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Science / Space Race

[December 1, 1964] Planet Four or Bust! (What we know about Mars)

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by Gideon Marcus

Mars or Bust

This week, humanity embarked on its most ambitious voyage to date.  Its destination: Mars.

I use the term "humanity" advisedly, for this effort is a global one.  On November 28, 1964, the United States launched Mariner 4 from Cape Kennedy.  And just yesterday, the Soviet Union's Zond hurtled into space.  Both are bound for the Red Planet, due to arrive next summer. 

That both missions commenced so close to each other was not a coincidence.  Every two years, Earth and Mars are situated in their orbits such that a minimum of energy can be used to get from one planet to the other.  This favorable positioning applies equally to democracies and communist states.

Mariner 4 and Zond are not the first Martian probes: identical Mariner 3 was lost a few weeks ago, and Zond's predecessor, Mars 1, failed a couple of months before it could reach its target.  Let us hope these new spacecraft have more luck.  So far so good!

It is possible that these two probes will revolutionize our understanding of Mars, just as Mariner 2 changed our view of Venus forever.  It is, therefore, appropriate that I summarize our knowledge of the planet on the eve of collecting this bonanza of new information.

Another Earth?

Mars has been known to us since ancient times.  Because it wanders through the constellations throughout the year, it was classified as a "planet" (literally Greek for wanderer).  When it is in the sky, it is one of the brightest objects in the sky, with a distinct reddish tinge, which is why it has been associated with the bloody enterprise of war.

Until the invention of the telescope, all we knew about the fourth planet from the Sun was its orbital parameters: its year is 687 days, its path around the sun very circular, and its average distance from the Sun is around 141,600,000 miles. 

Even under magnification, Mars can be a stubborn target; at its nearest, about 35 million mies away, the planet measures just 25 seconds of arc from limb to limb (compared to the Moon, which subtends 1860).  Still, early telescopes were good enough to resolve light red expanses, darker expanses (believed to be seas), and bright polar caps.  Said caps waxed and waned with the Martian seasons, brought on by the planet's very Earthlike tilt of 25 degrees.  Because the Martian surface was visible, unlike those of Venus or Mercury, the day was calculated to be just over 24 hours long.  Indeed, Mars appeared to be a world much like Earth.

Mars for the Martians

In 1877, our understanding of the planet broadened.  Astronomer Asaph Hall discovered two tiny moons, named Phobos and Deimos, and we were able to deduce the mass of Mars — about 10.7% that of Earth.  Combined with the planet's diameter of 4200 miles, that meant Mars' density was about four times that of water.  This is only two thirds that of the Earth, which suggests that the planet is poorer in heavy metals, and/or that, because the planet is less massive overall, its layers are not so tightly bound together with gravity.  From Mars' measured mass and diameter, we learned that the surface gravity is 38% that of Earth; sprinting and jumping should be much easier there.  Flying…well, more on that in a moment.

1877 was also the year that Mars came into our public consciousness in a huge way — all because of a silly mistranslation.  Giovanni Schiaparelli turned his 'scope to Mars and saws something remarkable: dozens of fine straight streaks crisscrossing the planet that seemed to link up the dark patches (which were, if not oceans, at least areas of vegetation suggesting the existence of water).  He called them canali, which is Italian for "channels".  But to English ears, it came out as "canals", which strongly connotes construction by intelligent beings.

Well, you can see what an uproar that would make.  Very soon, folks like Wells and Burroughs were writing tales of Martian aliens.  And not just aliens — civilizations beyond those found on Earth.  The thinking went that the planets' ages corresponded to their distance from the Sun.  Hence, Mercury was a primordial hunk of magma.  Venus, shrouded in clouds, was probably a steamy jungle planet on which Mesozoic monsters roamed.  And beyond the Earth, Mars was a cold, ancient world, its verdant plains dessicated to red deserts.  To avoid catastrophe, the Martians built planet-spanning canals to bring water to their cities.  Being so advanced, it was obvious that they had mastered space travel, and had either visited us or were on the verge of doing so.

Even the more practical-minded scientists were hungry for evidence of life, even primitive stuff, existing off of the Earth.  Mars seemed like the prime location for extraterrestrial creatures to be found.  For one thing, the planet clearly had an atmosphere, wrapping the planet's edges in a haze and producing a marked twilight. 

Originally thought to be a touch thinner than Earth's, more recent measurement of the polarization of Martian light (the vibration angles of light reflected off the atmosphere) suggested that the surface air pressure was about 8% that of Earth.  That was too thin for easy breathing, but not too thin for life.  If there was enough oxygen in the mix, perhaps a person could survive there. 

Mars Today

Such was our understanding of the planet perhaps a decade ago.  Recently, ground-based science has made some amazing discoveries, and it may well be that Mariner and Zond don't so much revolutionize as simply enhance our understanding of the planet.

