Tag Archives: space

Science / Space Race

[June 6, 1961] America’s Answer to Lunik: Project Ranger

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by Lawrence Klaes

[The Space Race continues to run at an ever-accelerating pace.  To keep up with all the new developments, I've tapped my friend and fellow professional space historian to tell us a very special program that just might score for the United States in the next inning…]

President Kennedy declared three weeks ago before Congress that America shall make the bold step of “sending a man to the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” before the end of this decade.  This has given a much needed – and quite literal – boost to the American space program. 

It couldn’t have come at a better time.  Since that day in October of 1957 when our geopolitical and space rivals, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR for short, lofted that 184-pound silvery sphere they called Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit, the Communists have handily outpaced us on virtually all key fronts of the Space Race.  First animal in orbit.  First man in orbit.  First probe to Venus.  First victories in the race to that big golden prize in our night sky, the Moon.

In one year alone, 1959, the Soviets sent the first space probe flying past the Moon and on into solar orbit.  This was followed by the first manmade vehicle to impact another world, with their Luna 2 littering the lunar dust with pennants engraved with the Soviet Coat of Arms.  The USSR rounded out their lunar triumphs of 1959 with a circumlunar imaging mission that revealed the hitherto unseen lunar farside.

So which Superpower will be the first to orbit the Moon?  The first to land, with robots and then with manned spacecraft?  Experts in various fields might understandably side with the Soviet Union, including those in the West.  In a mission-by-mission comparison, America’s efforts at exploring and conquering the Moon pale.

All of the first three Air Force Pioneer lunar probes fell short of their celestial goal.  Of the next two, made to order by Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California (JPL), Pioneer 4 alone escaped the confines of Earth’s gravity and headed into interplanetary space in March 1959.  Unfortunately, the small conical craft was many thousands of miles too far away for its scientific instruments to examine the Moon and slipped on to join its Soviet counterpart, Luna 1, in solar orbit.

Then it was STL’s turn again with their advanced Atlas Able Pioneers.  All four of them failed.  Spectacularly.

And so, back to JPL.  They have a new robotic lunar exploration program that they are confident will return some of NASA’s prestige in space and ensure that one day soon the Stars and Stripes will be standing tall on the lunar surface — before the Hammer and Sickle.  Named Ranger, it is actually a three-step program of increasingly sophisticated species of spacecraft: what the space agency calls Blocks.

The two Block I machines will fly this year.  Looking like an oil rig with two long solar panel “wings” at its base and a large high-gain directional dish antenna beneath, the first two Rangers will initially enter an Earth parking orbit and gradually be moved farther out into space until well beyond the Moon.  There the controllers at JPL will put the probes through their paces to see how they handle the cislunar environment to improve upon the next blocks of Ranger missions.  These won’t just be engineering flights; each Block I Ranger it will also fly a suite of scientific instruments. 

Now, JPL thought these science Rangers were good enough to make good Venus probes, too.  Their intention was to launch these modified Rangers using the Atlas-Agena B combination of rockets. 

NASA rejected this plan, instead asking JPL to develop a more ambitious planetary probe labeled Mariner A, which would use an Atlas rocket with the powerful Liquid Oxygen Centaur second stage.  The Centaur booster has a more powerful payload lifting capability, which translates into sending their Mariner A concept with more scientific instruments to either Venus or Mars.

However, the Centaur has had a number of technical issues during its development.  There is genuine concern that the new booster will not be ready in time to send a probe to Venus during the 1962 launch window.  A delay would mean waiting for the next launch window over two years hence.  NASA officials and others are quite certain that the Soviets could have their own Venus probes on their way to the second world from the Sun by next year.  A successful exploration of that planet would bring yet another space victory and political glory to the communist nation.  Thus the Ranger bus option to flyby Venus and see what dwells under its mysterious bank of clouds remains a plausible alternative.

Back to the Moon: the first Block I Ranger is scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida atop an Atlas-Agena B for late July, 1961.  Its sister probe, Ranger 2, will follow into space aboard a similar rocket sometime in October.

