Jan 15 1962
From The Space Library
"Big Shot" suborbital inflation test of 135-foot diameter sphere in Echo II program was conducted from AMR. The 44-inch cannister containing the uninflated balloon that would be larger and more rigid than ECHO II was separated at altitude from a specially stabilized Thor booster which carried both TV and 16-mm movie cameras. These cameras monitored the separation of the cannister and inflation of the "balloon satellite," showed the too-rapid inflation that ripped the balloon apart at 250-miles altitude; capsule with movie film re-entered and was later recovered by skin divers.
In regular press conference, President Kennedy announced that he had asked his Science Advisory Committee, in cooperation with the Federal Council for Science and Technology, to report "as quickly as possible on the specific measures that can be taken within and without the Government to develop the necessary and well-qualified scientists and engineers and technicians to meet our society's complex needs—government, educational and industrial." He prefaced his announcement with a review of the declining number of scientists and engineers educated in the United States since 1951.
In NASA press conference in New York City, Dr. Abe Silverstein, Director of the Lewis Research Center, outlined factors in NASA’s nation-wide recruitment of 2,000 scientists, engineers, and technicians: (1) NASA had already interviewed 4,000 candidates in other cities and hoped to screen another 1,000 in New York; (2) salaries in industry tended to be higher than in Federal employment but NASA offered better postgraduate experience as well as opportunity to acquire national or international reputation; (3) NASA's manpower drain on the annual pool of 40-45,000 engineering graduates was small; and (4) the new specialists trained in the space program during the next decade would be an effective argument for much of the cost of the entire space effort.
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