I just read a paper that says the Martian atmosphere is about a quarter as dense at the surface that thought.  This isn't just bad for breathing — it means NASA scientists have to rethink all the gliders and parachutes they were planning for their Voyager missions scheduled for the next decade.  Observations by spectroscope have found no traces of oxygen and scarcely more water vapor.  The planet's thin atmosphere is mostly made up of nitrogen and carbon dioxide.  The ice in the polar caps may well be mostly "dry".

Because of the lack of water and the thin air, erosion is probably much less of a factor on Mars.  In a recent science article in Analog, George Harper says that the planet's surface may be riddled with meteorite craters that never got worn away.  Close up, Mars may end up looking more like the Moon than the Earth!

And those canals? Telescopic advances in the late 40s made it possible to examine Mars in closer detail than ever before. The weight of astronomical opinion now disfavors the existence of canals.

Still, old dreams die hard.  I imagine we will cling to our visions of Martian life and even civilizations long after such notions are proven unworkable.  To kill such fancies, it'll take a blow as serious as that delivered by Mariner 2, which told us that it's hot enough to melt lead on the surface of Venus.

We'll find out, one way or another, in July 1965!

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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

[November 1, 1964] Time (sharing) travel

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by Ida Moya

New Toys for Los Alamos

As the Traveler said, things have really been heating up in Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL). And what with President Kennedy being taken from us so traumatically last year, it has all been too much. We have been struggling with national security while mourning the loss of our leader, and also attending to a deluge of new computers that are coming into the lab. Things have calmed down a little so I am now able to share a few secrets with you again.

Page from LA-1 document
Page from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory report LA-1

I've been busy helping with the preparation of the upcoming declassification of the Los Alamos Primer. This is the very first official technical report we produced at LASL, numbered LA-1. It is based on 5 lectures introducing the principles of nuclear weapons. These lectures were given in 1943 by LASL librarian Charlotte Serber’s husband, the physicist Robert Serber. You bet it's release took a long time to get this approved. Doing the work to cross out all those “Secret Limited” stamps and restamp each page with "Unclassified" also took some time.

Los Alamos is so important to the nation’s top-secret defense work that we are able to commandeer the first of each of the fastest computers manufactured. We had Serial no. 1 of the IBM 701 “Defense Calculator” in 1953. LASL also tested one of the first of 8 IBM 7030 “Stretch” computers, which even with its uptime shortcomings can calculate so fast that some people call it a “Supercomputer.”

I’m sure I also told you that we finally received our IBM 7090 computer. This equipment is being used for big science calculations around atomic energy, guided missile control, strategic planning (cryptanalysis, weather prediction, game theory), and jet engine design. I'm sure it is no surprise when I tell you we are using it to simulate nuclear explosions. This computer also has what they call an “upgrade,” the addition of more memory and input-output capability. The upgraded computer is called an IBM 7094.

Scientists at LASL, Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been working on better ways for computer operators to use the IBM 7094. Rather than custom-writing each computer operation and calculation that have to be done, they are working on a kind of “supervisor” to allow for more than one person to use the computer at the same time. This "operating system" is called CTSS or Compatible Time Sharing System.

Robert Fano sitting at a teletype
I don't have a current picture of Marge, but here is MIT Professor Robert Fano using CTSS from a Teletype ASR 35.

Sharing the Wealth

It's difficult to convey just how important this will be. Computers are hideously expensive things, often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. They are also vital for any scientific institution's operations. Currently, only one person at a time can use them, which results in one of two situations. Either one person at a time has a monopoly on the machine during for the time it takes to compose and enter a program into the machine (incredibly inefficient) or programs are written "off-line" and run in a "batch". This latter solution ensures that the computer is always running, but it means no one can access the computer in real-time, and it might take days to get results (or notice that the program failed to run correctly!)

With time-sharing, several people can use a computer at once, running different programs in real-time. While the performance might not be as efficient for the computer, since it is accommodating multiple processes at once, the increased efficiency for the operator should more than make up for it.

One of my colleagues at MIT, Marjorie Merwin-Dagget, co-wrote a paper with Robert C. Daly and MIT lab head Fernando J. Corbato (Corby) about the CTSS operating system. You can have a look at it here An Experimental TIme Sharing System.

The Mother of Invention

Marge majored in math, taught for a couple of years, then found a position doing calculations and differential equations at an engineering lab. In the mid-50s, one of Marge’s female colleagues at this lab was sent to MIT to learn about the Whirlwind computer, and when this colleague came back, she taught her about how to code for Whirlwind.

Marge then leveraged this knowledge to code applications for a card punch calculator, an IBM 407 accounting machine, which was much quicker than the manual equipment their lab had been using. This clever coding work helped her land a job from Prof. Frank Verzuh in the MIT computer center. Marge got her friend Robert "Bob" Daly a job there too, because he was so skilled programming the IBM 407.

IBM 407 Accounting Machine showing detail of plugboard.
The IBM 407 Accounting Machine is "programmed" by changing wires on this plugboard.

