8, Nimbus-1 can transmit live cloud images from orbit using the Automatic Picture Transmission instrument. This television system is designed to photograph an area of 800 miles square, which is the largest field of view to date. The pictures are transmitted using a slow-scan system of four lines per second, similar to the way radio photographs are sent. Each ground station is designed to receive three pictures per orbit. Nimbus can also store data on board and retransmit it later if it is not in range of a ground station. But what makes Nimbus-1 different from TIROS-8 is that its High-Resolution Infra-red Radiometer enables it to take images at night and measure the night-time radiative temperature of cloud tops and the Earth’s surface, so that data is being acquired all day, every day.


Here's a diagram of Nimbus-1 showing its main components and instruments.

On its first day in orbit, Nimbus took a picture of Hurricane Cleo as it travelled north along the US east coast after devastating parts of the Caribbean and Florida. This really demonstrates that with the data and images from the TIROS and Nimbus satellites, the Bureau of Meteorology will now be able to reliably track the development of conditions over the Pacific, Southern and Indian Oceans that determine the weather across different parts of Australia. The poet Dorothea Mackellar didn’t call Australia the “land of droughts and flooding rains” for nothing, but weather satellites will undoubtedly improve the forecasters’ abilities to see when these weather conditions are coming!


Hurricane Cleo imaged by Nimbus-1. Its strike on Florida delayed the launch of the Gemini-2 unmanned test flight.

Orbiting Geophysical Observatory-1: A New Design Paradigm

Just two days ago, 5 September (Australia time), NASA’s third recent satellite was launched. This time it was the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, or OGO-1, the first of a series of satellites that is intended to study the atmosphere, magnetosphere and the space environment between the Earth and the Moon, making sure that it will be safe for the Apollo astronauts to traverse this region of space.


This philatelic cover marking the launch of OGO-1 highlights its role in manned spaceflight safety.

OGO-1 is the largest and most complex scientific satellite that NASA has launched to date. With the OGO series, NASA is taking a new approach to satellite design. Until now, each satellite has been designed to accommodate the instruments and experiments that it would carry. However, with OGO, the satellite design is fixed and the experiments are tailored to fit the satellite. Each satellite will carry about 20 experiments.


Diagram of the universal OGO bus that will be used for all the satellites in the series.

OGO-1 has been placed into a highly elliptical orbit with an apogee of almost 93,000 miles, and the plan is for future OGO missions to alternate between this type of orbit and low polar obits. At 31° inclination (its angle with respect to the equator), the OGO series needs additional tracking stations to supplement NASA’s STADAN network. One of these support stations will be established next year in Darwin, in the Northern Territory, as an outstation of the STADAN station at Carnarvon. This facility is part of the NASA Carnarvon tracking station that I mentioned in my last article, which is a prime tracking station for the upcoming Gemini missions.

Unfortunately, one of OGO-1's long booms and one of its short booms did not properly deploy. As a result the satellite used up most of its stablisation-thruster fuel attempting to lock the satellite into its Earth-stabilised orbit. For the moment, scientists have decided not to turn on any of OGO-1's instruments while they work out ways to operate it as a spin-stablised satellite. Let's hope they succeed as this satellite and its successors promise a wealth of new data on the near-space environment.


OGO-1's deployment from its folded launch configuration to its operational configuration is rather complex. I guess it's not surprising that this new satellite has had some problems in properly unfolding!

It’s exciting to see so many new space missions occurring and knowing that, through the tracking stations around the country (managed by the WRE on NASA’s behalf and operated by local engineers and technicians) Australia is playing its part in the exploration and peaceful use of outer space. I can scarcely wait to see what goes up next month!




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Science / Space Race

[August 29,1964] Coming to You Live via Satellite

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by Kaye Dee

Back in early January 1955, I was incredibly lucky to hear space promoter and science fiction writer Mr. Arthur C Clarke give a talk in Sydney about the future prospects of space activities. One of the things he discussed was the way in which satellites in Earth orbit could revolutionise communications around the world, allowing us to make phone calls or transmit television and radio virtually instantaneously from country to country. He first wrote about his ideas for global satellite communications back in 1945, especially in an article in the British radio enthusiasts’ magazine “Wireless World”. Mr. Clarke explained that three satellites, placed equidistantly around a very particular orbit, would be able to provide radio and television coverage across the world by relaying signals sent from ground stations in each country.

The first two pages of Mr. Clarke's seminal article on communications satellites. As a science fiction author, I guess he couldn't resist the title.

The special orbit that Mr. Clarke discussed is now called “geostationary orbit”: it’s 24,000 miles above the equator. Satellites in this orbit are travelling at the same speed as which the Earth rotates, and this means that they appear to be stationary above one spot on the Earth’s surface, so that they can act as a stable relay platform for radio and television signals.

