Jan 20 1965
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (2MB PDF)
President Lyndon B. Johnson was inaugurated. In his Inaugural Address, he said: "For every generation, there is a destiny. For some, history decides. For this generation, the choice must be our own. "Even now, a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves in a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene different from our own. "Ours is a time of change-rapid and fantastic change-baring the secrets of nature-multiplying the nations-placing in uncertain hands new weapons for mastery and destruction-shaking old values and uprooting old ways. . . . "Change has brought new meaning to that old mission. We can never again stand aside, prideful in isolation. Dangers and troubles we once called 'foreign' now live among us. If American lives must end, and American treasure be spilled, in countries we barely know, that is the price that change has demanded of conviction. "Think of our world as it looks from that rocket heading toward Mars. "It is like a child's globe, hanging in space, the continents stuck to its side like colored maps. We are all fellow passengers on a dot of earth. And each of us, in the span of time, has only a moment among his companions. "How incredible it is that in this fragile existence we should hate and destroy one another. There are possibilities enough for all who will abandon mastery over others to pursue mastery over nature. There is world enough for all to seek their happiness in their own way. "Our own course is clear. We aspire to nothing that belongs to others. We seek no dominion over our fellow man, but man's dominion over tyranny and misery. . . ." (Text)
Dr. Robert Jastrow, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said at the annual meeting of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia: "Beyond military and political advantages of getting to the moon are possibilities we cannot conceive." The moon, he said could prove to be "the Rosetta stone of the universe. Its lifeless surface could give us the clue to the process of life." (Phil. Eve. Bull., 1/21/65)
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. conducted successful static firings of the Agena target vehicle for Project Gemini. The firing tests, which included simulated maneuvers to be made by Agena. During rendezvous with the Gemini spacecraft, included five separate firings of the main engine and of the secondary propulsion system. The tests lasted some 12 hrs. and were termed by Lockheed "complete captive flight." All systems of the actual flight Agena were tested, including command from earth transmitters, programmed commands within the Agena, telemetry, and docking simulation. Previous Gemini Agena firings had tested the vehicle's engines only. (Huntsville Times, 1/22/65)
Dr. M. P. Lansberg of the National Aeromedical Center, Soesterberg. The Netherlands, told scientists attending the symposium on the inner ear at the Naval School of Aviation Medicine at Pensacola Air Station that one role of space flight would be the exploration of the functioning of the vestibular organ. "This might well be the most important and fascinating side of space flight," said Dr. Lansberg. "Not what it will reveal to us of distant worlds, but what it will unveil to us about ourselves." Dr. Lansberg also warned against expecting too much from experiments conducted here on earth in trying to determine how much gravity-producing spinning man could stand. In recommending rates of speed to space engineers, he said "we should be conservative." (Harris, Pensacola Journal, 1/21/65)
In an article in The Huntsville Times, Richard Lewis said: "If Project Apollo continues at its present pace, the United States will be able to attempt the landing of astronauts on the moon in 1968. .. . "This impression of the status of Apollo . . . was gained by this reporter in tours of both industrial and test centers for the mammoth project. . . . "The story at these centers is this: no new breakthroughs in electronics, mechanics, metallurgy, propulsion or guidance and navigation are required for the program. All major problems are settled. They have been solved or 'worked around.' . . . "So well does Apollo appear to be running that there is a strong probability it will overtake the later flights of Project Gemini, the two-man spacecraft program." (Lewis, Chicago Sun-Times, Huntsville Times, 1/20/65)
It was reported that Lockheed Propulsion Co. had successfully test-fired a new solid-propellant rocket motor at the proving ground in Redlands, Calif. The lightweight "pulse motor" measured 10 ft. in length, 2 ft. in dia., and contained 40 solid-propellant wafers, each of which could develop more than 1,000 lbs. of thrust. This was possibly the rocket motor that would power the Sram (short-range attack missile) mentioned by President Johnson in his defense message to Congress [See Jan. 18, 1965]. (Miles, Wash. Post, 1/20/65; SBD, 1/18/65, 74)
USAF successfully launched its first Minuteman ICBM of 1965 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The missile was sent on a 5,000-mi. course toward a target in the Pacific. (UPI, L.A. Herald Examiner, 1/21/65)
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