FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0420.PDF
flvbid'tvm ™ Vapor M agttn tome fer 428 FLIGHT 6 z^r/7 1961 Missiles and Spaceflight. , . A MINISTER FOR SPACE? In the Commons on March 21 a private member's Bill "to providefor the establishment of a Minister of Space Research and Develop- ment; and for purposes connected therewith" was presented byMr Woodrow Wyatt and read for the first time. In his speech Mr Wyatt said that he was proposing this appointment because he didnot think that we should make real progress in this important new field until we had a Minister in the Cabinet with responsibility toco-ordinate everything to do with space. He claimed that the Americans were spending £3 10s per year per head of populationon space development, the Russians "an equivalent sum" and the British not more than a penny per head. Mr Wyatt's Bill, published on March 28, quoted a salary "notexceeding £23,750" per year for the Minister. His functions would be to co-ordinate, promote and carry out arrangements for spaceresearch and development. HIGHER THRUST FOR SCOUT An increase in payload capacity of some 40 per cent for NASA'sScout is planned under a joint NASA-Navy project to develop improved-performance third-stage and fourth-stage rocket motorsfor the launch vehicle. These improvements will be effected by replacing the current solid fuels with improved propellants similarto some of those now used in Minuteman and Polaris motors. Only minor design changes to the existing Scout motors will berequired. The improved versions of the two stages are expected to be ready for use on Scout early next year, and the total cost of theprogramme is estimated to be 81,350,000. Development will be carried out at the Bureau of Weapons' Allegany Ballistics Labora-tory in Cumberland, Maryland. MORE BIG-BOOSTER STUDIES Three contracts have been awarded by the National Aeronauticsand Space Administration for comprehensive studies of possible future space vehicles beyond the Saturn class. The three contracts,each concerned with rockets with a first-stage thrust of 6m to 12m pounds, go to Convair, Lockheed's Georgia Division, andNorth American Aviation. Representative and promising hypothetical vehicles are beingstudied. Some of the vehicles combine solid and liquid chemical fuels and others use liquid chemical and nuclear propulsion. Amongthe aspects considered are the optimum use of nuclear propulsion in large rockets; recovery and re-use of large space vehicles; largehigh-energy liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen first-stage booster; solid and liquid fuel in first-stage booster; conventional tandemstaging versus parallel staging; and pressure-fed versus pump-fed systems. The most promising configurations will be selected forfurther study. A three-stage Thor-Delta was used to launch NASA's Explorer 10 satel- lite into highly elliptical orbit on March 25 from Cape Canaveral. The 781b package was de- signed to study inter- planetary magnetic fields and solar plasma, and incorporated a sensitive rubidium vapour magnetometer MORE DYNA-S0AR DETAILS Further to the news (published in Flight last month") that the USAFDyna-Soar hypersonic glider has a third stage of propulsion, it is now clear that many different booster systems are under discussion.The original project was for the first few shots to be boosted by both stages of the Titan 1 ICBM, and Martin received a contract tothis end. Titan 1 was chosen purely because of its convenience and reliability, but it cannot achieve the burnout velocity needed fororbit. Earlier this year Titan 2 was substituted (Flight, March 16), yet—according to Mr J. R. Dempsey, manager of ConvairAstronautics—even this combination can only put 8,0001b in an 80-mile orbit. According to Aviation Week the present researchglider has risen in weight from about 9,000 to almost 11,5001b, although progressive refinements are now reversing this trend. ANOTHER LITTLE JOE An additional Little Joe flight test of a production Mercury space- craft will be made from Wallops Island, Virginia, following the March 18 attempt in which the test objectives were not achieved. The purpose of the test was to check the performance of a produc- tion Mercury spacecraft and its escape system during an escape manoeuvre initiated at the highest air loads anticipated during an Atlas launch for orbital flight. On March 18 the escape rocket apparently fired prematurely, resulting in improper sequencing of other systems. A ground command signal was used to effect capsule separation. Several shingles on the spacecraft were damaged in the test, but the capsule is in good general condition and will be re-used in the next Little Joe test. The Australian Minister for Supply, Mr Alan S. Hume, officiallyopened the NASA Project Mercury tracking and command station at Muchea, Western Australia, on March 24. Belling & Lee Ltd have been engaged by Sir Alexander Gibb andPartners, consulting engineers acting for the Air Ministry, to assist in the design and implementation of RF shielding and interference suppres-sion at Fylingdales. Such protection must be provided not only for the BMEWS personnel but also for electronic equipment and computers. According to the London Daily Telegraph, Lt Col Roy Roberts,of the USAF Air Research and Development Command at Holloman AFB, believes that "certain corridors" across the US should be evacu-ated for live missile tests "to find out what an enemy missile attack would be like." He asserts that the Soviet Union has been doing this over theirown land-mass, and "apparently have no morale problem." Ampex have been allowed to say a little more about the very advanceddata recorder which flies with the Minuteman ICBM. The FR-600 is a solid-state transistorized package, in which FM-FM has been com-pletely replaced by digital PCM (pulse code modulation). Several hundred channels can be sampled and recorded over a bandwidth of500 kc/s at 120 in/sec tape speed. At 60 in/sec information can be trans- mitted at the rate of 350,000 bits/sec. Although almost 100 Atlas vehicles have been fired, in both ICBMdevelopment and space launchings, the latest E version, with 389,0001b take-off thrust, has recorded four failures out of the first five shots. Thefifth firing took place from the Cape on March 14, at 11.17 p.m. local time, and resulted in premature cut-off of the sustainer and an impactwell short of the target area. Another malfunction resulted in a TM-76B Mace winged air-breather crashing into the Atlantic only a few secondsafter leaving the Cape on March 28. This was the first disaster in 22 Mace firings; and last week it was announced by the USAF in Tokyothat Mace will beemplaceJ on Okinawa.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