From Imagination to Reality

Well now Mr. Clarke’s idea is in the process of becoming reality! Since 1962, Telstar, Relay and the Syncom 1 and 2 satellites have all transmitted telephone and television between the United States and Europe. But none of these satellites was in geostationary orbit and none of them was in a suitable position to transmit to the Southern Hemisphere. On August 19, Syncom 3, the latest in the series, was launched —and it is going to become the world’s first geostationary communications satellite! Right now, it’s manoeuvring from its initial elliptical orbit up into its final geostationary orbit, which it is due to reach by late September — just in time to broadcast the Tokyo Olympic Games to you in the Northern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, we here Down Under will miss out again this time, but hopefully not for too much longer….


The Syncom 3 geostationary satellite. Soon it will be bringing you the Tokyo Olympics live – if you live in the Northern Hemisphere

Introducing INTELSAT

Just a few days ago, on August 24, Australia formally became a founding member of the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, which is going to be known as INTELSAT for short. INTELSAT is a revolutionary idea: an intergovernmental consortium that will develop, own and manage a global geostationary satellite communications network to provide international broadcast services. Member nations will contribute to the cost of establishing, operating and maintaining the satellite system, but they’ll get a return for that investment through the revenue generated from satellite usage fees. The really great aspect of INTELSAT is that its services will be open to any nation to use and everyone will pay the same rates. This is an important policy because it means that Third World countries will be able to afford to have access to satellite communications and be connected to the world.

In my May item on rocket mail, I mentioned how important satellite communications could be to Australia. The big difference is that it will really reduce our isolation from the rest of the world. Right now, if something major happens overseas, it’s going to be two or three days at least before we can see any film footage about it on television or in the newsreels. With satellites, we could see things the same day they happen! Satellites will also make it easier for us to communicate within Australia — we’ve got a very big country with a very small population, and there are a lot of parts of the Australia where it’s difficult or just too expensive to provide telephone connections and television service.

A Presidential Proposal

The late President Kennedy first proposed the idea that has become INTELSAT in a speech to the United Nations in 1961.


When President Kennedy addressed the United Nations in September 1961, he proposed a global satellite communications system – and international research into weather control.

He even signed the Communications Satellite Act in 1962 to help bring it into being. That Act created the Communications Satellite Corporation, which calls itself COMSAT, as a private corporation to represent the United States in the international governance for INTELSAT, where most other countries are represented by their national telecommunications carriers: Australia, for example, will be represented by the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC), which has been our telecommunications agency since 1946. In addition to Australia, seven other countries have joined together to establish INTELSAT, and several more nations will become members soon, once their governments have enacted the necessary legislation.

Mrs O’Donahue Saves the Day!

INTELSAT plans to launch its first its first satellite in the first half of next year. Interestingly, I have heard that NASA is thinking of using INTELSAT satellites to provide communications links with its tracking stations around the world for the Apollo Moon programme. Actually, a recent incident at the NASA Carnarvon Tracking Station in Western Australia may have helped to give them the idea. Back in April, the Manned Space Flight Network station in Carnarvon suffered a major loss of communications just minutes before it was due to support the uncrewed Gemini 1 mission.


Gemini 1 launched successfully, but one of NASA's main tracking stations for the mission almost wasn't operational!

A lightning strike destroyed the telephone lines between Carnarvon and the town of Mullewa, which was the tracking station’s only connection to Perth and the overseas cables that carried data to and from America.

Luckily, an alternative route along an obsolete section of an old pole-top phone line was improvised. Information from NASA, relayed via Perth, was sent to along this line to the tiny settlement of Hamelin Pool. Mrs. O’Donahue, the postmistress there, then read the data figures down the temporary line to the Carnarvon telephone exchange for more than two hours! After this near-catastrophe, it’s no wonder NASA is looking for a more reliable means of communication with Carnarvon!


Here's a woman who never thought she'd be saving NASA's bacon: Mrs. O'Donahue, the postmistress at Hamlin Pool

If NASA goes ahead with its plan to use communications satellites for its Apollo communications network, I guess OTC will be establishing Australia’s first satellite ground station in Carnarvon, to keep the NASA station in contact with the United States. I can’t wait to see the first live satellite broadcasts to and from Australia.

And if I can call my Scottish cousins directly via satellite, that’s going to be a slice of science fiction become reality!

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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[July 28, 1964] Beatlemania Arrives Down Under!

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by Kaye Dee

I was so excited last month to talk about the first Blue Streak test launch that I completely forgot to mention another huge event occurring in Australia in June — the first tour Down Under by The Beatles! Yes, the Fab Four made a whirlwind visit to Australia and New Zealand last month and Beatlemania took the country by storm. Mr. Kenn Brodziak, the local promoter, made a lucky investment when he booked The Beatles last July to tour here, because they weren’t anywhere near as famous then as they are now. The newspapers are even saying that this tour has been the most successful event in Australian show business history.


