Category Archives: Science / Space Race

Space, Computers, and other technology

Space Bunnies! (July 9, 1959)

July 9, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

It’s time for a Space Race update! I hear mixed cheers and groans. Well, it takes all kinds to make a column…

The Soviets have launched a rocket into space, apparently on a sub-orbital path using an equivalent to our Jupiter IRBM, with several living passengers. They are the dogs, Otvazhnaya and Sznezinka, as well as the first Space Bunny, Marfusa. The flight apparently took place on July 2, and all animals reportedly returned safely to the Earth. In fact, if the report be believed, this was Otvazhnaya's third such flight. Given the long press delay and the lack of reporting on failures, I take Soviet press releases with several grains of salt.

Still, if it’s accurate, it means that the Soviets figured out animal recovery well ahead of us. I’d estimate that the Communists are about half a year closer to a manned mission than we are.

Speaking of estimations, take a gander at IMPACT OF US AND SOVIET SPACE PROGRAMS ON WORLD OPINION, hot off the presses of the USIA Office of Research Analysis. As it says on the tin, it’s a fascinating snapshot of domestic and world opinion of the space program. It’s short, so do read it.

In particular, I liked the point that Space Race reporting has become more rational, less sensational. I also enjoyed seeing the breakdown of those nations who feel the U.S.S.R. is ahead in the Race versus those who feel the U.S.A. is in the lead. The distribution is predictable, I think.

Per the report, virtually all reporting links the space programs of the two superpowers with their military programs, which I think is sensible. That said, it is my understanding that there is increasing resistance in the U.S. Congress to letting the Army team under Von Braun continue development of the enormous Saturn rocket. It’s just too big to serve any practical military service, it is said. If the program is transferred to NASA, our fledgling civilian space program, perhaps we will have a truly inspiring non-military space presence.

If we can forget what Von Braun’s job was just 14 years ago. Ah well, “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down!” as one wise man has observed.

Image by Starbound

See you in two days!

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Science / Space Race

Two for two (Vanguard and Discoverer failures; 6-26-1959)

June 26, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

It's another Space Race update from The Traveler!

A Vanguard went up on the 22nd, but I decided to hold off on writing a column as I knew a Discoverer was set to launch on the 25th. I'm afraid I've got a double-whammy of disappointment for my good readers.

This new Vanguard had two thermistors (heat-activated electrodes) adorning the magneisum-alloy skin of the 20" diameter sphere, one facing the sun, one facing inward. The point of this experiment was to measure the heat balance of the sun's radiation on the Earth. Why is this important? The primary engine for the Earth's weather is the sun's heating of the atmosphere. Hot air rises, cold air sinks, and the spinning Earth mixes all of this thoroughly and chaotically. If we knew how strong the sun's rays were at various latitudes, we could correlate these findings to heat flow in the lower atmosphere and learn a great deal.

NASA photo–I don't know who those folk are.

The rocket soared out of sight of observers, seemingly on a flawless trajectory. However, it appears that one of the second-stage pressure valves was faulty; no signal from the satellite was ever caught on the ground by any of the many Minitrack receiving stations around the globe.

The sad news is that there is only one booster left to the Vanguard program. After the next shot, it's all over. I hope these experiments don't get abandoned!

From a postcard I picked up this week–wishful thinking, as it turned out.

Discoverer 4 took off yesterday, and it seemed to be a good launch, but then the second stage (the "Hustler") failed, and the payload never reached orbit. From the press releases, the Air Force was testing a new capsule designed to carry monkeys. Given that there were no actual passengers on the mission, I can think of two possibilities:

1) The Air Force doesn't want to actually send up any more animals lest the critter-lovers of the world let out a cry and hue (bigger than they already have), at least until the flyboys have perfected their rockets, or

2) There was a payload on Discoverer 4 equipped with eyes, but it wasn't an animate one.

Which one do you think is more plausible?

—

In other news, my F&SF and Astounding magazines have come in for this month, and I picked up last month's IF as well. I'm also reading Sam Merwin's Well of Many Worlds, one of the first "sideways in time" stories. So expect a lot of fiction reviews in the near future!