Ranger Block II will be the first Moon missions.  Scheduled for 1962, three probes will fly through the airless void to make a direct hit on the Moon.  The original proposal called simply for each Ranger to carry a TV camera to map potential landing sites.  But, just as nature abhors a vacuum, scientists abhor minimum missions.  Thus, some of the sky science experiments from Block I will make their way to Block II — over the protests of engineers, who abhor complication. 

The neatest bit is the MoonQuake detector.  It is hoped that the Rangers will not be completely destroyed at the end of their missions: Each probe carries atop its main bus a thick sphere of balsa wood.  At the very center of each ball is a seismometer which will determine if the Moon produces quakes just as they occur on Earth.  The balsa sphere will protect the sensitive geological instrument upon impact with the lunar surface.  Six silver cadmium batteries will power the seismometer for up to one month after the rough landing. 

Just as with earthquake science here on Earth, the Ranger 3 through 5 science packages should teach us much about the composition of the lunar interior and if the Moon is still geologically active or not.  Although most scientists now accept that the vast majority of lunar craters were caused by ancient meteor and comet impacts, it may be that some of them are actually the calderas of volcanoes.  Scientists want to know if any of them may still be active. 

Finally, we have Ranger Block III.  As with their predecessors, the robot probes of Block III will also be sent plunging into the Moon.  While these mechanical explorers will not survive their high-speed impacts with the lunar crust, they will nevertheless return thousands of increasingly detailed images of particular regions of the Moon in real time using a bank of onboard television cameras.  These images will help scientists understand the finer details of the lunar surface both for geology as well as assisting NASA with future locations for soft landing missions, including manned vessels.

The manned program that will benefit from the findings of the Ranger program is Project Apollo.  The space agency had already planned Apollo as a follow-up spacecraft to Mercury with goals including a circumlunar flight or even a lunar orbital mission.  With President Kennedy’s new mandate to place a man on the Moon by the end of this decade, NASA has already begun to expand Apollo to include the ability to land astronauts on the lunar surface.  Whether this will involve using the entire Apollo craft and the powerful Nova rocket currently on the drawing board or perhaps an alternate concept of a separate Apollo craft and lander will be decided after much study and debate.

One thing from all this is certain, though: The Soviet Union has clear ambitions for the ultimate high ground of space.  Should the Soviets come to dominate Earth orbit and our neighboring worlds, especially if they include nuclear arms in this mix, the American way of life will be under a greater threat than ever before since the end of the last World War and the start of the Cold War. 

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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

[April 12, 1961] Stargrazing (the flight of Vostok)

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The jangling of the telephone broke my slumber far too early.  Groggily, I paced to the handset, half concerned, half furious.  I picked it up, but before I could say a word, I heard a frantic voice.

"Turn on your radio right now!"

I blinked.  "Wha.." I managed. 

"Really!" the voice urged.  I still didn't even know who was calling. 

Nevertheless, I went to the little maroon Zenith on my dresser and turned the knob.  The 'phone was forgotten in my grip as I waited for the tubes to warm up.  10 seconds later, I heard the news.

It had happened.  A man had been shot into orbit.  And it wasn't one of ours.

Last night, Major Yuri Alekseyivich Gagarin blasted off from the Soviet Union in his Vostok spacecraft (Vostok means "East" in Russian, and it is in that direction that the rocket flew).  He circled the Earth once before landing with his vehicle.  Protected only by steel walls and a space suit, he made it to orbit and back.  I had to sit down, so dizzying was the news.

I've now had a few hours to think about this event and determine just what it means for all of us.

For ages, humanity has dreamed about journeying to outer space.  We have now finally taken our first shuffling steps off of our world. 

Half a century ago, a Russian named Tsiolkovsky determined the first practical way to get there — at the tips of rockets.  So it is appropriate that the first human to traverse the regions beyond our atmosphere was a Russian. 

For the Communists, it is yet another victory in a race that as yet has no finish line.  A demonstration of their superior rocketry, or perhaps a greater willingness to gamble with a person's life. 