The Beatles, arriving in Adelaide

The band arrived in Australia from Hong Kong on 11 June. An unscheduled touchdown in Darwin in the early hours of the morning was a taste of things to come, with 400 fans and journalists turning out to greet them. Unfortunately, when their plane arrived in Sydney it was bitterly cold and pouring rain (remember, it’s winter right now in this part of the world): in fact, the rain was so heavy that I could not even get out the door to go to the university — I’d have been soaked to the skin before I got to the bus stop! Oddly enough, there hasn’t been a drop of rain since and the long-range weather forecaster Mr. Lennox Walker is now predicting a drought over the next year.

To tell the truth, I didn’t mind being stuck at home because of the downpour, since it meant that Faye and I could watch the live broadcast of The Beatles arrival at Kingsford Smith Airport. There is no morning television in Australia, but both Channel 9 and Channel 7, our two commercial stations, had outside broadcast vans at the airport to provide a direct telecast. The pictures were even relayed live to Melbourne via the new co-axial cable. It shows how much everyone wants to see this amazing pop group that has taken the world by storm! There were thousands of fans at Sydney airport, braving the awful weather to catch a glimpse of the Fab Four as they struggled with umbrellas in the driving wind and rain.


The Fab Three and Jimmie Nichols braving the rain in Sydney

I say the Fab Four, but when the band arrived in Sydney, it was actually the Fab Three and a ring-in. Ringo Starr had been hospitalised with tonsillitis and pharyngitis before the start of the tour and his place was being taken by British drummer Jimmie Nicol. Ringo wasn’t able to join the tour until their first concert in Melbourne on 16 June. 


The Beatles with Jimmie Nichols

The Beatles travelled to Adelaide on a chartered plane for their first concert and when they arrived, more than 250,000 people lined the route between Adelaide Airport and the city. According to my WRE friends, this huge turnout was a ‘thank you’ to recognise that the promoter had added Adelaide to the tour schedule in response to a petition signed by 80,000 fans. I’ve read that this is the largest crowd to turn out for the Beatles so far, anywhere in the world! There’s certainly been nothing like it in Australia before: I even heard a commentator on the radio say that the eruption of Beatlemania in Australia has been more intense than anywhere else in the world so far! Mind you, not everyone has welcomed the Beatles so enthusiastically. In Brisbane, where their plane arrived at midnight to be greeted by 8,000 fans, a handful of anti-Beatles protesters threw eggs at the boys, which I think was a pretty stupid gesture.


There's Jimmie Nichol again

The Beatles played 20 shows in Australia — in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane and everywhere they were greeted by enormous crowds of screaming fans. There were a lot of reports in the press about ‘hundreds’ of fans in Adelaide and Melbourne being injured in the crowds, although Mr. Brian Epstein, The Beatles’ manager said in response to a question at the Canberra Press Club that he believes these reports to be greatly exaggerated. The police took them seriously in Sydney, though, and more than 600 officers of the Special B Squad were on duty around their concerts and other appearances in the city, to prevent major disturbances.

Faye and I managed to get tickets to one of the Sydney concerts (yes, I admit we’re fans, even if we might be a little bit older and less-inclined to scream than most of the audience). The tickets cost us 37 shillings ($3.70) each, which certainly wasn’t cheap, but it was well worth it to see the Fab Four performing live. It was just as well that we could see them, because I’ve got to say that we could hardly hear them over the screaming of the young fans. It was even more hysterical than at the Frank Sinatra concert I went to in Sydney in 1961! 


Screaming fans in Sydney

The concert itself was really entertaining. The first half of the show consisted of four Australian support acts, including Johnny Devlin (something of a favourite of mine) and Johnny Chester, who are well-known Australian singers. The local acts performed for about 45 minutes, then, after the interval, The Beatles came on for the second half of the concert. In half an hour, they gave us 10 songs from their first two albums, as well as Can’t Buy Me Love from their ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ album, which has just been released in Australia this month. Of course, I would have loved them to perform more songs, but, as they did two shows every night (one at 6pm and the second at 8:30pm), there wasn’t time for any more. I’m told that the concerts had the same format in each city and it must have been incredibly exhausting for all the performers.


On stage at Sydney

On 18 June, while The Beatles were in Sydney, Paul McCartney celebrated his 22nd birthday, with a party thrown by the Daily Mirror newspaper. After the Sydney concerts, the Beatles made an eight-day tour of New Zealand, where they performed 12 concerts in four cities. 10,000 fans saw them off from the airport in Sydney. There was an article in the newspaper saying that Johnny Devlin actually helped to solve major sound problems at the concerts in Wellington, which had annoyed John Lennon so much that he threatened to cancel the remainder of the tour. Fortunately that didn’t happen and the Fab Four were back in Australia at the end of June for their final concerts in Brisbane.


The Beatles, off to New Zealand

The Beatles tour has been a major event in Australia, with more media coverage than just about anything apart from a Royal Tour! I suspect that it’s going to have a big impact on music and teenage culture in this country. I also suspect that these talented young men from Britain are destined to go on to achieve great things in the world of music and entertainment.

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