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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0195.PDF
No 2667 VOLUME 77 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH DFC FRIDAY 13 FEBRUARY 1060 AIRCRAFT, SPACECRAFT, MISSILES Official Organ of the^Royai Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded 1M9 Editor H . F. KING USE Technical Editor W. T. GU NSTON Production Editor ROY CASEY IN THIS ISSUE From All Quarters 196 Missiles and Space-flight 198 BOAC Takes Care of the £s 2O3 Fifty Bristol Years 205 NA.39 Gets its Sea Legs 213 Straight and Level 214 Supersonic Transports at the IAS 215 Sport and Business 217 Service Aviation 218 Air Commerce 219 Flight System Survey 224 Correspondence 225 The Industry 226 Iliffe & Sons Ltd, Dorset House, Scam-ford Street, London SE1; telephone Waterloo 3333. Telegrams FlightpresSedist London. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s. Overseas £5. Canadaand USA $15.00. Second Class Mail privileges authorized at, New York, NY. Branch Offices Coventry: 8-10 Corpora-tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham! King Edward House, NewStreet, 2; telephone Midland 7191. Man- chester: 260 Ueansgate, 3; telephoneBlackftiars 4412 cr Dean3gate 3595. Glasgow: 26B Renfleld Street, C2;telephone Central 1265. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner & Co(Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Iliffe <fe Sons Ltd, 1960. Permissionto reproduce illustrations and letterpress can be granted only under written agree-ment. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due acknowledgement. The University of SpaceI N the University of Space the senior class speaks with a Russian accent. The Americans are barely more than second-year students and, liks the Russians, they seem to be reading a National Prestige Tripos comprising science, propa- ganda and "defence" as major subjects. Next year, on a grant from the USA, a freshman from Britain is coming up—modest in ambition and devoted purely to science, but perhaps the first of many. In London last week, at the offices of the Royal Society and at the Royal Festival Hall, this contrast was emphasized. At the former, Professor Harrie Massey des- cribed the British experiments which (Scout booster permitting) should be launched into orbit late next year; in the latter, Professor Alia Masevich des- cribed the impressive achievements of Soviet space technology. The Soviet professor's audience comprised 2,500 people who had paid up to 15s per head to be there; those listening to the British professor amounted to some 30 scientific correspondents who had not had to pay at all. While the immediate intentions of British scientists (through the National Com- mittee on Space Research) in taking up the generous US offer of the "International" satellites are now clear, the question of more-ambitious future satellites, possibly launched by British rockets, is still supposedly uncertain. But it is now apparent that the official climate has changed within the past nine months, and has become distinctly favourable to the idea of using Blue Streak/Black Knight boosters for space research. The intuitive belief has grown that this will in fact happen. For the modest but excellently planned initial British venture into space to be followed by an equally well-planned major programme, the Government's Steering Group on Space Research will have to make the basic decision before many months have passed. Already the design studies which the Ministry of Supply stated (nine months ago) would take six months to complete have apparently drifted on and may now be complete "in perhaps a year's time" (from now). The implica- tion is not necessarily that time is being wasted, but rather that the design studies, without any official public indication having been given, are advancing to a more- detailed stage. If Britain is serious about entering the University of Space, the realistic way to do it is by decision and planning, not by a gradual drift. : : Facilities and Motives This country already possesses valuable assets in the space-research business. Both the Soviet Union and the USA agree that, in Manchester University's Jodrell Bank experimental station, we have the world's best steerable radio-telescope, the value of which has been repeatedly proved. The Radio Research Station near Slough, home of World Data Centre C for rockets and satellites, is expanding its space interests. New tracking facilities are planned. An altogether wider effort, however, would be made possible by a firm decision to develop British boosters as satellite launching vehicles. Only then would a true Commonwealth programme make sense, for the existing machinery for inter- national scientific cooperation—mainly through COSPAR—is indeed working well at present. And only then, presumably, would industry feel satisfied that it was being given a full opportunity to develop its talents along these directions. But the supremely important factor in deciding whether to go ahead with British satellite boosters is that of motive. The decision must be taken after realistic con- sideration by the Government's steering group—and not simply because of pres- sure from industry, enthusiasts' desires to put Englishmen in space, or wishful delusions as to national resources, power and influence.
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