Jan 10 1971
From The Space Library
U.S.S.R.'s Lunokhod 1 lunar rover, energized by solar cells after surviving second lunar night on moon's Sea of Rains, completed third exploration operation, moving about 128 m (140 yds) during 41/2-hr period. Vehicle had been inoperative since beginning of lunar night Dec. 23, 1970, and had been opened to receive solar energy Jan. 8. It had been released on surface by Luna 17, which had soft-landed on moon Nov. 17, 1970. (SBD, 1/11/71, 28; 1/12/71, 35)
Newspapers reviewed Of a Fire on the Moon by Norman Mailer. In New York Times Book Review Morris Dickstein said book aimed at confrontation with "brave new world of science and technology." Mailer found himself "frustrated at every turn. The event seems pack-aged, distant, unapproachable. . . ." Mailer gave "rather depressed personal account of his attempt . . . to make an approach to the mission, especially to the astronauts and their machines." Mailer felt "betrayed by the gap between his romantic expectations and the gray but immense realities. Seeking to understand, he turns the book into an account of the other America, the Wasp hinterland." " In end Dickstein concluded, "This is not perhaps the book on the impact of technology that we needed, but it is important nonetheless, and offers much to ponder and prey on." (NYT Book Review, 1/10/71, 1, 42-45)
In Washington Sunday Star, Day Thorpe said: "Mailer wasn't a passenger on Apollo 11, but in his motel rooms in Houston and Canaveral, and in his home in Provincetown ... he has put together a long and excellent book about the flight, the story not only of what the adventure meant to the three astronauts who lived it but, no less interesting, what it meant to Mailer himself. The bureaucrats Mailer encountered first in hermetic Houston and then in hermetic Canaveral were unlike all other bureaucrats. They were infallibly courteous, considerate and helpful, and they invariably told the truth." Mailer showed Apollo 11 astronauts as "three human beings, as similar as necessary for their mission, but as unlike one another as experimental prototypes should be." (W Star, 1/10/71, D 6)
M/G John B. Medaris (USA, Ret.)-first Commanding General of Army Ballistics Missile Agency (ABMA) at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Ala., in 1955 and head of team that launched Explorer 1 Jan. 31, 1958 - had become an Episcopal priest, National Enquirer reported. He was curate of Church of Good Shepherd in Maitland, Fla. (Natl Enq, 1/10/71)
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