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Science / Space Race

Four blind mice (Discoverer III;6-04-1959)

June 4, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

It's a bad time to be an experimental animal, if there ever was (or will be) a good one.

The Air Force launched Discoverer III last night with a payload of four plump black mice. As you know, if you read the papers or my column, Discoverer is a satellite program for shooting missions into polar orbit (i.e. over the poles, ultimately covering the entire Earth) ostensibly for the purpose of sending biological specimens into space and then recovering them in a detachable capsule.

Of course, a polar orbit is particularly good for reconaissance, and a detachable capsule can carry film as well as mice. I'm sure the Soviets aren't buying the "space science" angle any more than I am. Still, if we get any science out of the program, that's an added bonus.

Unfortunately, the mice of Discoverer III can't catch a break. Last week, the launch was scrubbed because telemetry from the mice had ceased. The technicians thumped on the nose cone, thinking the mice were asleep. They were, in fact, dead, having eaten the krylon coating of their cages.

A few days later, the launch was scrubbed when the nose cone sensors returned a 100% humidity level. Turns out that the mice had urinated on the sensors (a similar incident looks to have happened on one of last year's Thor-Able flights).

Yesterday, the rocket finally launched, but the second stage of the Thor-Hustler rocket flipped the payload and drove it straight into the Pacific ocean. Nothing could have survived that.

I understand that this incident has piqued the ire of several organizations promoting the ethical treatment of animals, particularly as this comes right on the heels of a suborbital Jupiter test flight on May 28, which had the monkeys, Able and Baker, as unwitting passengers. Though the mission was a success, I have it on good authority that Able died the other day after an unsuccessful surgery to remove an electrode. Six months before, a similar flight resulted in the death of its passenger, Sam the monkey. I wonder if the Air Force will abandon the pretense of the bio-medical mission and just launch cameras from now on.

So that's that. I believe there's another Discoverer launch scheduled in a few weeks along with another Vanguard shot. I'll report on them if and when they happen. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this month's Galaxy, and I'll finish up my report on the August issue in two days!

In the meantime, let's hoist a glass to our intrepid, lost rodentnauts. You deserved better.

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Science / Space Race

The shape of things to come! Part 2 (New rockets; May 17, 1959)

May 17, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

My cup runneth over!

When I started this column, I had worried that the increasing paucity of new science fiction would mean I'd run out of things to write about. Now, here we are seven months later, and I have a back-log of items on which to report. I suppose I shall just have to write constantly to get it all out. I hope you don't mind…

First in the queue, I wanted to wrap up the Homer Newell article I reported on five days ago, about America's new stable of rocket boosters. Last time, I talked about the new rockets expected to be in used by 1960. Now, let's press on a few more years into the future for a truly exciting sneak peek.

With the exception of the Vanguard and (soon-to-be) Scout, all of our space rockets are really borrowed military missiles. But as time goes on, we will see more purpose-built boosters that will be more powerful and efficient. The first true space rocket vehicles will be second stages designed to go on the Atlas ICBM, currently our biggest military missile.

The smaller of them, the Vega, is a purely civilian design that will be developed from the first stage of the Vanguard. The Atlas-Vega will to launch satellites into geo-stationary orbit for the first time. A bit of explanation as to the import of this: the Earth rotates on its axis every 24 hours. The period of a satellite's orbit is dependent solely on its distance from Earth–the closet the satellite orbits, the shorter the period. Right now, our best rockets can barely get satellites into a low orbit with a period of about 90 minutes. But the Atlas-Vega will propel satellites up to a height where the period matches the period of the Earth's rotation. This means the satellites will, to a ground observer, appear to be stationary (or at least will wobble about around a fixed place in the sky). Arthur Clarke wrote about the value of these satellites more than a decade ago; they will be way-stations for global communications.

An even bigger stage is the Centaur, which will launch truly massive payloads to the moon and to the planets. By the middle of the next decade, expect orbiting laboratories around Earth's closest celestial neighbors. To me, this is more exciting than sending a person into space, who probably won't be able to do much but give entertaining color commentary.