For the Americans, it is a challenge to meet, not a discouragement.  "It doesn't change our program one bit," said Marine Colonel John Glenn, who may well be the first American in space.

For science fiction fans, the impact is tremendous.  We have been writing about space travel for decades like a virgin writes about intercourse: avidly, but without experience.  Just the other month, there were published stories involving the predicted psychic and physical dangers of space, too horrible to be surmounted.

And yet, Gagarin did it.  If he can, others will.  Space may not be safe, but it is survivable.

Soon, we will have a flood of new data, and our s-f stories will change accordingly to accommodate.  I expect we'll have fewer tales of astronauts who jaunt out in their rocket as if they're out on a Sunday drive, more stories of space programs and the thousands of engineers who make up the bulk of the logistical iceberg. 

Some have opined that the more we explore the frontiers that were once solely the province of fiction, the less magical we make our world.  I must disagree.  This new frontier has hardly been touched, and even when we have thoroughly mapped the regions of low orbit, there is then high orbit, the Moon, the planets, the stars.  Each frontier is a gateway to the next.

Today, science fiction is fact, and the domain of science fiction has broadened.  I've never been more excited.

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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Science / Space Race

[March 31, 1961] Real-world round-up for March

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Here's an end of March, real-world round-up for you before we plunge into the science fiction of April:


http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHP-AR6454-B.aspx

President Kennedy devoted a good deal of time to the civil war in Laos at his fifth press conference, March 23.  This three-cornered fight between the nationalists (propped up by the United States), the Communist Pathet Lao (backed by the Soviets and the North Vietnamese), and the neutralists has been going on since the end of last year.  The US Navy Seventh Fleet was recently dispatched to the region along with a contingent of troops.  For a while, it looked as if we were looking at another Korea.

I'm happy to report that both Kennedy and Premier Khruschev have now proposed plans for peaceful solutions to the crisis that involve the invading North Vietnamese disarming and going home.  I fervently hope that this means Southeast Asia won't be the site of war in the 1960s.

Speaking of Kennedy and war, the President recently asked Congress for a significantly bigger defense package.  This would see the United States armed with 1200 nuclear-tipped missiles by 1965!

On the dove-ish side of the coin, Kennedy also asked for an increase in the NASA budget for development of the mighty "Saturn C-2", which would facilitate manned flights around the Moon by 1966.

On the subject of space, NASA pilot Joe Walker took the X-15 spaceplane to a record height of 31 miles above the Earth yesterday, more than five miles higher than anyone has flown the craft before.  During a good portion of his 10-minute flight, the plane's stubby wings and control surfaces had nothing to "bite" into, the atmosphere being so rarefied at that altitude.  For all intents and purposes, it was a flight in space, down to the unwinking white stars that filled the daylight sky. 

And he only got halfway to the rocketship's expected maximum altitude!

Meanwhile, the Air Force failed to get into orbit the 22nd in their Discoverer series.  These probes are ostensibly for orbiting and returning biological samples, but they really test components for their Samos spy satellites.  There was supposed to be a monkey on this one, but I haven't read any reports about it.  Perhaps the fly-boys were merciful and just stuffed the spaceship with non-perishable hardware.


http://photos.clevescene.com/28-vintage-photos-karamu-house/?slide=9&children-look-through-a-telescope-at-karamu-house-1961

Now let's look ahead at April.  There will, of course, be the three magazines, IF, Analog, and Fantasy and Science Fiction, the monthly The Twilight Zone round-up, and perhaps a trip to the movies.  I have Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Door Through Space on my bedside table, but it hasn't gripped me yet.  We'll see.

We'll also see more of our new regular columnist, Rosemary Benton, and along those lines, I've got another surprise for you 'round mid-month!

S'okay?  S'alright.

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Science / Space Race

[Mar. 10, 1961] Dog and Puppy Show (Sputnik 9)

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We are definitely not far away from a person in space.  The Soviets launched another of their five-ton spaceships into orbit.  We're calling it Sputnik 9; who knows what they call it?  On board was just one dog this time, name of Chernushka, who was recovered successfully after an unknown number of orbits.  It is pretty clear that the vessel that carried Chernushka is the equivalent of our Mercury capsule, and once the Russians have gotten the bugs out of the ship, you can bet there will be a human at the controls.