One of Marge's first assignments was to compare assembly language programming to FORTRAN programming. Her findings are that FORTRAN is quicker to use and easier for other programmers to understand. She quickly became the FORTRAN expert of her group. She even got to work with the brilliant John McCarthy. John has been promoting the notion of timesharing computer systems at MIT and beyond. These computers are so fast that, John reasons, that several people can use them at once.

Marge tells me that Corby thought she and Bob are the best programmers on the staff. CTSS started  as a demo, to demonstrate the feasibility of computer timesharing. This demo turned into a viable system, something people wanted to actually use. She worked one-on-one a lot with Corby, rehashing the problems. They ended up working a lot at odd hours, staying up late going over listings and working out the problems. Kind of like those “hackers” I told you about last year. She was so excited when she told me that it finally worked for two Flexowriters.

Fernando Corbato stands amidst an IBM 7090 computer system.
MIT's Fernando Corbato standing amidst some of an IBM 7090 computer system at MIT.

Corby worked on programming the supervisor and queueing, while Marge took the task of coding interrupt handling, saving the state of the machine, commands, character handling, and a method for inputting and editing lines for the demos. Bob Daly was best at translating this to the mechanical working of the computer.

After co-writing this paper, Marge got married and took a leave of absence after her first child was born. She did return to MIT last year (1963), and is working part-time on smaller support projects outside the mainstream of CTSS development. It’s troubling how difficult it is for a woman to juggle fulfilling technical work with the demands of raising a young family.

Things to Come

Next time, I will tell you about our newest Supercomputer, the CDC 6600. This remarkable machine, designed by that wag Seymour Cray, is being installed in Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory right now. It is so fast and hot that it has to be cooled by Freon, which is making for a lot of fuss with air conditioning technicians coming and going to the lab. I spend a lot of time making copies of "Site Preparation Guide" manuals for everyone from the managers to the technicians. There's a lot more to these computers than just programming languages, that's for sure.  I hear that IBM is working on a new computer system, the 360. One of its requirements is that the pieces be able to fit through standard doors, and ride in standard elevators. Guess buyers are getting tired of having to break through walls to get their computers installed!

CDC 6600 computer system
Installation manual photo of the CDC 6600. Look at that display console with the two round screens, perfect decor for your evil lair.

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Science / Space Race

[Oct. 16, 1964] Three in One (The next leg of the Space Race)

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by Gideon Marcus

A whole new ballgame

It's not often that news of the next stage in the Space Race is eclipsed by an even bigger story.  Yet that's exactly what happened this tumultuous week, a handful of days so crazy that we halted publication ("STOP THE PRESSES!") to keep up with events.

It all started with "Kosmos 47", launched just after midnight (San Diego time) on October 6.  While the Soviets were typically close-lipped about its purpose, from its orbital path, it was suspected that the 24 hour flight was actually an uncrewed test of a new type of Soviet spacecraft.

Sure enough, just six days later, Voskhod ("Sunrise") #1 took off.  On board were three cosmonauts: Commander Vladimir Mikahilovich Komarov, civilian scientist Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov, and civilian physician Boris Borisovich Yegorov.

This is huge news — both the American Mercury and Soviet Vostok space programs ended more than a year ago.  Those spacecraft only fit one person.  Since then, the United States has been hard at work on both its three-person Apollo lunar craft and its intermediate two-seat Gemini ship.  Although Gemini has already flown once, the first crewed flight won't happen until early next year.

And here are the Soviets, already throwing up a three person spaceship!  Could they be closer to a Moon mission than we thought?

On their eighth orbit, Voskhod's cosmonauts passed over the United States and radioed, "From aboard the spaceship, Voskhod, we convey our best wishes to the industrious American people.  We wish the people of the United States peace and happiness."

Interestingly, a second radio exchange was heard afterwards, during orbit sixteen: the three cosmonauts requested permission to extend the mission beyond 24 hours.  The request was denied, and the flight ended just one day after it had begun.

Why is this strange?  Well, one of the stated goals of the mission was "Extended medio-biological investigations in conditions of a long flight."  And while 24 hours is a long flight by American standards (that of Gordo Cooper in Faith 7 was about a day and a half), the Soviets have been flying day-long and longer missions since Gherman Titov's flight in 1961.  Did something go wrong with the spaceship? 

It turns out the problem was on the ground.  Even as the three cosmonauts were making history in space, the Presidium was holding a vote of no confidence, citing Khruschev's age and health as reasons for his dismissal.  Leonid Brezhnev was elevated to Secretary of the Communist Party and Andrei Kosygin was named Premier.  When the space travelers landed, they were whisked to Moscow where they must have been quite surprised to meet the new leadership!

Still, regardless of who is wearing the crown behind the Iron Curtain, there is no question that Voskhod was a tremendous accomplishment.  The question now is: What will they follow it up with?

Beep Beep, says America

Though perhaps not as impressive to some, the United States maintains the lead in automated space science.  Just this month, we launched the two latest Explorer satellites, 21 and 22.  And while those numbers seem a lot lower than what the Soviet "Kosmos" series has gotten up to, we have to remember that Kosmos conceals a wide variety of satellites, most of which have never resulted in a scientific paper.  They have probably snapped a great many photos of Midwest missile bases, though.