The real wave of the future is likely to be Von Braun's new brainchild–the Saturn family of rockets. These boosters are being developed completely from scratch and will be an order of magnitude bigger than anything currently in the pipeline. The biggest of them, the Nova, will be capable of landing 20 tons on the moon in one go! We may well see people on the moon by 1967.

My favorite part of the article is Dr. Newell's personal appeal to us, the citizen-scientists of the nation, to send in proposals for experiments. NASA is brand-new, and they need all the help they can get to develop not just the hardware, but the ideas that will drive the creation of the hardware. It's scientific democracy and it's greatest, and perhaps it will prove an advantage over the Soviet system.

Day-after-tomorrow: Invisible Invaders! There are A-movies, and there are B-movies. This was not an A-movie. The popcorn was yummy, though!

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Science / Space Race

The shape of things to come! (New rockets; May 12, 1959)

May 12, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

I had planned to write about science fiction today, but then I found an article by Homer Newell, Assistant Director of Space Sciences at NASA, talking about the new stable of rocket boosters about to come into use. So, it's time for the science-fiction-into-fact column!

For the first year of the Space Race, the United States had just three boosters at its disposal. One was the slender Vanguard, which had its share of mishaps before achieving its objective. The Vanguard was the Navy's contribution to this nation's orbital activities, though it was developed under civilian authority (the only civilian booster to date, in fact, in the world). The Juno I, also known as the Jupiter-C, about which there has been much nomenclature-related confusion was the Army's rocket, and it launched the first American satellite, Explorer I. Finally, there was the Air Force's booster–the Thor IRBM mated with the top two stages of the Vanguard rocket, known as the Thor-Able. It launched Pioneers 0-2.

Late last year, Von Braun's Army team took the top stages of the Juno I and put them on a bigger missile, the Jupiter IRBM, and created the Juno II, which launched Pioneers 3-4.

That was all she wrote for the International Geophysical Year, but now there's a brand new crop of boosters that have been unveiled:

One of them, the Thor-Hustler, has already been used to launch the first Discoverers. I know what a Thor is, but I'm not sure about the Hustler. I think it's a booster designed for a self-propelled bomb to be mounted on the sleek new jet bomber, the B-58 Hustler… but I could be wrong.

As might be expected, the powerful new Atlas is being mated to the Able and Hustler boosters just as the Thor was, and its heft should be correspondingly higher. After all, the Atlas is designed to send atomic bombs all the way to Moscow from California, whereas the Thor is based in England. I believe the Atlas Able will be used to launch a set of bigger Pioneers to the moon. I don't know what the Atlas Hustler will be used for.

But perhaps the most exciting development is that of the Scout rocket. Able to put 300 pounds in orbit, a good ten times the ability of the Vanguard rocket, it is also five times cheaper to launch–a mere half a million dollars as opposed to 2.5 million dollars. It is also a civilian booster. Expect this little number to usher in an uprecedented new era of space shots. Soon, the sky will be filled with scientific beep-beeps!

There's more to tell, but I think I'll wait until next time to discuss it. Oh, you want a hint? Let's just say that there's a big planet out beyond Jupiter… and it's namesake is going to be a doozy!

To wrap up this news segment of Galactic Journey, I present to you our beloved Vice President announcing the nation's "Handicapped American of the Year," Dr. Anne H. Carlsen of Grantsburg, Wisconsin, who lacks both hands and feet. I suppose it's appropriate that Mr. Nixon gave this award; after all, he is similarly afflicted, lacking charisma or conscience.

Just a word to the wise to those sending me comments via the U.S. Postal Service: you'd better do it quick, because the Postmaster General has asked permission to raise the price of a First Class stamp from four cents to a full nickel!

See you soon!

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Science / Space Race

Earth: 0, Space: 3 (Atlas, Discoverer, and Vanguard; 4-16-1959)

April 16, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

It's been an exciting though disappointing week in the world of space exploits. Here is a summary of what you've missed if you haven't been following the papers:

DISCOVERER 2 SOARS INTO ORBIT; LAYS EGG NO ONE CAN FIND

The Air Force launched another Discoverer on April 13. After 17 orbits, the satellite ejected a capsule for recovery. The landing spot was supposed to be around Hawai'i, but a task force of ships and aircraft were unable to find the capsule. Now, there wasn't anything on board this one, but later shots are supposed to carry biological specimens. And maybe film for developing. Oops! Did I say that out loud?

