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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1621.PDF
JK This Boeing &-52H, photographed during compatibility tests with the Skybolt missile at Wichita, is now at the USAF Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB for performance testing. Another B-52H at the Air Proving Ground Center at Eglin AF& has successfully completed drop tests of dummy missiles Missiles and Spaceflight EUROPE'S LAUNCHER GOES AHEAD The Anglo-French proposals for the setting-up of an organization to develop and build a European three-stage launcher using Blue Streak as first stage, originally proposed at Strasbourg last January, have now been translated into a "final draft Convention" which has been agreed by delegates from six European governments and Australia in addition to Britain and France. The Convention has now been submitted to the governments concerned for final consideration. This in essence was the result of the five-day conference held in the music room of Lancaster House, London, last week. A point not made clear by the Ministry of Aviation until the opening day of the conference was that those countries which had agreed to send delegates to the conference (Flight, October 12) had thereby agreed in principle to the Anglo-French proposals. The London meeting was therefore a formality at which the exact wording of the Con- vention was agreed, rather than a basic discussion of an open question. Delegates from Australia, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and West Germany attended, with observers present from Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Council of Europe and the European Space Research Organization. According to a Press communique issued at the close of the meeting: "The proposals provide for the organization to carry out an initialprogramme of work for the development of a launcher using Blue Streak as the first propulsion stage, a French rocket as the secondstage and a third stags to be developed under the leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany. The organization will also develop aspart of the initial programme a series of satellite test vehicles to prove the launcher system. The programme provides for the first firing ofthe complete three-stage launcher to take place from Woomera in the summer of 1965. An attempt will be made in this trial to place a satel-lite test vehicle in orbit. Discoverer 34 was launched into orbit from Vandenberg Air ForceBase by the USAF on November 5. Recovery of a payload capsule was planned. Revised performance figures for the first Saturn flight from CapeCanaveral on October 27 issued by NASA give the downrange distance as 215 miles and the impact point as "within ten miles of the plannedtarget." The third Skylark in a NASA series of four firings from Woomeraachieved a height of over 100 miles on November 2. The rocket was fitted with a boost motor and the payload included instruments tostudy the intensity and distribution of ultra-violet radiation. The Soviet Union completed its series of long-range rocket tests intothe central Pacific with a firing on October 29. At once the Tass agency was authorized to state that the region—roughly 1,000 miles south-westof Hawaii and 1,000 miles north-west of Christmas Island—bounded by the co-ordinates announced on September 10 was once more open tosea and air traffic. In the original announcement it was stated that launchings would terminate on October 15, but on October 13 theprogramme was extended until October 30. Successful launchings were "The Convention provides for an elaborate programme of advancedstudies to be carried out in the first two years of the initial programme with a view to formulating proposals for a second programme to becarried out by the organization. . . . "Work will be carried out on behalf of the organization by means ofcontracts placed either by the organization itself or by the governments of member-States on its beHalf. The allocation of contracts will bedetermined by the organization on the basis of a rational distribution of work among member-States, having regard to technical and economiccriteria. . . ." The Minister of Aviation, Mr Peter Thorneycroft, speaking at a Press conference at the end of the Lancaster House meeting, said that the organization had no plans to build any satellites other than the satellite test vehicles mentioned in the communique. It was possible, he said, that the European Space Research Organization might use the launcher when it had been developed (ESRO's eight- year programme, as reported in Flight of November 2, includes a total of four firings which would require a launcher of this class). Other applications, the Minister stated, were also "possible." Replying to a question concerning the motive behind the pro- posals, Mr Thorneycroft said; "The object is to avoid a situation in which Europe is right out [of this field] ... it gives us the oppor- tunity of taking some part in the commercial advantages to be gained. ..." The launcher-development programme proposed at Strasbourg was described fully and exclusively in Flight of February 17, 1961. There had been no basic change in the proposed programme since the Strasbourg meeting, the Minister reported. Assuming that Sweden, Norway and Switzerland remain outside the organization, however, there will be a change in the detailed arrangements for financing the programme. Britain's original commitment was to have been one-third (about £23.3m) of the £70m which the programme is estimated to cost. The absence of the above three countries leaves a gap of approximately £4.4m to be made up jointly by Britain, France and West Germany. announced on September 13, 17 and 21 and October 7, 12, 15, 22 and 29.Each firing was stated to have been accomplished by a "multi-stage carrier rocket," that of October 7 being said to impact with extremeaccuracy as a result of its new type of guidance system. In every case the range was given as approximately 12,000km (7,460 miles), and thepenultimate stage of the carrier rocket was always claimed to strike the sea with "a high degree of precision." Nothing was said of any failures. The USAF announced on November 3 that signals from the Midassatellite carrying the West Ford dipole experiment, launched on October 21, had shown that thedipoles had been ejected from the satellite but hadnot dispersed as planned. Attempts to locate the dipoles by radar had not been successful. An attempted test of the NASA Mercury tracking network by meansof a 1501b satellite in an elliptical Earth orbit failed at Cape Canaveral on November 1, when the Scout launch vehicle had to be destroyed bythe range safety officer after it had "veered from side to side," according to Reuter. Up to four three-orbit missions for the satellite, whichcarried communications components similar to those in the Mercury spacecraft, had been planned.
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