In contrast, the Explorer program is just one of many devoted to returning scientific data from the heavens.  Explorer 21, launched on October 4 (seven years after Sputnik) is the second of its type.  Also known as Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP) B, its job is the same as that of Explorer 18, launched in last year — to measure the magnetic fields, cosmic rays, solar wind, and charged particles far from the Earth.  This helps us understand the physics of the solar system, and it lets us map the electromagnetic "terrain" of the space between Earth and the Moon.  The IMPs are blazing a trail for Apollo, making sure it's safe for people out there.

Unfortunately, the third stage on IMP-B's Thor Delta launch booster fizzled, and instead of soaring 160,000 miles from the Earth, Explorer 21 barely gets to 60,000.  This is within the hellish Van Allen radiation belts, so even though Explorer 21's nine instruments are performing perfectly, the data being returned tells nothing about the universe beyond Earth's magnetic system.

However, Explorer 22, launched October 10, is doing just fine.  It's the last of NASA's first phase of ionospheric explorers, measuring the electron density in the upper atmosphere.  Before your eyes glaze, that just means it sees how electrically charged the air is in the layer that reflects radio waves.  Such experiments help us better understand how the Sun affects our broadcasts — and allows us to make plans for unusual space weather events. 

The satellite, also known as Beacon Satellite B ("A" failed to orbit on March 29) is also the first of NASA's geodetic satellites, measuring the shape of the Earth with tremendous precision.  What's neat about Explorer 22 is that the spacecraft is actually quite unsophisticated, just three radio beacons and a laser reflector.  More noteworthy are the 80 tracking stations run by 50 scientific groups in 32 countries.  These provide a worldwide web, collecting navigational data on an unprecedented scale.

And since it's a civilian probe, we'll probably even share the information with the Communists.  You tell me who's winning the Space Race…

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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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Science / Space Race

[Aug. 17, 1964] Yes and No (Talking to a Machine, Part 1)

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by Gideon Marcus

Making sense of it all

Computers can do amazing things these days. Twenty years ago, they were vacuum tube-filled monstrosities purpose-built for calculating artillery trajectories; now, they are sleek, transistorized mini-monstrosities that do everything from calculating income tax to booking vacations across multiple airlines. It used to be that computers were mathematically inclined women — these days, digital computers do everything those able women did, and many times faster.

This is an absolute miracle when you realize just how limited a digital computer really is. It's about the dumbest, simplest thing you can imagine. Appropriately, the successful operation of a computer, and programming those operations, is one of the more abstruse topics I've come across. Certainly, no one has ever been able to give me a concise education on the subject.

I'm a naive (or arrogant) person. I'm going to try to give you one. It's a complex topic, though, so I'm going to try to break it into "bite"-sized parts. Read on for part one!

Ones and Zeroes

Whether you know it or not, you are already familiar with the concept of binary. Your light switch is either on or off. Your television, your radio, your blender — all of them are either in operation or not. There is no in-between (or, at least, there shouldn't be).

A digital computer is nothing but a big bunch of places where you process ons and offs; for simplicity's sake, let's call an off "0" and an on "1". Inside every computer is a place for storing 1s and 0s called its "memory". If you've ever seen medieval chain mail, you have an idea what it looks like, a net of metal rings, each of which can be individually magnetized. If a ring is magnetized, the computer sees it as on or "1". If not, it sees it as off or "0".

Now, there's not a lot of information you can store there — just the on/off state. But what if you grouped of eight of these binary digits (or "bits") so that your computer knew they were associated? Then you could have all sorts of 8-digit groups (called "bytes"). For instance:

00000000
11111111
11110000
00001111
10000001

and so on. All told, you could have 256 combinations of ones and zeroes in each of these groups, and that's enough to be useful. Here's how.

Three simple tasks

A computer, at its heart, can do just three things:

  1. Store information. Think of a computer's memory as a post office, and each byte is a mailbox. In fact, in computing, these mailboxes are called addresses. Each address can store one of the 256 combinations of ones and zeroes.
  2. Do arithmetic. A computer is designed to be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
  3. Compare numbers. A computer can look at two different numbers and tell you if one is equal to, greater than, or less than the other.

That's it! When I first learned that, I (like you) wondered "how the heck can something like that do something complicated like making sure my Allegheny Airlines reservation gets transferred to Eastern for my trip to New York?"

As it turns out, these three basic computer functions are sufficient for that task — if you are clever in how you instruct a computer to do them.

Talking in numbers

Remember that a computer can only speak in binary digits ("binary" for short.) Let's say a computer has been hard-coded to know that when you input "110", you mean "store the following number in the following address." If you input "101" it means "add the number in the following address to whatever is in this other, following address. And let's say "111" means "print out whatever is in the following address."