In any event, no one knows where it landed. Since Discoverer is in a polar orbit (and still otherwise functioning, to all reports), I suppose the capsule could have fallen anywhere along its trajectory. If the capsule was ejected too early, it would have hit Antarctica or the South Pacific. If late, the track crosses Alaska, the Arctic ocean, and down through Scandinavia, the Eastern Bloc nations, and all along central Africa.

Assuming the latter, its destination could be somewhere in the ice, perhaps a communist station, or next to some frightened zebra. We may never know.

VANGUARD IS ANOTHER FLOPNIK

The Navy boys tried to launch a sequel to the orbiting but unsuccessful Vanguard 2. This shot was a two-fer–atop the slim rocket was not only a 10kg ball with a new magnetometer on board (for mapping magnetic fields) but a balloon for tracking air density.

Sadly, the rocket only got up a hundred miles before falling back to Earth. It's a shame–Von Braun's team is having success after success, but the Vanguard program is stuck in first gear. Let's hope they can get Vanguard 3 up before the year's end!

MAIDEN LAUNCH FOR NEW ATLAS A BUST

The Atlas is America's first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). It is being manufactured just a dozen miles from my house at Convair's Kearny Mesa plant. The first incarnation of the Atlas was test-launched in 1957 with a dummy warhead. Since then, Atlases have been launched with some regularity from Cape Canaveral, including the December launch of SCORE, which went on the improved Atlas B. The Atlas C was the last of the prototypes, and it may be used this year for an upcoming Venusian mission.

But the Atlas launched on April 14 was an Atlas D, a more-powerful version designed to be the first operational ICBM, the one they'll bury underground in protective silos to be turned loose on the Soviet Union on a moment's notice.

Eventually. The one launched last Tuesday malfunctioned right out of the gate, one of its three engines blasting at reduced capacity. It limped along for 20 seconds, burst into flames, and was destroyed 17 seconds later by ground control. And this is the booster that the Mercury astronauts will ride into orbit. Brave men they!

So, as they say, "All the news that fits, we print!" See you in two days!

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Science / Space Race

Lucky Seven! (The Mercury astronauts; 4-09-1959)

April 9, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

The results are in! NASA has picked its first seven astronauts, dubbed "The Mercury Seven" since they will be flying the new one-man spacecraft when it debuts for piloted missions, perhaps next year.

The newspaper mistakenly described them as "GI"s the other day, but they are, in fact the best of the best American military test pilots from all of the services except the Army. 110 candidates were winnowed to 31, and of them, 24 were sent packing (though I suspect we may see some of them in later astronaut groups).

The chosen seven are a homogeneous bunch in several ways: white, married with children, mildly Protestant, in their 30's. But they come from a variety of places and service backgrounds. In alphabetical order, we have:

The astronauts expressing confidence that they will all come back from space safe and sound; L to R: Slayton, Shepard, Schirra, Grissom, Glenn, Cooper, Carpenter

Navy Lieutenant. Malcolm "Scott" Carpenter: 33, much has been made in the local paper since he is a native, though adopted, son from Garden Grove, California. His wife registered him for the astronaut program while Scott was at sea. He has the least flight time of the astronauts, but this is more than compensated by the man's dreaminess quotient. What a hunk!

Air Force Captain Leroy "Gordo" Cooper (for those not militarily inclined, this rank is the same grade as Navy Lieutenant): 32 and a Colorado resident. He's flown the fancy new planes, including the F-102 and F-106B. Gordo speaks with an Okie drawl, but I understand he's quite a sharp tack.

Marine Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn: 37, from Ohio, may have the most impressive credentials. He flew 59 combat missions in World War 2, more than a hundred in Korea, and he has the highest rank of the candidates. He's also the most religious, the nicest, and (reportedly) the most abstemious. I'd put odds on this fellow getting a plum spot in the line-up.

Air Force Captain Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom: 33, from Indiana, is the youngest and shortest of the group, but he has more combat missions under his belt (in Korea) than anyone in the group but Glenn.

