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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0954.PDF
952 FLIGHT International, 14 June 1962 Missiles and Spaceflight upper-stage engine to be successfully ignited at altitude; and this alone was an engineering achievement of no mean magnitude. Second-stage operation begins at a height of about 40 miles, with the missile already travelling at 6,000 m.p.h.; and it boosts the speed to 18,000 m.p.h. Structure is stiff monocoque, with butt- welded aluminium-alloy panels extensively chemical-milled to reduce weight Weight empty is 11 short tons, and weight full 110 short tons. Payload in an Avco Mk 4 re-entry vehicle for the design range of 6,300 statute miles is described as the heaviest of any US missile. Coinciding with the Lowry turnover came the news that the last Titan 1 engine has been produced. Now, Aerojet production has turned to the more powerful versions for the Titan 2, which uses storable propellants—hydrazine and N20«—in order to reduce reaction time to five minutes. Titan 1 can be left full of RP-1, which is only a refined kerosine, but the lox tanks have to be filled in the last minutes before firing. Later models of Titan 1 will use all- inertial guidance, as will all Titan 2s. One complex of three Titans made a back-drop for the Lowry turnover ceremony, their companion complex being way out of sight. General Schriever commented that construction at Lowry was started two months after the first Titan test at Cape Canaveral. Team-work made the job possible, according to the general; he estimated that 100,000 people worked on the whole Titan 1 pro gramme, and this certainly is borne out by the cost of $200m per complex at Lowry. A medal, the Legion of Merit, was pinned on Colonel James H. Thompson, the Commander of the Ballistic Systems Division's Site Activation Task Force, for performing a Herculean task so well. At the close of the ceremony one of the three missiles in the complex slowly retracted into its hideout. The concrete doors, each weighing 232 tons, swung down after the nosecone had vanished from sight. The wives of the brass took pictures of each other, and of the missiles, and said what a wonderful day it was. IAIN PIKE ARIEL PROGRESS-REPORT With the exception of the solar ultra-violet detector, all experi mental equipment aboard the joint US/UK satellite Ariel is func tioning correctly. This was stated in a press release on May 29 issued jointly by NASA, the Office of the Minister for Science, and the Royal Society. The satellite was said to be spinning as planned at "a little over half a revolution per second," in an orbit having a 100.9min period, 53.9° inclination, 760-mile apogee and 244-mile perigee. Temperature of the satellite was reported to be "a little above that planned" but well within the design range. The tape recorder aboard the satellite was being commanded to transmit a full orbit's data about 12 times each day, and telemetry signals were being recorded at 15 ground stations around the world. Processing of the data obtained by the ground stations was talcing place at Goddard Space Flight Center, and the processed information would be arriving shortly in the UK in digital form on magnetic tape. Data reduction and analysis will be carried out on UK Atomic Energy Authority digital computers, using programmes being developed with the assistance of the Royal Aircraft Estab lishment and UKAEA. The satellite was launched by Delta vehicle from Cape Canaveral on April 26. WORLD ROCKET-RANGE PLAN Mr Homer Newell, Director of the NASA Office of Space Sciences, proposed in Geneva on May 28 that an international rocket range be set up near the geomagnetic equator. Speaking before the scientific and technical subcommittee of the United Nations committee on the peaceful uses of outer space, Mr Newell suggested also that the subcommittee should consider the tabulation of space programmes for reference; arrange a survey on the effectiveness of world data centres for information on rockets and satellites; ask the International Telecommunication Union and the World Meteoro logical Organization for interim reports on their work; and meet the Photograph taken by Scott Carpenter during his orbital flight of May 24 of the small Mylar-aluminium balloon released from "Aurora 7" on a nylon line. In this picture the line has been retouched for clarity need for brief technical documents and costs for establishing small tracking stations. At a simultaneous meeting of the legal subcommittee of the UN space committee, the Soviet Union and the USA both proposed that the first laws drafted for outer space should concern the re covery of astronauts and space vehicles in distress, and state liability for space accidents. Bilateral US/Soviet talks on space co-operation, begun at the United Nations last March, were resumed in Geneva last week between Dr Hugh L. Dryden, Deputy Administrator of NASA, Academician Anatoli Blagonravov of the US Academy of Sciences, and other experts. GUIDANCE FOR APOLLO Three United States companies have been selected by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration for negotia tion of production contracts for major components of the navi gation and guidance system of the three-man Apollo spacecraft. The firms are AC Spark Plug Division of General Motors Corpora tion, the Raytheon Company, and Kollsman Instrument Corpora tion. AC Sparkplug will build the inertial platform and its associate electronics, and will develop and build a guidance ground support and checkout system. They will also receive, assemble and test all components of the system. Total value of this contract is esti mated at approximately $16m. Raytheon will build the on-board digital computer for the guidance system, at an estimated contract cost of about $2m. Kollsman will build the optical subsystems in cluding a space sextant, Sun finders and navigation display equip ment, at an estimated cost of approximately $2m. These contracts bring the total value of Apollo guidance system development and production contracts to $40m. The three com panies will work in support of Massachusetts Institute of Tech nology's Instrumentation Laboratory, which is NASA's associate contractor charged with the initial development of the Apollo navigation/guidance system. The MIT Laboratory will develop and produce the first few Apollo navigation/guidance flight units, and the industrial team will then manufacture ten follow-on flight units which will be used during the Earth-orbital phase of the Apollo programme. The flight components will be integrated into the Apollo vehicle by the principal Apollo contractor, the Space and Information Systems Division of North American Aviation. COSMOS 5 IN ORBIT The launching of a fifth artificial Earth satellite in the current Soviet series was announced on May 28 in the following terms: "A routine artificial Earth satellite, Cosmos 5, has been launched in the Soviet Union. According to provisional data, the flight of the satellite is taking place on an orbit close to that planned. The satellite is circling the Earth in 102.75min. The angle of inclination of the orbit to the equator is 49.05°, the apogee is 1,600km, and the perigee 203km. "The satellite Cosmos 5, carries scientific instruments designed
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