Apr 1 1964
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (2MB PDF)
Fourth anniversary of TIROS I, first meteorological satellite, orbited with a Thor-Able booster from AMR. The spectacular accomplishments by the experimental TIROS weather satellites were to develop into a global cloud-cover reporting system. NASA launched Aerobee 150 sounding rocket from White Sands, N. Mex., with two cameras and two spectrographs to obtain spectra of nebulosities of certain star fields. Rocket attained 118-mi. altitude and instrumentation performed properly, but failure of the attitude control system prevented the rocket from pointing at the targets and there were no experimental results. (NASA Rpt. SRL)
Five men emerged from 30 days of isolation in sealed chamber where they conducted first U.S. experiment integrating all systems for self-contained life support in space. The test was made in Seattle by the Boeing Co. for NASA. NASA Director of Biotechnology and Human Research Dr. Eugene B. Konecci called the successful experiment a "major breakthrough" in research on life support systems for extended space flights. "The basic principles and techniques of life-support systems have been proved Workable and sound. Now we refine and advance them. We are already looking and preparing far beyond." (AP, Balt. Sun, 4/2/64; AP, Houston Chron., 4/2/64)
NASA Lewis Research Center was investigating several techniques for producing flexible, thin-film solar cells. One of the techniques being investigated was sputtering, which required absolutely clean atmosphere and a low pressure of inert gas. Sputtering apparatus in which controls Were fully automated-rigidly controlling pressure, temperature, and voltage in relation to each other-had been built at Lewis. With this equipment, researchers were attempting to increase efficiency of thin-film cells to that of silicon cells. (LRC Release 64-28)
Vice Adm. Rufus E. Rose (USN, Ret.) was sworn in as Director of Policy Planning Div., NASA Office of Technology Utilization and Policy Planning, by NASA Deputy Administrator Dr. Hugh L. Dryden. The most recent assignment during Admiral Rose's 44-year career was as Commandant of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. (NASA Release 64-73)
Picket lines were set up at the entrances to Cape Kennedy and the Merritt Island Launch Area (MILA) by United Plant Guards Workers of America. The union charged that Wackenhut Corp., subcontractor to TWA at the Saturn/Apollo site, was employing nonunion guards. 1,886 of 2,597 construction workers at the Saturn V complex refused to cross the picket lines, and about 700 of 2,500 workers at the USAF Titan III site were absent. William Simkin, vice chairman of the President's Missile Sites Labor Commission, requested that the building trades unions return to work. (UPI, Wash. Post, 4/2/64; AP, Balt. Sun, 4/2/64; UPI, NYT, 4/3/64)
AEC conducted test of Snap-10A reactor to see what would happen if it were to fall into the sea after an aborted space launch attempt. The Snap-10A reactor was placed in concrete water tank and the mechanism to absorb neutrons-to control the chain reaction-was removed, causing a "runaway." A wall of Water 16 ft. wide erupted 40 ft. into the air, due either to sudden heat increase in the "runaway" or the contact of water with the reactor's liquid metal coolant (sodium potassium). AEC spokesman said core of the reactor was damaged as expected, and test Was completed with no hazard to personnel or the public. Another test would be made to investigate consequences of a ground landing. (AP, Balt. Sun, 4/2/64)
NASA Administrator James E. Webb addressed the American Assembly Student Conference at the Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs: ". . . in assessing the future one can always learn from the past, and if the thoughtful student of history learns anything from a review of the march of human progress, it is that the ultimate potential of contemporary undertaking is almost never perceived. "So, I believe, it is with research and exploration in space. . . . "Today, 500 years after Prince Henry and his use of the caravel to initiate the Oceanic Age, 400 years after Copernicus presented his theories about the solar system, 300 years after Newton worked out the formula for space flight, but less than 40 years after Goddard devised the vehicle to make it possible, man has left the earth, and widened his horizons to include the entire solar system. "Science today has at its disposal a modern caravel, the chemical rocket, which has already traveled to the moon and Venus. And, as with Henry and his explorations, we have improved navigation systems to guide them out and bring them back to make steadily more accurate measurements of the environment of space-that environment through which Gagarin and Glenn and others traveled, and through which our own planet, Mother Earth, is also traveling around the sun at the relative speed of 67,000 miles per hour. "And to complete the parallel, just as Prince Henry inaugurated an Age of Discovery which led man to all the seas and continents of the earth, and into the atmosphere up to twice the height of his tallest mountains, so have we today embarked on a new Age of Discovery in which there is no foreseeable horizon. . . ." (Text; CR, 4/6/64, 6686)
Atlas ICBM launched by USAF from Cape Kennedy sent new deceptive war-head 5,000 mi. downrange and carried two piggyback rockets which were fired from a 7-ft. pod attached to the Atlas. The small rockets carried radiometers to measure radiation in the Atlas engine exhaust. Another attached pod contained scientific experiments to study the ionosphere, magnetosphere, and radio frequency noises. (AP, Wash. Post, 4/2/64; M&R, 4/6/64, 10)
According to Hebrew Univ. sources, Dr. Menahem Steinberg of Hebrew Univ. in Jerusalem had developed new oxidizer for use in solid-fuel rocket engines, said to be superior to those in general use because the gases produced by combustion would be of a low molecular weight and so would increase propulsion power. The sources said two years would be required to develop and confirm the new discovery. (Reuters, Balt. Sun, 4/2/64)
At zero hour GMT, astronomers in 10 nations, including the U.S., turned back their atomic clocks a tenth of a second to adjust them to time measured optically by the passage of the stars. (Plumb, NYT, 4/1/64, 33)
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