A very simple program, computing A + B = C might look like this (for the sake of simplicity, let's say that your computer's memory has 256 addresses in which it can store bytes, each addressed with digits 00000001 through 11111111):

  1. 110 1 00000001
  2. 110 10 00000010
  3. 110 0 000000011
  4. 101 000000001 00000011
  5. 101 000000010 00000011
  6. 111 000000011

In English, that's:

  1. Put "1" in address #1.
  2. Put "2" in address #2.

    3. (how does 10 equal 2? Just like when you add 1 to 9 in normal, base 10 arithmetic, you make the ones place 0 and carry the one into the tens place.  In binary, 1 is the most that can ever fit into a digit — so if you add 1, you make that place zero and carry the 1 to the next place over.

    Thus 1 + 1 = 10 (2), 10 (2) + 1 = 11 (3), 10 (2) + 10 (2) = 100 (4) …and 11111111 =255!)

  3. Put "0" in address #3 (just to make sure we're starting from zero — if a program had used that byte before, it might not be empty!)
  4. Add whatever is in address #1 (in this case, 1) to whatever's in address #3 (so far, nothing).
  5. Add whatever is in address #2 (in this case, 2) to whatever's in address #3 (so far, 1).
  6. Show me what's in address #3: The answer should be "3" (because 1+2=3). Except, it will probably be displayed as "11" because this is a computer we're talking about.

Good grief, that's a headache, and that's just for one simple bit of math. The first big problem is just remembering the commands. How is anyone supposed to look at that code and know what those initial numbers mean?

An easier way

The folks at IBM, Univac, CDC, etc. solved that particular problem pretty easily. They designed a program (entered in binary) that translates easier-to-remember three letter alphanumeric codes into binary numbers. Thus, someone could write the above program as, for example:

  1. STO 1 00000001
  2. STO 10 00000010
  3. STO 11 00000000
  4. ADD 000000001 00000011
  5. ADD 000000010 00000011
  6. SHO 000000011

STO, ADD, and SHO make a bit more intuitive sense than strings of numbers, after all.

And since you can translate letters to binary, why not numbers and addresses?

  1. STO 1 A1
  2. STO 2 A2
  3. STO 0 A3
  4. ADD A1 A3
  5. ADD A2 A3
  6. SHO A3

Note, these are not commands in any actual language — I made them up. And each computer system will have its own set of commands unique to the system, but real code will look something like this.

This easier to understand, mnemonic language is called "Assembly" because the program assembles your commands into something the computer understands (remember — they only know ones and zeroes).

Hitting the ceiling

Assembly makes it easier to program a computer, but it's still tedious. Just adding 1+2 took five lines. Imagine wanting to do something simple like computing the hypotenuse of a right triangle:

In geometry class, we learned that A2 + B2 = C2.

The first part of that is easy enough.

  1. STO A A1 (store A in address A1)
  2. STO B A2 (store B in address A2)
  3. STO 0 A3 (Clear out address A3 for use)
  4. MUL A1 A1 (multiply what's in A1 by itself)
  5. MUL A2 A2 (multiple what's in A2 by itself)
  6. ADD A1 A3 (add what's now in A1 to what's in A3)
  7. ADD A2 A3 (add what's now in A2 to what's in A3)

All right. That gets us A2 + B2 in the third address…but how do we get the square root of C2?

When I wrote this, I had no idea. I've since talked to a programmer. She showed me a thirty line program that I still don't understand. Sure, it works, but thirty lines for a simple equation? There has to be an easier way, one that doesn't involve me pulling out my accursed slide rule.

There is! To find out how, join us for the next installment of this series!

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Science / Space Race

[August 1, 1964] On Target (The Successful Flight of Ranger 7)

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With the recent American lunar triumph, it is appropriate to take a look back at the long road that winds from Sputnik and ends in Oceanus Procellarum…


by Gideon Marcus

Shooting the Moon

It all began with a dream.

The Moon has captured our imaginations since we were first definably human.  Some two thousand years ago, the Greeks learned that the Moon was our closest celestial companion; it took another 1800 years for Galileo to determine that it was a spherical body, not unlike the Earth. 

It is no surprise that this discovery spawned some of our earliest science fiction stories: Godwins's The Man in the Moone, Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, Wells' recently cinemized The First Men in the Moon. 

With the launch of Sputnik, the heavens were broken open, and science fiction could be made fact.  Indeed, just after the Soviets launched their first satellite, the engineers at Ramo-Wooldrige's (now TRW) Space Technology Laboratories, made plans to build their own Moon rocket out of boosters already in existence, mating the Thor missile they had developed with the Vanguard rocket's second and third stages.  With luck, they would have probe around the Moon less than a year after the inauguration of the Space Age.

It was an ambitious plan.  Too ambitious.  The first of the so-called Pioneers blew up on the launch pad.  The next, Pioneer 1, made it halfway to the Moon before, like Icarus, falling back to Earth.  Pioneer 2 barely limped out of the Earth's atmosphere before burning up.

So ended the first American Moon program.  Enter Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Situated across the San Fernando Valley from its rival, JPL was working with Von Braun's Jupiter rocket, the same one that had launched America's first satellite, Explorer 1.  Unfortunately, JPL's first attempt, Pioneer 3, also faltered on the way. 

