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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1504.PDF
608 FLIGHT, 19 October 196] Missiles and Space/light Washington Congress From KENNETH OWEN Part 2: FINAL DAYS AT THE INTERNATIONAL ASTRONAUTICAL FEDERATION MEETING THE activities of the parent International Astronautical Federa-tion and its twin offspring the International Academy ofAstronautics and the International Institute of Space Law became intermingled during the final days of the twelfth 1AF Con-gress in Washington. At the congress banquet on Thursday, October 5, the Academy's first Guggenheim Award was received onbehalf of Prof Sir Bernard Lovell of Manchester University by Dr Harry Hookway, chief of the British Scientific Mission inWashington. Dr Hookway read an acceptance message from Sir Bernardwhich said, in part:— "I feel very greatly privileged to be the first recipient of this award,and I am most conscious of the fact that I am merely the avenue through which the International Academy of Astronautics has honoured theteam of young scientists al Jodrell Bank, and through which it has paid tribute to the radio telescope which we are fortunate enough topossess . . . The first use of the telescope in early October 1957 was to track the first Sputnik and its carrier rocket by radar, under conditionsof extreme difficulty before the engineers had completed their final tasks. "Our most memorable success occurred with Pioneer 5. Twentyminutes after its successful launching from Cape Canaveral on March 11, 1960, a signal transmitted from the telescope released the space probefrom its final carrier rocket. Then, every day for four months, a signal from the telescope switched on the transmitter in the probe to enable usto record the information which the instruments in the probe were collecting on the conditions in interplanetary space. In this wayPioneer 5 was tracked to a distance of over 22m miles from Earth before the power supplies in the probe failed. "The Jodrell Bank telescope has been truly an international instru-ment during these years because our co-operation has embraced the space activities of the Soviet Union as well as those of the UnitedStates. For example, the recordings made of the approach of Lunik 2 to the Moon and the measurement of the Doppler shaft, which enabledus to calculate the acceleration of the rocket towards the lunar surface and the approximate point of impact, probably represents one of themost significant measurements so far made with the telescope. "Now, in the United States at least, deep space tracking facilitiesspecifically tailor-made to the new series of space probes are in opera- tion. Nevertheless, whenever the special facilities of what is still todaythe world's largest steerable radio telescope are needed, then our scientific colleagues whether they be American or Russian can beassured of the ready and willing co-operation of Jodrell Bank. . . ." Other awards presented at the banquet included three by the Space Law Institute—a gold medal to Prof John Cobb Cooper and cash awards to Michael S. Smirnoff of Yugoslavia and to Vladimir Kopal of Czechoslovakia. Prof Samuel Herrick, chairman of the congress committee, reported that some 750 delegates had regis- tered for the meeting, of whom about 300 were from abroad. Titov's Reactions During the previous day's technical sessions Gazenko and Yaz-dovsky of the Soviet Union had amplified the earlier mentions made in Moscow of "unpleasant sensations" experienced by MajTitov during his August 6 orbital flight. In their paper Some Re- sults of Physiological Reactions to Space Flight Conditions theyreported:— "As a thoughtful, keen observer, Titov noted some importantsymptoms. In conditions of weightlessness unpleasant sensations of the vestibular character were felt stronger and stronger, especially whenthe astronaut sharply turned his head or was observing swiftly moving objects. After some period after sleep these phenomena decreased,but did not disappear before the beginning of the action of overloads during the ship's recovery to earth. Thus, the sensation of some dis-comfort accompanied the considerable portion of the flight and resembled sea-sickness."H. Titov's observations have attracted great attention. They require careful analysis and undoubtedly will serve as an initial point forspecial investigations in this direction . . ." Details of the US Navy's new 600ft radio telescope were given intwo papers by Edward F. McClain and James H. Trexler of the US Naval Research Laboratory during one of the sessions de-voted to the exploration of the