Navy Lieutenant Commander (between the Lieutenants/Captains and Lt. Colonel Glenn in Rank) Walter M. "Wally" Schirra: 36, from New Jersey, he's apparently the prankster of the group. He comes by his talent honestly, his father having been a stunt pilot and his mother a wing walker!

Navy Lieutenant Commander Alan B. Shepard Jr.: 35, from New Hampshire, has the most flight time but zero combat experience. He has an intense air about him suggesting he may be a leader type. He confidently declared that he expected orbital flight would be no more hazardous than testing out a new plane on Earth.

Air Force Captain Donald K. "Deke" Slayton: 35, from Wisconsin, he's got almost as much flight time as Shepard, and World War II combat experience. He has a smart, no-nonsense look about him. I suspect he'll get a good mission. He said he signed up because we'd pretty much finished exploring the Earth, and it was time to pierce the next frontier.

L to R: Grissom, Glenn, Cooper, Carpenter

Unmanned test flights of the Mercury spacecraft, which looks a bit like a thimble, are expected to start in the summer. The capsules will be launched sub-orbitally first on "Little Joe" test rockets and then Redstones (which were used to launch the first American Explorers.

I'm willing to wager that, now that American's first spacemen have been identified, our upcoming science fiction stories will make many and copious references to them, either directly or allusive. For decades, authors have written how the first men would go into space–now they know for certain who they will be and what they will ride in (that is, unless the Soviets beat us again to the punch…)

See you in a couple of days with news of Fred Pohl's latest novella, really a short novel. It's excellent. Until then…

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Science / Space Race

Kaboom! (Project Argus; 3-26-1959)

March 26, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

This is what happens when you let scientists play with toys.

Apparently, last summer, the Air Force detonated three atomic bombs high above the South Atlantic… just to see what would happen!

That's actually a little too glib. Dr. N.C. Cristofilos, of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, has always wanted to trace the lines of magnetic force that girdle the Earth. After Sputnik launched in October 1957, he has been hung up on the idea of using satellites to measure the path of charged particles along those lines. But Dr. Cristofilos was not content to collect data of the natural environment for, as he confided to me, "The creation of artificial effects under controlled conditions is more interesting, as the initial conditions are known and therefore physical quantities can be measured under completely diferent conditions from those which the natural phenomena allow."

Which, translated into layman's speech, means, "We need to detonate three atomic bombs high above the South Atlantic and see what happens!"

The Air Force love their toys, too, and the whole project went from concept to completion in about half a year. They apparently wanted to get the experiment done lest some pesky nuclear test ban treaty come into being unexpectedly (they needn't have worried).

In fact, I think the Air Force moved a bit too quickly for a project designed for purely scientific research. I have heard rumors (without detailing the source for fear of leaking classified information) that the real project aim was to see if, by detonating nukes high in the atmosphere, they might create an artificial barrier against enemy missiles, or at least light them up in flight for easier interception.

I can't tell you if that's the case (I doubt it), but we do have a host of scientific data available. You see, Explorer IV was launched last summer specifically to observe the effects of Project Argus (as the tests were called). Of course, they didn't tell the press last July. I'm frankly amazed that we're being told the truth at all. Perhaps the whole thing was about to leak, and the government wanted to control the release.

So what did Explorer IV see? The Argus blasts created their own auroral light along the magnetic lines nearest the bursts. Electrons charged by the blasts flew along these lines to an apogee of some 4000 miles. Essentially, the satellite was able to see Earth's magnetic field glow in the dark. The Argus tests also enabled scientists to venture a guess as to the lifespan of a charged electron, though I haven't head anything definitive yet.

Of course, three tests in one section of the upper atmosphere hardly makes for a definitive data set. We clearly need more airbursts! I bet the Air Force is studying plans for several such tests over the Soviet Union, seeing how that nation covers such a large swath of territory that must be just loaded with magnetic lines of force. I bet we could even get the Russians to pay us for the service–if we did it at night time, we'd be providing lighting for those remote Siberians who lack access to electricity. Oh, we're such humanitarians! We should put Edvard Teller, that philanthropist, in charge of the project after he's done using atomic bombs to blast canals (Project Plowshare).