And then came the Soviets' turn.

Red Moon

1959 began with a Dream, a Russian Dream.  On January 3, Mechta ("dream") sailed off toward and past the Moon, the first human-made object to become a satellite of the Sun.  The American success of Pioneer 4, two months later, was subsequently eclipsed when the second Mechta impacted the Moon in September, depositing Soviet medals upon Earth's companion — the first interplanetary delivery. 

Capping off this lunar tour de force was the Soviet follow-up, called Luna 3, Lunik 3, and Mechta 3.  Not only did this probe sail around the Moon, but it took pictures.  These missions were not just engineering and prestige shots, they were returning valuable information about the Moon.  It had no magnetic field, for instance.  The never-before seen Far Side was curiously devoid of the "seas" that mottle its Earth-facing surface.

We had to know more.

Local Space Race

With JPL batting .500 with its Pioneers, STL decided it needed to do better than its .000 average (though, to be fair, the flight of Pioneer 1 was a triumph for its time).  Mating the Vanguard stages of its prior Pioneer rocket to the beefy Atlas ICBM, the boys from Redondo Beach were sure they could launch the first bonafide lunar observatory into orbit around the Moon.

It didn't work.  1959-60 saw four failed attempts, all botched because the bleeding-edge Atlas wasn't yet up to the task (and how reassuring that must have been to the Mercury astronauts who had to ride the thing in a couple of years!)

One team's failure is another's opportunity.  While the second STL lunar endeavor was ending in tears, JPL was already hard at work on its own second-generation Moon project: Ranger.

Ranger was actually two programs in one.  This reflected the tension between the engineers, who wanted a craft that could make it the Moon and return information about its surface (of immediate use to a crewed lunar program), and the scientists, who wanted not only to learn about the Moon, but the space between it and the Earth.

The first two Rangers weren't even built to go to the Moon.  Planned to be launched into high orbits on a combination of the Atlas and a powerful second stage called the Vega (this civilian stage later substituted with the military's Agena), Rangers 1 and 2 would measure magnetic fields and the solar wind.

Would, but never did.  Ranger 1 and Ranger 2 both were stranded in useless low orbits due to booster malfunctions (plus ça change).  On the other hand, the satellites themselves were sound, and a modified Block 1 Ranger became the highly successful Venus probe, Mariner 2, in 1962.

Never mind them.  Rangers 3-5 were the real lunar probes, even including giant balsawood pimples on the end, which housed seismometers that could survive impact with the Moon.  It was more important than ever that we know what the lunar surface was like now that President Kennedy had announced that we would, as a nation, put a man on the Moon and bring him safely back to Earth before the decade was out.

Easier said than done.  Ranger 3, launched in January 1962, missed the Moon.  Moreover, it sailed past while facing the wrong way.  The probe took no useful pictures, and a failure of the onboard computer prevented the acquisition of sky science data.

The identical Ranger 4 was both more and less successful.  From a launch and trajectory perspective, it was perfect: On April 26, 1962, Ranger 4 became the first American probe to hit the Moon.  Unfortunately, it was an inert frame of metal by that time; NASA might as well have shot a cannonball.  In fact, the probe never worked, the first Ranger not to function at all in space. 

Still, the mission was heralded (rightfully) as a partial success.  Surely Ranger 5, last in the Block 2 series, would be a win.

No dice.  Ranger 5, launched in October 1962, lost internal power shortly after take-off and sailed silently past the Moon two days later.

Sharper Focus

For those keeping count, the Americans were now 1 for 14 in the Moon Race, a record even worse than that of last year's San Francisco 49ers.  As 1962 drew to a close, JPL undertook an internal audit and came to the following conclusions:

  • JPL's management structure was unsuited to big, complicated projects like Ranger
  • Ranger was too complicated, too dependent on every system working perfectly
  • The general scientific objectives conflicted with the specific, Apollo-supporting objectives

The result was a beefed up management staff that would focus primarily on Ranger until the probe worked.  And a newer, leaner Ranger.

Ranger, Block 3, had one job.  It would crash into the Moon, taking TV pictures all the way down.  No other science experiments.  Up came the hue and cry from scientists, but the decision was made.  As it was, it would take at least another year to develop and launch Ranger 6.  It had to work.

It didn't.

Ranger 6 had a textbook launch on January 30, 1964.  Shortly after the probe reached space, its TV system inexplicably turned itself on and off, but otherwise, all was well.  Indeed, Ranger 6 cruised through its mid-flight course correction burn like a dream, pointed straight and true for the Moon's Sea of Tranquility.  JPL Director William Pickering felt confident enough to declare, "I am cautiously optimistic."

But when it came time for Ranger 6 to do its job, to take TV pictures of the Moon, it stubbornly refused.  The probe impacted the lunar surface without returning a single shot.

