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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 20, 1970] The Goat without Horns…among other things (August 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Of horses and streams

Tom Paine is trying the most desperate of Hail Mary passes.  Aviation Weekly just published a piece that the NASA administrator is pitching the idea of an international space station with at least six astronauts from a number of countries, possibly even from behind the Iron Curtain, to be launched in the Bicentennial year of 1976.

The price?  Diverting Apollos 15 and 19 to the Skylab program, scheduled to start in 1972, and shifting Apollos 17 and 18 to the new space station.  As a result, only two more Apollo missions would fly to the Moon.

There's some logic to this—after all, the Soviets have given up on the Moon, and we've already been twice.  Moreover, the Reds are now focusing on orbital space stations (if the recent Soyuz 9 flight and the prior triple Soyuz mission are any indication).  Shouldn't we change course, too?

I have to think this idea a plan to save the Space Shuttle.  With Senators Proxmire and Mondale sharpening their knives to gut the space agency's budget, Paine figures that the way to keep the next-generation orbital launch vehicle in business is to give it a fixed destination.  After all, once the two Apollos have been used, the only way to get astronauts to the station will be on the Space Shuttle.

A Space Shuttle Orbiter docks with the NAR Phase B Space Station using a module deployed from its payload bay and linked to the docking port atop its crew cabin. Image credit: North American Rockwell.
A Space Shuttle Orbiter docks with the NAR Phase B Space Station using a module deployed from its payload bay and linked to the docking port atop its crew cabin. Image credit: North American Rockwell. (text by David Portree)

The timing is awfully tight, though.  The Shuttle won't be done until at least 1977, which means the station will have to lie fallow for a while until the vehicle is online.  That's assuming the advanced station can even be developed and deployed in six years, which seems doubtful.  Skylab is just an adapted Saturn V upper stage.  This proposed station would probably be something entirely new.

In any event, it seems foolish to squander Kennedy's legacy and barely scratch the surface of the Moon, scientifically speaking, when an infrastructure for further exploration is already in place.  Shifting course so rapidly stinks of desperation.  As Walter Matthau once said, playing a gambler in an episode of Route 66, "Scared money always loses."

Of dolphins and dreams

The realm of science isn't the only dubious one this month.  Take a gander at the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction to see what I mean…

Cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction's August issue, featuring 'The Goat Without Horns' by Thomas Burnett Swann and 'Isaac Asimov on astrology'-- the cover illustration is a black-haired nude white woman facing away from the viewer, standing thigh-deep in a claret sea and peering downward. Three improbably large & erect black dorsal fins tightly orbit her, cutting a circular wake, and an onyx platform floats above, out of her reach. Three crescent moons hang large in the sky, the largest one refracted through the only other feature projecting from the waves-- left of the woman is an enormous lenticular crystal within which is embedded vertically a chalky nude man, twisted to face the moon. Red and white flares lay a track of parabolic arcs charting from the horizon towards the crystal.
Cover by Bert Tanner

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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 20, 1969] Ad Astra et Infernum (June 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

To the Stars

Venus has gotten a lot of attention from Earth's superpowers.  Part of it is its tremendous similarity to our home in some ways: similar mass, similar composition, similar distance from the Sun (as such things go).  But the biggest reason why so many probes have been dispatched to the Solar System's second world (to wit: Mariner 2, Mariner 5, Venera 1, Veneras 2 and 3, and Venera 4) is because it's the closest planet to Earth.  Every 19 months, Earth and Venus are aligned such that a minimum of rocket is required to send a maximum of scientific payload toward the Planet of Love.  Since 1961, every opportunity has seen missions launched from at least one side of the Pole.

This year's was no exception: on January 5 and 10, the USSR launched Venera (Venus) 5 and 6 toward the second planet, and this month (the 16th and the 18th), they arrived.

Our conception of Venus has changed radically since spaceships started probing the world.  Just read our article on the planet, written back in 1959, before the world had been analyzed with radar and close-up instruments.  Now we know that the planet's surface is the hottest place in the Solar System outside the Sun: perhaps 980 degrees Fahrenheit!  The largely carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmosphere crushes the ground at up to 100 atmospheres of pressure.  The planet rotates very slowly backward, but there is virtually no difference between temperatures on the day and night sides due to the thick atmosphere.  There is no appreciable magnetic field (probably because the planet spins so slowly) so no equivalent to our Van Allen Belts or aurorae.

This is all information returned from outside the Venusian atmosphere.  Inference.  To get the full dope, one has to plunge through the air.  Venera 4 did that, returning lower temperatures and air pressures.  This was curious, but it makes sense if you don't believe the Soviet claim that the probe's instruments worked all the way to the ground—a dubious assertion given the incredibly hostile environment.  No, Venera 4 probably stopped working long before it touched down.

The same may be true of Veneras 5 and 6.  TASS has not released data yet, but while the two probes were successfully delivered onto Venus' surface, we have no way of knowing that they returned telemetry all the way down.  Indeed, the Soviet reports are rather terse and highlight the delivery of medals and a portrait of Lenin to Venus, eschewing any mention of soft landing.  The news does spend a lot of time talking about solar wind measurements on the way to Venus—useful information, to be sure, but beside the point.


The Venera spacecraft and lander capsule

Anyway, at the very least, we can probably hope to get some clarity on what goes on in the Venusian air.  It may have to wait until next time before we learn just what's happening on the ground, however.

To Hell

I bitched last month about the lousy issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Well, I am happy to say that the May issue is more than redeemed by this June 1969 issue, which, if not stellar throughout, has sufficient high points to impress and delight.


by Gray Morrow

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