solar system by radar and radio astronomy. Dr John Thomson of Jodrell Bank was unable to bepresent to talk on the radar study of Venus but, on the subject of the Moon, the implications of new theoretical studies on the lunarsurface were described by Prof Zdenek Kopal of the Department of Astronomy, Manchester University. The final technical sessions of the congress were held on Friday.October 6, when G. K. C. Pardoe of de Havilland Aircraft not only gave his own paper Blue Streak as First Stage of a Satellite Launcher,but also deputized for Dr L. R. Shepherd, who was to have spoken for the United Kingdom in a session devoted to "Recent Resultsand Plans in International Astronautics." Mr Pardoe concentrated on "plans" by telling us more about Blue Streak. At the same session on national results and plans, Dr Hugh L.Dryden of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration gave a comprehensive review of his agency's overall programme andinternational activities. He said that the next major step in Project Mercury would be a three-orbit flight in which a chimpanzee wouldbe carried in the spacecraft. If this were successful, it might be followed by a manned orbital flight. The speaker still hoped thatthis would take place before the end of this year. NASA's inter- national programmes, Dr Dryden indicated, included agreementsfor joint satellites with Britain and Canada; and arrangements for co-operative sounding-rocket programmes with Argentina, Aus-tralia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Norway, Pakistan and Sweden. Academician Leonid Sedov of the Soviet Union declined topresent any contribution from his country at this session, although this had been included on the printed programme. Mercury Safeguards The problems of combining the technologies of manned aircraftand of missiles in the Mercury programme were described in The Manned Rocket Vehicle Mercury-Redstone by Dr J. P. Kuettnerof Marshall Space Flight Center and E. P. Bertram of the NASA Launch Operations Directorate at Cape Canaveral. These twophilosophies had developed along entirely different lines, the authors pointed out, and had come together for the first time inProject Mercury, where one had literally a man-carrying (or "man- rated"') missile. The automatic escape system of the Mercury (see diagramopposite) was designed to anticipate cases of suddenly developing catastrophic failures and used a restricted number of partly redun-dant sensors. There were able to detect a great variety of malfunc- tions, because many of them resulted in the same sequence ofevents; but, according to the authors, there was room for improve- ment. The reliability requirements of the man-carrying missile con-cerned both mission reliability and survival reliability. The latter obviously depended on the reliability of the escape system in caseof mission failure, which included short-sensing, ejection and re- covery. A mission reliability of 85 per cent combined with anescape reliability of 85 per cent resulted in a survival reliability of about 98 per cent, which seemed reasonable. On the operations side, time studies were made (see diagram)prior to selecting equipment to ensure maximum safety for the astronaut during the countdown period on the pad. The padrescue team used an armoured personnel carrier and operated a mobile tower or "cherry-picker." The total Mercury-Redstonelaunch countdown time was lOhr 40min, divided into 6hr 30min on the first day, a break of 15hr to give the ground crew a rest, anda 6hr 30min final countdown on the second day. The astronaut entered the spacecraft approximately two hours before lift-off,and the cherry-picker stood by on the pad throughout the final 55min of the countdown. Intriguing new techniques in communication were discussed at afive-paper session comprising COLIDAR, a light Radar by George F. Smith of Hughes Research Laboratories: ULTRACOM;Ultra-violet Communications by J. W. Ogland of Westinghouse Electric Corp; Gamma Ray Communications by Jozef W. Eerkensof Aerospace Corp; Measurement of Very-low Frequency Propaga- tion by Lofti I Satellite by J. P. C. Leiphart of the US Naval Re-search Laboratory; and Light Communications by J. P. Gordon of Bell Telephone Laboratories. In the paper by Eerkens the gamma rays envisaged for communi-cation are those produced as a by-product in the nuclear reactors which, in the author's view, are a near-certainty for future space-craft propulsion and auxiliary power. Using a 100MW (thermal) reactor, it was estimated that morse-code transmissions could be
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