Uproar.  Six failures in a row.  There was serious Congressional talk of shutting down the Ranger program altogether.  On the other hand, the mission had been almost entirely successful.  There was every reason to believe (or at least hope) that improved check-out procedures on the next, already built, Ranger 7, would lead to a completely successful mission.  After a NASA investigation and a Congressional inquiry, JPL was given one more chance.

Dream into Reality

Opportunities for lunar missions come once a month, when the Moon is situated such that the least energy is required for a rocket from Earth to reach it.  The latest such apparition started on July 27, the opening of the lunar "window."  Ranger 7's powerful Atlas-Agena rocket, now the most reliable part of the mission infrastructure, stood ready on the launchpad.  The countdown was steady, until, just 51 minutes before the scheduled launch, a faulty telemetry battery had to be replaced.  It was, and the countdown resumed…but the a fatal flaw in a ground guidance component meant that the launch had to be scrubbed. 

But only for a day.  On July 28, the countdown proceeded smoothly, and at 9:50am PDT, Ranger 7 was sent into orbit.  The onboard TV system appeared to be working normally, and half an hour later, the Agena engine fired once more, propelling the spacecraft toward the Moon.

So accurate was this burn that Ranger 7 didn't need a mid-course correction to hit the Moon.  However, the path it was to take would carry it to the lunar Far Side, which would make the transmission of TV pictures impossible.  A day after launch, a short engine burn aimed the probe directly for its destination: The Sea of Clouds.

In the early morning on July 31, 1964, reporters and cameramen once again filed into JPL's von Karman Auditorium for Ranger 7's final descent.  Just six months ago, Ranger 6 had been so disappointing that Walter Downhower, the Chief of the System Design Section who had been the voice over the auditorium speakers that day, refused to ever do that job again.

This time, JPL's George Nichols was the voice of Ranger as it zoomed toward the Moon at 5000 miles per hour.  At 3:07am PDT (yes, I stayed up, too), Nichols was able to announce that Ranger's television system and its six cameras were working properly.  Three minutes later, the first images taken from the vicinity of the Moon began to pour in as a stream of ones and zeroes on a telemetry stream.  Five minutes went by.  Still going.  Ten minutes.  Then, at 6:25 PDT, the hum of Ranger's telemetry abruptly cut off.

But this was a planned cessation — Ranger had hit the Moon!

Where we Stand

In all, some 4,316 pictures were taken of the Moon, all of higher resolution than is possible from Earthbound telescopes.  JPL identified dozens of new craters, never before seen.  One cluster was probably made by rocks thrown into the sky when the giant impact crater, Copernicus, was formed ages ago, two hundred miles away from where Ranger 7 crashed.  More importantly, NASA has gotten its first close-up look of the lunar surface; JPL scientists have identified favorable and treacherous landscapes for the upcoming Apollo missions to land on.

There will be at least two more Block III Ranger flights aimed at other parts of the Moon.  Plans to continue the series through to #14 are in doubt given that the upcoming Lunar Orbiter project (managed by Langley Research Center in Virginia) may already be flying by the time the later Rangers are ready.

And what about the Soviets?  What happened to the madcap competitive days of 1958-9?

As it turns, out, the USSR has had just one lunar probe since then: Luna 4.  Launched during the gloomiest days of Ranger, on April 2, 1963, it was highly touted by Soviet news services.  Three days later, as the craft approached the Moon, TASS and Izvestia reported that a bonanza of science would be forthcoming.

Then…nothing.  The probe sailed past the Moon with hardly any coverage.  A couple of conferences scheduled for the discussion of Luna 4's results were quietly canceled.  Per the British astronomer, Sir Bernard Lovell, the craft actually failed in its mission to enter lunar orbit.

This brings up the interesting possibility that the Soviets have launched other Moon missions and that none of them have been successful enough to be publicly announced.  That would explain some of the Kosmos flights about which the Russians have been so terse in their reporting.  It may well be that the Soviet Union is finding the Moon as tough a target as the Americans were.

The bottom line, then, is this: After five years of diligent effort (presumably by both of the planet's Superpowers), the Americans have emerged the victors in this second stage of the Moon race.

Who will win the third?

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Science / Space Race

[June 6, 1964] Going Up from Down Under (The launch of the Blue Streak rocket)

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by Kaye Dee

I’m so excited at the moment because, after several cancelled launch attempts, the first test flight of the Blue Streak rocket went off successfully yesterday (June 5) — it makes me wish I was back at the Weapons Research Establishment right now working on the trials computing! This is the first time such a large rocket has been launched at Woomera. The Blue Streak is just on 70ft tall and 10 ft in diameter, so it made quite a sight sitting on the launchpad at the edge of Lake Hart, which is a salt- lake that only occasionally gets filled with water. I went out there a few times when I visited Woomera and the contrast between the red earth, the deep blue sky and the white salt-lake is quite striking.

The Blue Streak rocket has something of a chequered history. When it started development in 1955 as a long-range ballistic missile for Britain’s nuclear deterrent, I don’t think anyone imagined it becoming a satellite launcher. The idea then was to fire it at targets in Eastern Europe or the USSR from either Britain or British-held territory in the Middle East. In fact, the Blue Streak design was based on the American Atlas missile, although Rolls Royce developed its new RZ-2 LOX/Kerosene engines for the British version.