This is not to say that the American program is standing still—one of our astronauts may go up on a suborbital jaunt as early as next month.  But the Atlas booster, the big one that can put a man in orbit, won't be ready until the end of the year, at the earliest. 

By the way, if you're wondering how the two dogs who went up in Sputnik 5, Strelka and Belka, are doing, you'll be happy to know that they are alive and well.  Strelka's given birth to a litter of six!  Anyone want to adopt a space puppy?

Meanwhile, closer to home (but not that much closer), NASA sent its X-15 spaceplane on its fastest flight yet.  I explained not too long ago that the X-15 has got a new engine, one designed to propel it to unprecedented heights and speeds. 

Sure enough, the powerful XLR99 engine pushed the spaceplane and pilot Major Bob White to a height of 77,000 feet and a record speed of 2,650 mph (Mach 4.43).  That was nearly 400 mph faster than White had managed using the weaker XLR11 engines—and he didn't even open the throttle wide open!

"I felt no sensation of speed except for the explosive thrust when I first lighted the engine.  That was about double the acceleration of the smaller engine used in earlier flights," White said after the flight had made the Major the fastest man alive. 

While the X-15 will never propel itself to orbit (at least, not without some kind of booster-assisted help, plans for which have been drafted), it will fly as fast as Mach 6 and up to 300,000 feet.  At that height, the sky is black and the limb of the Earth is round; one could argue that it's close enough to Space to count as Space by any measure that matters.

Stay tuned for the rest of this month's Galaxy!

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Science / Space Race

[February 28, 1961] Strings of Success… and Failure (Transit 3B, Venera)

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Before we move on to the latest Space Race update, why don't you mosey on down to your local record store and pick up a copy of Wheels, by the String-a-longs?  It's a swinging tune, and it's been on the radio a lot lately.  It'll keep a smile on your face even when the news threatens to be a drag.

There are good weeks and there are bad weeks.  For the Space Race, this wasn't the best week.

It's been several months since the Navy got one of their Transit navigational satellites up into orbit.  Last year, I raved about these little marvels that make it possible to determine one's position just by listening to the satellite's whistle (and doing a little math).  Two were launched in quick succession, and it seemed a constellation would be established in short order. 

But the third Transit (and its piggyback Solrad probe) failed to launch last November, and its replacement, Transit 3B, had a booster malfunction that stuck it in an eccentric, relatively useless orbit.  In attendance at the ill-fated launch were two of the three Mercury astronauts who have been chosen to make the first manned flights: Alan Shepard and John Glenn (Gus Grissom was in Bermuda).  When asked for their opinions on the botched mission, they voiced their confidence in NASA's rockets. 

The launch may not have been a complete bust.  This Transit had a piggyback, too—the LOw Frequency Transmission through the Ionosphere (LOFTI) satellite.  It will test the ability of submarines to use the VLF band (below the bottom of your AM dial) for communications.  Maybe.  At last report, LOFTI had not detached from Transit 3B as planned, and I don't know if either satellite will work in a Siamese configuration.

The Soviets aren't having a great time of it, either.  Their Venus probe, launched two weeks ago, fizzled out some time before February 26, when it failed to respond to ground-based radio queries.  Venera may not be dead, but it is certainly giving us the silent treatment.  It's a shame—we will have to wait another 11 months for Venus and Earth to be favorably aligned before we see Venera 2 or its American counterpart.

To take the taste out of failure out of our mouths, let's ponder Things to Come.  The Air Force has announced that its next Discoverer capsule-return probe will carry a monkey; look for that launch late next month.  Also, NASA is hard at work developing the next generation lunar probe.  It is called Ranger, and as its "mother" is Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, it will have an entirely different configuration from Space Technology Laboratories' ill-fated Pioneer-Atlas series. 

Fingers crossed!

