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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 2140.PDF
528 FLIGHT, 30 September I960 Missiles and Spaceflight ... US MOON-SHOT FAILS The American attempt last Sunday to put a 3871b satellite intoorbit round the Moon ended—or began—in failure. The fault lay with the second stage of the three-stage Atlas-Able rocket which,though ignited, burned abnormally. It is considered unlikely that the third stage ignited at all, and that, if it did ignite? it wouldhave been so far off trajectory that it would have plunged back into the Earth's atmosphere and burned out—probably over theIndian Ocean an hour or so after the Cape Canaveral launching. MINUTEMAN REVELATIONS As a preliminary to the public "unveiling" of Minuteman at SanFrancisco, Lt-Gen Bernard A. Schriever, commander of Air Research and Development Command, and other officers con-cerned with the Minuteman programme, gave details of the mis- sile at a Press conference at the convention (see previous page). Itswarhead would have a smaller yield than those of Atlas or Titan, said Gen Schriever, but the cost of the missile would be a quarterto one-fifth of any existing liquid-propellant ICBM. It is slightly under 60ft in length, and weighs 60,000-70,0001b. It was expected that one-third of the Minuteman missiles wouldbe mobile, i.e., mounted on the special launcher trains which would be used to move them throughout the country's railway network.The remaining two-thirds would be stored at the ready in under- ground silos. Feasibility tests on the railways had proved verysuccessful, and in fact fewer tests than planned had been required. Fixed Minuteman sites should be operational in mid-1962, withthe mobile units following some six months later. NEW DETECTORS FOR SKYLARK A Skylark research rocket to be fired in Australia next month willcarry new-type micro-meteorite detectors designed and con- structed at Jodrell Bank. Dr Roger Jennison, who is in charge ofsatellite instrumentation projects at that centre, is on his way to Australia to supervise the operation of the detectors and otherequipment to be fired in a Black Knight at a later date. Dr Jennison said before his departure that the detectors had beendesigned to determine the size of micro-meteorite particles and the measurements of other particles smaller than had beenmeasured by conventional techniques. ORBITAL SCATTER COMMUNICATIONS The fears expressed by Prof Lovell about adverse effects of theUS proposal to assist global radio communication by means of metal foil fragments scattered from an Eanh satellite (this pagelast week) have drawn a comment from a spokesman of Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology. The foil fragments, he said,were fibres only one-third the thickness of a hair and would be put into two orbits several thousand miles above the Earth, onearound the Equator "and the other over the poles. A maximum of about 1001b would be put into orbit, and each "needle" wouldbe about 1,200ft distant from its neighbour. "Intensive studies" had shown that, used in this way, they would have no effect oninterplanetary observations. BRITAIN AND SPACE Speaking in Strasbourg last week, Lord Hailsham, Minister ofScience, said that, apart from economic arguments, he thought political arguments favoured international co-operation in spaceresearch. Scientific arguments pointed in the same direction. He was addressing the Assembly of the Council of Europe, before "Flight" photograph Minuteman (with a Titan in the background) being "unveiled" at the Air Force Association Convention in San Francisco (see Kenneth Owen's story in the preceding pages). Gen Thomas D. White, USAF Chief of Staff, performed the ceremony. Other missiles (or mock-ups) included a Thpr-Able and a Hound Dog, and a Bell X-15 was among other exhibits which a plan for a Commonwealth/European space "club" had been introduced by Mr David Price. Broadcasting in Australia, Mr Thorneycroft, Minister ofAviation, declared that the Woomera Range was a first-class example of what co-operation could "do. He added that if theCommonwealth and Western Europe could agree to get together on some project, they could command resources greater thaneither Russia or the United States. He was not talking, he said, about financial resources but about technical, scientific andengineering skills. BOEING'S BALLOON STUDIES It was announced by Boeing Airplane Co on September 13 thattheir Aero-Space division are to conduct a series of unmanned- balloon flights from Seattle to find answers to several cosmic-radiation questions posed by the company's various space pro- grammes. The balloons will be 60ft polyethylene spheres, expand-ing to 80,000 cu ft at an altitude of 110,000ft. Payloads will not exceed 101b; data will be telemetered to Earth and the instrumentpackages will be recovered by parachute. BALLOON-BORNE TELESCOPES A USAF contract for 20in reflector telescopes to detect approach- ing missiles was announced recently by Electro-Optical Systems Inc, of Pasadena. Carried by 200ft balloons to a height of 20 miles, the telescopes, which will rotate, will detect the Sun's rays reflected from missiles several hundred miles away and convert the sightings into electrical impulses which will be transmitted to the ground. The British Interplanetary Society announces that an additional lec-ture will be given tomorrow, October 1, at 6.30 p.m., in the York Hall of Caxton Hall, off Victoria Street, London SW1. The lecturerwill be Mr Morton J. Stoller, whose subject will be "The NASA Space Flight Programme." Mr Stoller is NASA's assistant director, satelliteand sounding rocket programmes, and he will deal with the status of satellites and sounding rockets, lunar and planetary programmes, satelliteapplications and manned flight. Artist's representation of a Dynasoar flight, which should occur within three years. Boeing are the prime contractor for the system and glider, Martin for the booster
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