When the Commonwealth Government agreed in 1956 to allow Blue Streak to be tested in Australia, it led to a huge development programme to open up the full length of Woomera Range for use, because the trial flights were planned to cover well over one thousand miles, travelling north-west from Lake Hart almost to the Indian Ocean! From Lake Hart, tracking, measuring and recording instruments had to be installed across the deserts of central Australia all the way to the Talgarno impact area in Western Australia. They even built a small town at Talgarno to house the researchers who would examine each missile when it impacted at the end of its test flight. Mr. Len Beadell, who is a real character and an incredible bush surveyor (he actually surveyed the area for the Woomera Range when it was first established), put together a road building team and they have graded hundreds of miles of new roads through the outback, along the length of the downrange to Talgarno.

So it was a big shock to us here in Australia when Britain decided that Blue Streak was already obsolete as a weapon and cancelled the programme in April 1960, without any real consultation with the Australian Government. As you can imagine, this caused a major outcry here and in the UK and there was a lot of political embarrassment all round. 

But as early as 1957 I was reading articles in British aerospace magazines about the possibility of turning Blue Streak into the first stage of a satellite launch vehicle using a Black Knight, which is a large British sounding rocket used for defence research at Woomera, as the upper stage. This sounded like a great way for Britain to develop its own launch capability, but the UK Government wasn’t interested until it started looking for a way to recoup some of the enormous investment in Blue Streak after they cancelled it as a missile. The initial idea was for a Commonwealth satellite launcher to be developed and used by Britain and other Commonwealth nations. However, New Zealand was the only Commonwealth country that expressed any interest in that project — even the Government here didn’t show any interest, which really surprised me given how much work we do with sounding rockets at Woomera and space tracking for NASA. Anyway, with so little interest that idea went nowhere.

However, Britain wasn’t giving up on the satellite launcher idea and started to canvass European nations for their interest in developing a European launch vehicle so that they would not have to rely on the Americans to launch satellites for them. Of course, the British probably also thought that this project might help to smooth its way into the European Economic Community, which they are very keen on joining. By 1962, France, Belgium, West Germany, Italy and the Netherlands all agreed to participate in the rocket project. This has led to the formation of the European Launcher Development Organisation, which we call ELDO. Because of the complexity of the international negotiations needed to ratify its charter, ELDO didn’t formally come into existence until 29 February this year, but work has been going on since 1962.

Under its charter, ELDO is going to develop an independent, non-military European satellite carrier rocket, to be called Europa. The Blue Streak will be the first stage of the rocket. France will provide the second stage, which is going to be called Coralie (and I’m told that’s partly because Coralie rhymed with Australie, the French word for Australia). West Germany is going to produce the third stage: I think is going to be called Astris. The test satellite that will be launched by the Europa is being developed under the leadership of Italy, while The Netherlands and Belgium will be responsible for the development of telemetry and guidance systems. So all the countries in ELDO will have a part to play in the programme.

Australia’s part will be to provide the launch site for the Europa rockets. Since the Blue Streak is the first stage, it makes sense to use the launchpad and other facilities already built at Woomera for ELDO’s launch operations. This makes us the only non-European member of ELDO. In fact, the Commonwealth Government has insisted that Australia be considered a full, but non-paying, member of ELDO, contributing the Woomera facilities and their operation in lieu of the financial commitment that the other member states are making.

Because Britain and France are the two largest contributors to ELDO, both English and French are working languages in the consortium. The official ELDO logo carries the acronyms of both its English and French names. The French version CECLES stands for Conseil européen pour la construction de lanceurs d'engins spatiaux, which is a bit of a mouthful! It’s going to be really interesting to see if all the member countries can overcome their different national rivalries and their different languages to make the complete Europa rocket successfully come together.

At least yesterday’s first test launch of the Blue Streak was a success. Although there was a problem with sloshing of the propellant as the fuel tanks emptied which caused the rocket to roll about quite a bit in the last few seconds of its flight and to land short of its intended target zone, the instrumentation along the flight corridor acquired a huge amount of useful information about the rockets performance. I was so thrilled with the news of the Blue Streak flight that I even phoned my former supervisor Mary Whitehead last night to hear more about it (and I’m going to have to give my sister the money for that long-distance trunk call, which I’m sure will be expensive).

Mary was at the Range for the launch and she told me that the rocket looked spectacular as it rose up into the blue sky out of its cloud of orange exhaust. She’s especially proud of the fact that the zigzag pattern you can see on the Blue Streak was her idea. It enables the tracking cameras to make very accurate measurements as the rocket rolls after leaving the launchpad. Using the pattern, the cameras can easily measure if, and how far, the rocket rolls depending on where that diagonal was relative to the top and bottom stripes. I know she’s looking forward to seeing how well this worked.

I’m looking forward to the next test flight, and Australia's further involvement in the Space Age!

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