And if your coffee tastes funny, I hear strontium-90 is good for your bones. Why else would they absorb it preferentially over boring ol' calcium?

Oh dear. My cynicism is showing again, isn't it?

Back to fiction in two days. Satellite's got a snazzy new slick-sized format. But are the stories as impressive? Stay tuned!

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Science / Space Race

Where's my script? (F&SF Part… um… Pioneer IV update!; 3-08-1959)

March 8, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

Isn't it frustrating when you try to tune into your favorite program and hear nothing but static?

Sorry folks! I'd planned to give you Part 2 of this (last) month's F&SF. Well, the last third of the issue is taken up by a Poul Anderson novelette, and I know I won't be able to devote a whole article to just that, assuming I can even get through it. But I don't have enough to fill an article with the remaining stories.

Therefore, I have resolved to just give you all an extra-long column day-after-tomorrow! It will be worth the wait, I promise. There are some fine stories this month. And who knows? Maybe the Anderson story will be good.

…

(gasp)

All right, I can't hold my breath that long.

——–

In other news, if you've been tracking the flight of Pioneer IV, you may have heard that we finally lost communications with the plucky little probe at more than 400,000 miles away. This isn't the fault of the ground antennas, which could probably track the vehicle much further out. The satellite's batteries just ran out of juice. Hopefully, when we have bigger rockets (perhaps the Air Force's Thor "Hustler"?), we can send out satellites with solar panels on board that can broadcast indefinitely.

Anyway, the Russians are crowing that their Mechta made it further, but we're saying that our science was better. But can we really trumpet our mission as a triumph without a sodium flatulence experiment?

See you on the 10th!

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Science / Space Race

We're Number Two! (Pioneer IV; 3-04-1959)

March 4, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

In any nascent endeavor, it is human nature to trumpet even the most modest of achievements. Sure, Pioneer I didn't make it to the moon, but it went pretty high and confirmed the Van Allen Belts. Sure, Vanguard I was the size of a grapefruit, but it taught us that the Earth is pear-shaped.

In that vein, sure, Pioneer IV, NASA's latest moon shot, may not have been entirely a success, but at least it will be the first (American) probe to sail beyond our planet's celestial companion and into solar orbit.

Launched yesterday on a Juno II, Pioneer IV is essentially an exact duplicate of the less-successful Pioneer III, with a little extra shielding around one of its charged particle detectors to better measure cosmic radiation. In the tradition of focusing on the positive, I will note that Pioneer IV's mission is not just to take snapshots of the moon, but to duplicate the mission profile of its predecessor so as to provide a comparative data set. This is the soul of science–the repeating and repeatability of experiments.

As far as the trip to the moon is concerned, there have only been a couple of minor hiccoughs: one of the three scaling factor taps on one of the counters got knocked out when Pioneer IV's engines shook it a bit too roughly. In English, a scaling factor allows scientists to convert the raw voltages, recorded when charged particles hit the spacecraft, into usable numbers. I don't think this critically damages the instrument. Pioneer IV's transmission also went on the fritz for about 30 seconds while the craft traversed Earth's outer radiation belt.

While we're on the topic of problems, it looks like the little spacecraft is going to pass wide of its target, missing the surface of the moon by some 37,000 miles. This is too far to activate the photoelectric sensors on the spacecraft, which would have been used to activate a camera–if the probe had been heavy enough include a camera! Not a huge loss.

What will really be exciting is to finally give the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's deep space tracking network a full run through its paces. We've never tried to monitor a spacecraft several hundred thousand miles from Earth before. On the other hand, if the Soviets can do it, I suspect we can, too.

So there you have it. We launched a probe that weighed sixty times less than Luna I and which missed its target by a distance ten times greater. And we did it two months after Luna I.

A success? You be the judge…

P.S. Following up on Discoverer I, the Air Force is claiming that they are still receiving sporadic signals from their spacecraft. They've also confirmed that their new rocket is a Thor-Hustler, whatever that is. The Swedish press is calling Discoverer I "The Whispering Satellite" since they can barely hear it, if at all.

I'm still unconvinced. Something's fishy. I just can't tell you exactly what.

See you on March 6 with a book review!

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction