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Science / Space Race

[May 6, 1961] Dreams into Reality (First American in Space)

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I've been asked why it is that, as a reviewer of science fiction, I devote so much ink to the Space Race and other scientific non-fiction.  I find it interesting that fans of the first would not necessarily be interested in the second, and vice versa. 

There are three reasons non-fiction figures so prominently in this column:

1) I like non-fiction;
2) All the science fiction mags have a non-fiction column;
3) Science fiction without science fact is without context.

Let me expand on Point 3.  Science is different from all other philosophies because of its underpinning of reality.  My wife and I had this debate in graduate school many years ago with our fellow students.  They felt that, so long as their systems were logical, their views on how the universe worked were just as valid as any others – certainly more valid that lousy ol' science, with its dirty experiments and boring empiricism.

They're wrong, of course.  Religion and philosophy have discerned little about the natural universe except by accident or where the practitioners have utilized some version of the scientific method.  The fact is, there is a real universe out there, and it pushes back at our inquiries.  That "friction" is what allows us to experiment as to its nature.  It's why we have wonders like airplanes, nuclear power, the polio vaccine, the contraceptive pill. 

Similarly, science fiction is nowheresville without an underpinning of science.  Science fiction is not make believe – it is extrapolation of scientific trends.  Even fantasy makes use of science; ask Tolkien about his rigorous application of linguistics in his construction of Elvish.  It is important that my readers keep abreast of the latest science fact so they can better understand and appreciate the latest science fiction. 

And it goes both ways – the science of today is directly influenced and inspired by the dreams of yesterday.  Without science fiction, science is a passionless endeavor.  Jules Verne showed us space travel long before Nikita Khruschev. 

Thus ends the awfully long preface to today's article, which as anyone might guess, covers America's first manned space mission.  Yesterday morning, May 5, 1961, Commander Alan B. Shepard rocketed to a height of nearly 190 kilometers in the Mercury spacecraft he christened "Freedom 7."  His flight duplicated that of chimpanzee Ham's February trip: a sub-orbital jaunt that plopped him in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  He flew for just 15 minutes.

The flight was so short because Shepard's rocket, the same Redstone that launched the first American satellite into orbit, was simply too weak to push the two-ton Mercury fast enough to circle the Earth.  The Redstone is an old missile, made by the Army in the early '50s.  It is significantly weaker than the Soviet ICBM that hurled the first cosmonaut into space.  It looked embarrassingly undersized compared to the Mercury it carried – like a toy rocket.

We have a booster comparable to that which launched Vostok, the ICBM called Atlas, but it's not ready yet.  In fact, a test shot of the Atlas-Mercury combination (MA-3) failed miserably just last week on April 25, and before that, the Atlas failed in four out of four unmanned Moon missions.  It is likely that we won't see an American in orbit until 1962.

The flight of "Freedom 7" might have impressed more had it before occurred the Soviet orbital shot that made the headlines on April 12.  In fact, a Mercury-Redstone did go up on March 24, a full three weeks earlier.  It carried an unmanned boiler-plate Mercury capsule; the main purpose of the mission to make sure the Redstone was truly ready for a human passenger since it had been a little balky during Ham's flight.

The flight of "MR-BD" went perfectly.  Had MR-BD been a manned mission, Shepard would have been the first human in space. 

And so the Soviets scored yet another first in the Space Race.  But does it matter?  NASA is already soliciting designs for its "Apollo" series of Moon ships, scheduled to launch at the end of the decade.  The Russians announced a similar program on May Day.  If this is going to go on for the long haul, I prefer a measured, safety-conscious space program over a reckless one.  The tortoise beat the hare, and I predict Shepard's flight is just the first tentative step toward a permanent American presence in space.

The Mercury capsules are proven.  Our astronauts are proven.  All that's left is the Atlas.  Let's do things right the first time rather than repeat the failures of the Air Force's Discoverer program and the Soviet Vostok program.  I want all my astronauts back safe and sound; this is a marathon, not a sprint.

And at the end of it, all those space travel stories we've enjoyed for decades will at last become reality.  A triumph for science fiction and science.

