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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 2343.PDF
Missiles and Spaceflight SECOND SOVIET COSMONAUT ATTENDS SPACEFLIGHT CONGRESS by a Special Correspondent DELEGATES to the thirteenth Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, held near Varna, Bulgaria, during September 24-29, found their journey a most frustrating experience. Some made it via Vienna to Sofia, with a highly in formal, utilitarian flight on the domestic airline on to Varna; and others direct from Frankfurt to Varna after a nine-hour delay, arriving in Bulgaria at 5 a.m. Once there, they all had to start to learn the form-filling, currency- changing, accommodation-fixing, bill-paying, flight-confirming complexities which took up an incredible amount of time and energy throughout what was otherwise a most interesting and valu able technical congress. As might have been expected, technicians from the Eastern countries were there in force, and, for once at an international •conference, there was a fairly balanced programme of contributions from Soviet and United States sources. European countries such as France and Germany also were there in force, but Britain had only two papers to contribute, both on communications satellites —and only four British space-industry engineers were there to represent British activity in this field. An interesting feature on the opening day was the arrival of Maj Herman Titov, Russia's second man in space. Maj Titov had been given a warm welcome at the opening ceremony held in the -centre of Varna which, incidentally, included a musical concert of excellent quality. Before the afternoon technical sessions Maj Titov gave a lecture which was complicated by the extensive activity by over-enthusiastic photographers (which was to be a feature of the whole congress). His paper, which was quite lengthy, appeared to be basically the same as that given at the recent COSPAR confer ence in Washington. He did, however, confirm that his vehicle was of four stages (it may well be that Russian technology calls the spacecraft itself a stage, in which case this would be three stages by Western terminology), had six engines in all, and that the take off thrust was 600,000kg. 610 FLIGHT International, 11 October 196: Left, Ivan Mihailov, vice-chairman of the Bulgarian Council of Ministers, seen speaking at the opening ceremony at the IAF Congress. Below, com memorative stamps with a spaceflight accent were issued to mark the occasion The Soviet cosmonaut made several references to the flights of his colleagues Nikolayev and Popovich, mentioning lightheartedh that the decision to initiate re-entry of Vostok 3 and 4 was made because of the fatigue of the control personnel on the ground. The cosmonauts, he added, would have been happy to stay up longer. Maj Titov added that Nikolayev and Popovich had experi enced some small differences in feeling when moving about the cabin in weightless conditions, compared with sitting in their seats. The opening day followed tradition by devoting the technical sessions to reports on national astronautical research, the Bulgarian authors K. Popoff, I. Tzenoff, N. Boneff and N. Kalitzin having prepared papers ranging from Thermodynamic Considerations eon- cerning Astronautics to Investigations on Relativistic Rockets and Some Astronautical Objects. The papers offered considerable mathematical detail, best left to the official publication of the con gress proceedings, as no major conclusions were reached. It is of interest, however, that the relativistic-rocket paper, in addition to considering some of the basic techniques for nuclear rocket propul sion analysis, made some constructive criticism of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and offered some improvements. The International sessions were conducted in three parallel streams of lectures—a common failing, but apparently a necessary evil in contemporary conferences. The keenness or otherwise of the delegates to cover as many of the papers as possible could be judged at any one time by the number of perspiring experts trotting the half-mile between the two main lecture halls. It is to the general credit that counter-migratory streams were usually evident. The paper by John Zvara and R. L. Schroeder of Raytheon (USA) dealt with the manoeuvre requirements and recovery tech niques associated with vehicles returning from lunar flights. The approach trajectories to Earth were analysed, and certain advantages demonstrated on the sequence with which the roll, pitch, yaw and velocity corrections were applied, to permit the greatest flexibility of landing areas. The associated radar screens and tracking-station requirements were defined for a variety of vehicles, for certain tolerances in the transfer orbit approaching the Earth orbit, and it was perhaps somewhat disturbing to realize the difficulties ot covering all possibilities in effecting a safe recovery. Unfortunately, the authors were not in a position to discuss the equipment which would present both predicted and actual spacecraft re-entry con ditions, as it was clear that comprehensive and instant recognition of the situation by the crew, to enable them to make key decisions (which was an emphasized necessity) would be a vital feature. Another paper by George Arthur of General Electric (USA) well complemented the above, as it dealt with manned lunar- vehicle design, including some interesting data on the possible design of the final stages. It did not represent in full the latest development programme announced by NASA, but gave an excel lent insight into the various problems of radiation shielding for the crew, different types of propulsion system trade-offs, etc.
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