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Science / Space Race

[Feb. 21, 1961] Trading up (Mercury Atlas 2, Discoverer 21)

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I'm starting to enjoy these musical interludes.  Indulge me while I flip on my hi-fi to play my new favorite pop tune, Del Shannon's Runaway.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm often still as square as a lot of the slightly older set, and I still tap my toes to Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and Count Basie, but I enjoy the new stuff, too.

Now, on to the news.  With all of the talk about Mercury capsules on Redstone rockets, it's easy to forget that the main mission is to get a person into orbit–and you just can't do that without a bigger booster.

It appears that bigger booster, in the form of the Atlas ICBM, is ready to roll.

I actually missed the first flight of Mercury Atlas, back on July 29, 1960, as I was traveling Japan and didn't have easy access to English newspapers.  In that flight, the Atlas' payload was a boilerplate Mercury.  There was also no ejection system or passenger.  The goal was to test the Atlas as well as to plunge the Mercury in a steep reentry angle, simulating an abort situation.

Unfortunately, MA-1 broke up 58 seconds after lift-off.  It was a cloudy day, so no one saw it occur, but when the telemetry stopped and pieces of the craft fell from the sky, it was pretty clear the mission was over.  The culprit was later identified as the junction between the capsule and booster.

MA-2, launched this morning, was a far happier flight.  The sky was perfectly clear, and the mission was a complete success.  It was a short flight, just 17-and-a-half minutes, and it didn't go any farther than Ham's flight last month, but the results were gratifying, nonetheless.  NASA now knows that the Mercury can survive a serious abort situation, and the rocket is ready for an unmanned orbital test.  After that, it we'll just be a chimp away from a fellow in orbit; this could happen as soon as the end of the year, I reckon.

Speaking of chimps, here's Ham enduring the rigors of reentry.  He had to go through an unplanned 17gs of gravity for a few seconds on the way down, poor thing.  He's all right, though, NASA vets assure.

There's a new Discoverer in orbit, Number 21, launched on the 18th.  I don't know why the Air Force launched it so fast on the heels of Number 20, which was sent up just the day before.  It may be because their missions are so different.  #20 is a simple capsule-return mission, differing from prior ones in just the length of the planned mission–four days.  #21 will test an in-orbit engine fire, presumably to test its ability to change photographic targets while over the Soviet Union (assuming it's a spy sat, of course!).  The latter probe also carries more equipment planned for use on the official spy sat, Midas.  It's all a little sketchy; the Air Force is increasingly clamping down on its press releases.

By the way, #20's mission was a bust.  The capsule was supposed to come down yesterday, but it's still in orbit.  Perhaps it was smitten by #21 and decided it just could bear to be apart…

Meanwhile, the Soviet probe to Venus, Venera, continues to sail along.  It is around 4 million kilometers away, and the Russians have confirmed at least three transfers of data.  Like Pioneer 5, it will return science on the interstellar medium all the way to Venus.  In fact, this may be all we get out of it.  Sadly, the probe will miss the mark, ending up perhaps 200,000 kilometers away at closest approach.  That may not be near enough to get much useful information, though you never know.

Still no clarification of the February 4 launch, by the way.  An article in the Feb. 13 Aviation Weekly advances all kinds of theories, one of which is similar to the "spy sat" explanation my daughter advanced.  But in the latest (Feb. 20) issue, it seems the hypothesis I advanced,that Sputnik 7 had the same mission as Sputkin 8 and simply fizzled out, is gaining favor.  The twin launches of Sputniks 7 and 8 (the latter being the rocket from which Venera was launched) have apparently galvanized the American government into action.  Or, at least, a lot of talking…

Finally, Happy Birthday to me!  Like Dr. Asimov, I am a little past 30 (a status I've enjoyed for some time).  A fan nominated me for the Hugo this year.  I'm flattered beyond words; it's a great present.

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Science / Space Race

[Feb. 18, 1961] Lost and Found (Explorer 9 and Discoverer 20)

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February is definitely making up for January's relative paucity of space flights; this week, in particular, has been noteworthy. 

