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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 0442.PDF
FLIGHT, 13 February 1959 215 Missiles and Space flight . , . COMMONWEALTH SPACE MEETING Church House, Westminster, will be the scene of two astronauticalmeetings in August and September this year. In addition to the 10th International Astronautical Federation Congress (August 31-September 5), a Commonwealth Spaceflight Symposium will be held there during the preceding week (on August 27-28). TheCommonwealth meeting is being arranged by the British Inter- planetary Society, who are inviting senior government and indus-try representatives with the object of "encouraging Common- wealth initiative in the field of space research." RESULTS FROM RUSSIA Sixteen preliminary Russian reports on rocket and satellite investi-gations have been received by the Royal Society. This was stated in reply to a question by Mr. Gresham Cooke in the House ofCommons on February 3 by Mr. H. Nicholls, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works. The IGY scheme, Mr.Nicholls said, only involved publication of full scientific reports in generally available literature within one year from the end of eachexperiment. No results obtained from the recent Soviet space rocket had yet been received, but preliminary results might beobtained by the end of February. SPACE IN THE LECTURE-HALL Before the Royal Aeronautical Society in London last night(February 12) Mr. W. H. Stephens was due to lecture on Earth Satellites. Head of the Guided Weapons Department of R.A.E.Farnborough from 1954 until last month, Mr. Stephens is now Director-general, Ballistic Missiles at the Ministry of Supply. Satellites and spaceflight will also be included in the programmeof the special Montreal meeting organized by the Canadian Aero- nautical Institute on February 23-24 to commemorate the 50thanniversary of powered flight in Canada. Space research by the U.S.A. will be reviewed by Dr. H. L. Dryden of NASA, andCanadian lecturers on the subject in general will include G. D. Watson of the Defence Research Board and Dr. P. M. Millmanof the National Research Council. SOVIET SUGGESTION A Moscow Radio broadcast on February 27 suggested that nationalresources should be pooled to send an international expedition of "several dozen" spacecraft into outer space. Although this wouldbe extremely expensive, "if the whole world co-operated, not only in the scientific work but in bearing the cost, that would be a bighelp." The broadcast added, "We can be sure that the difficulties connected with the mastery of outer space will be overcome muchbetter and sooner if several countries—and especially the Soviet Union and the United States—pool their material and intellectualresources." ADVANCED PROJECTS The U.S.A. hopes to test a rocket next year that will be ten timesas powerful as any yet produced, according to Mr. Roy Johnson, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S.Department of Defense. The Army, he explained in a paper before the New York Bar Association, was devising a booster with1.5 million pounds of thrust by grouping together a number of existing rocket engines. Using an Atlas as a second stage anda third stage using high-energy fuel, the new boost rocket not only would be able to put a 25,000 lb space station in orbit, but couldsend a manned vehicle around the Moon. Mr. Johnson went on to outline the following Defense Depart-ment projects: (1) Project Midas, designed to use satellites in an early-warning system against surprise missile attack; (2) the useof 2,500 lb satellites in "stationary" orbits 22,000 miles above the Earth for global communications, and (3) devising means tomanoeuvre a space vehicle rather than merely following a pre-set trajectory. For the next two years, Mr. Johnson said, the U.S. spaceprogramme would be based largely on the use of four military rockets—Thor, Jupiter, Atlas and Titan. The first two of thesecould launch 2,000 lb satellites into low orbit, while Atlas and Titan could launch satellites weighing 4,000 lb. With a high-energy upper stage now being developed, Atlas would be able to launch useful satellite payloads of up to five tons, to land 1,000 lbof instruments on the Moon or to land several hundred pounds on Venus or Mars. ROCKET PIONEER HONOURED The first annual Louis W. Hill Space Transportation Award hasbeen made posthumously to Dr. Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945), the U.S. rocket pioneer, and was presented to his widow byS. Paul Johnston, director of the Institute of the Aeronautical sciences, on January 27. Established by the Hill family founda-tion of Minneapolis to honour U.S. scientists for "research in any or all of the fundamental sciences relating to space travel or spacetechnology," it is administered by the I.A.S. Dr. Goddard began his rocket researches in 1899 when only 17,and many of the techniques which he first developed and tried out are now regarded as basic. He first suggested the multi-stagerocket in 1909. Other modern devices which resulted directly from his work are the U.S. Army "bazooka" launcher and jet-assisted take-off. SEACAT AND TIGERCAT On February 4 the Admiralty announced that the close-rangeship-to-air missile under development by Short Brothers and Harland Ltd. (as a replacement for the 40-mm gun of the RoyalNavy) is to be named the Seacat. The manufacturers state that the weapon will deal, with a high degree of effectiveness, withaircraft which may evade defensive fighters and long-range guided weapons. Seacat is a small and highly manoeuvrable weaponpowered by a solid-propellant motor. It is designed to be "instantly ready to attack" and is suitable for installation aboardrelatively small ships. Progenitor of the Seacat was the SX-A5 test vehicle, which wasemployed for preliminary research. Seacat itself may be expected to differ appreciably from the SX-A5 although its configuration,control and guidance remain closely guarded. Short Brothers and Harland are intensively developing Seacat under contract fromthe Ministry of Supply, and a considerable number of ships may be equipped with the weapon "by the early 1960s." The companyare also investigating a land-based variant, to which they have given the name Tigercat, for use in surface-to-air and surface-to-surface roles. MACE FOR U.S.A.F. EUROPE It was announced on Monday last that "early this spring" theMartin TM-76A Mace will replace the TM-61A and TM-61C as the weapon of the 587 Tactical Missile Group. This unit formspart of the U.S. Air Force Europe and is based at Sembach, Western Germany. Mace is a development of the Matador; itdiffers chiefly in having improved guidance (Goodyear ATRAN map-comparison system), greater tankage, improved ability tostrike at all altitudes in all weathers, and in being designed to the weapon-system approach (the Martin Company, Baltimore Division,being co-ordinator for the whole system, including launcher, prime mover, testequipment and ground-handling gear). Powerplant is an Allison J33 turbojet. TITAN FLIES After two unsuccessful attempts, onDecember 20 and February 3, the U.S. Air Force XSM-68 TitanICBM finally got off the ground at Cape Canaveral on February 6 (seephotograph on right). Prime contrac- tor for the WS-107-A-2 weapon system,of which Titan is a part, is the Denver Division of the Martin Company.Titan is a missile of more advanced design than Convair's SM-65 Atlas; itis designed to supplement rather than replace the Atlas, and its developmentis running approximately one year be- hind that of its rival. Chief features ofTitan are: choice of a true two-stage configuration, separation and ignitionof the second stage occurring beyond the atmosphere; an airframe of highfineness ratio constructed from planks of stretch-formed and chemically-milled high-strength light alloy; liquid oxygen/RP-1 propulsion by Aerojet-General, the first-stage engine having two gimbal-mounted chambers eachof 150,000 1b thrust and the second stage having a single gimbal-mountedchamber of 60,000 lb thrust; pure- inertial guidance of very advanceddesign by Bosch Arma; and a nose- cone by Avco. On its first flight onlythe first stage was operative, the second- stage tankage being filled with water toproduce the correct weight and moment of inertia. The missile left the padcleanly—a tribute to the sophisticated launching system mentioned in ourDecember 5 issue—and travelled a distance of between 200 and 450 miles. First successful Titan launch, Cape Canaveral, February 6 (see report above)
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