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Science / Space Race

[April 28, 1961] Newies but goodies (April space round-up!)

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They say "You're only as old as you feel," which explains why Asimov pinches co-eds at conventions.

I've been asked why someone of my advanced age is into the bop and rock and billy that the kids are into these days, when I should be preferring the likes of Glenn Miller or Caruso.  Truth be told, I do like the music of my youth, the swing of the 30s and the war years (no, I didn't serve.  I was 4F.  My brother, Lou, was in five Pacific invasions, though.) But there's something to today's music, something new.  Lou's kid, David, really turned me onto this stuff – the Cubano and the Rock n' Roll.  Music beyond whitebread and Lawrence Welk. 

It makes me feel…young.

I've got a full month of space news to catch up, in large part because I was remiss around the end of last month thanks to Wondercon.  And then Gagarin's flight eclipsed all else in significance for a while, but there is more to off-planet exploration than men in capsules.

Like dogs in capsules.  Gagarin's flight was preceded by Sputnik 10, launched March 25.  In retrospect, it is clear that it was a test flight of the Vostok spacecraft, and it carried a mannequin cosmonaut and a dog, Zvezdocha ("Little star" – a charming name).  Both passengers returned safely to Earth. 

The fact that Sputnik 9, Sputnik 10, and Vostok 1 all launched in such close succession is a testament to the robustness of the Soviet space program.  It is clear that they have plenty of boosters and capsules to fling into space.  One has to wonder if their second manned space shot will precede our first (currently scheduled for May 4.)

Also launched March 25 was the diminutive and short-lived Explorer 10.  Its brief lifespan was intentional.  The little probe was sent on a eccentric orbit that took it nearly half-way to the Moon.  For just 52 hours, the craft returned data on the magnetic fields in cislunar space, well above the energetic Van Allen Belts.  It may seem a waste to send a satellite up for such a short time, but solar panels are heavy, and the Thor Delta that boosted it can only throw so much into space. 

Some of the results are straightforward — it confirmed the speed and density of solar flare protons.  As for the magnetospheric results, well, their interpretation depends on the answer to one question: did Explorer 10 probe into a realm beyond Earth's magnetic field (thus measuring the sun's field) or just its outer reaches? 

Columbus' first trip returned inconclusive results about the New World; so it will take several more satellites to properly map the high electromagnetic frontier.

Speaking of seeing the unknown, many humans (yours truly included) have some degree of color-blindness.  That is, there are wavelengths of the visual electromagnetic spectrum that we cannot distinguish from others.  For all intents and purposes, those colors don't exist to us. 

All humans are subject to another kind of color-blindness, one caused by the atmosphere.  You see, while the sky seems perfectly clear to us, at least at night, in fact the air blocks a good many wavelengths of light that we'd be able to detect if it weren't there.  Not with our eyes, to be sure, but with equipment. 

X-Rays, for instance.  High-flying sounding rockets have found tantalizing evidence that the Sun emits those high energy waves.  Explorer 7's and Vanguard 3's X-Ray detectors were swamped by the radiation of the Van Allen Belts.  Solrad, equipped with a magnetic sweeper, was humanity's first eye in the sky that could see light in that spectrum, though only in a crude fashion, counting the photons as they struck its photocell.  Perhaps the upcoming Orbital Solar Observatory will see more.

Even more elusive are the extremely energetic gamma rays, normally only detected as radiation from natural and artificial nuclear reactions.  Logic would suggest that these rays are emitted by stars, but there is no way to be sure from the ground.

Enter Explorer 11, launched on one of the last Juno II rockets (thankfully, it worked; these neglected boosters have a mere 50/50 chance of success.) It looks to my eye like the early Explorers, which makes sense: the body of the probe is the little Sergeant rocket that makes up the fourth stage of both the Juno I and II.  This little guy is the first satellite that can detect light in the gamma ray end of the spectrum.  Again, it isn't a camera, but it will detect the number and direction of the rays that hit its sensors.  Who knows just what it will find!

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Science / Space Race

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

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

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

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

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

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