I'd held off reporting on NASA's February 16 launch of Explorer 9 since, well, NASA lost it.  You see, the satellite's beacon was tracked through half an orbit, but then the signal was lost, and no one could confirm that the thing was still up there.  Yesterday, the vehicle was tracked optically, and it looks as if the probe will be able to fulfill its mission.

'What mission?' you ask.  Explorer 9 is a big, polka-dot balloon.  Unlike Echo, whose main purpose is to bounce communications signals across continents, Explorer 9 is an incredibly simple experiment.  By tracking the path of the balloon, scientists can tell a great deal about the air density of the upper atmosphere and the effect of the sun and solar wind thereon.  They will also be able to refine their gravity maps of the world by tracing the satellite's dips and rises as it travels.  It is the very simplicity of this satellite that allows it to function even without a functioning beacon.  As for the polka-dots, they are designed to help regulate the temperature of the 11-foot wide aluminum/mylar sphere.

Perhaps more exciting than the satellite itself is the rocket that launched it.  It was a cheap, civilian-made, four-stage, solid-fuel rocket called Scout.  The exciting bit is that it's the first purpose-built booster that isn't a knock-off of a missile (technically, that honor might go to Vanguard, but it traces its origins to the Viking sounding rocket, itself an evolution of the V2).  It's cheaper than the military missiles, too.  This launch is actually the second try of the Scout and balloon sat, the first ending in failure during ascent back in December.  The mission also marks the christening of a new orbital launch facility at Wallops Island, Virginia.  That base has been a sounding rocket pad for a long time, but now it joins Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base as an origin for true spaceflight missions.

In other news, the Air Force launched its twentieth Discoverer yesterday atop a Thor Agena rocket of decidedly military origin.  Once again, the capsule-return probe went into polar orbit, the kind that is best for espying global weather conditions…or enemy army bases.  The flyboys plan to wait an unprecedented four days to recover the capsule, which reportedly contains emulsions for detecting radiation, and probably also for catching a glimpse of Khruschev's new Model A.  More on that as it crosses my desk.

In the meantime, I'm finishing up this month's IF, and picked up a recent reprint of A.E.Van Vogt's The War against the Rull.  We'll see if I get those reviews done before the next space spectacular.

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Science / Space Race

[February 13, 1961] Venus Plus USSR (Venera)

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Look out, Venus!  The Russians are coming to open your shell.

Venus, forever shrouded in a protective layer of clouds, may soon be compelled to give up her secrets to a 1400 pound probe.  Launched by the Soviet Union on the 11th, it is the first mission from Earth specifically designed to investigate "Earth's Twin."

The solar-powered ship is armed with a panoply of scientific instruments, from cameras to spectrometers to magnetometers.  It's also got a cargo of Soviet pennants and medals to deposit on the Venusian surface a la Luna 2.  It will reach the vicinity of Venus in three months; a full report might not be forthcoming until 1962.  That may seem a long while to wait for results, but one should remember that science takes time—even for nearby probes.  For instance, NASA is only just now processing the data from Explorer 8 (launched into Earth orbit last November, it fell silent just after Christmas.)

The Soviet probe (some reports call it 'Venera'–Russian for Venus) is not the first deep space mission.  That honor goes to the American Pioneer 5).  Venera is the first ship to be launched from an orbital rocket; the Soviets report that they launched a larger vehicle into orbit, and that Venera took off from there.

This is very interesting given last week's mystery launch, dubbed Sputnik 7.  As you may recall, the USSR launched a seven ton craft into orbit on the 4th, reportedly to do some near Earth space science.  No beep-beeps have been detected from the vehicle (though its presence has been confirmed by Western astronomers), and the Russians have been unusually quiet about the launch.  That usually indicates some kind of failed mission.

Now, my daughter has an interesting theory.  She believes that it is actually a spy satellite, and that the Soviet caginess is a ploy to lull the West into thinking the mission had been a bust. 

On the other hand, the Venera plus rocket plus fuel combination must have weighed far more than three quarters of a ton.  Is it possible that Sputnik 7 was really Venera 0, and the Venus probe never detached from its mothership? 

Maybe the Russians will tell us…in about a hundred years.

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