Apr 22 1964
From The Space Library
NASA launched Nike-Apache sounding rocket from Ft. Churchill, Canada, with Univ. of Alaska payload to obtain data on the visible aurora and on the vacuum ultraviolet emissions. This information was to be supplemented by data from two electron particle detectors. Payload also included three photometers and two vacuum ultraviolet detectors. The rocket attained peak altitude of 103 mi., and the flight appeared satisfactory. (NASA Rpt. SRL)
Michael I. Yarymovych, Director of NASA Manned Earth Orbital Mission Studies, said before Canaveral Council of Technical Studies, Cape Kennedy, that NASA was coordinating fully with DOD in exploring four different types of orbital systems: Extended Apollo, Apollo Orbital Research Laboratory (AORL), Medium Orbital Research Laboratory (MORL.), and Large Orbital Research Laboratory (LORL). The first three concepts were designed to be orbited' y Saturn IB; LORI, by Saturn V. Yarymovych said that it was "becoming increasingly clear that the Extended Apollo is an essential element of an expanding Earth orbital program. . . . "In the initial stages, it would be used as a laboratory and later it could be converted to a logistics system." AORL, MORL, and LORL were in competition with each other, he said, and a decision would have to be made among them. USAF's Gemini B/Manned Orbiting Laboratory was being studied as possible integral element of Orbital Research Laboratory program. (M&R, 4/27/64, 16)
NASA announced Flight Research Center's selection of Norair Div., Northrop Corp., for design and fabrication of two "lifting body" research gliders. The fixed-price contract was expected to amount to about $1 million. The research gliders would be used by FRC in studying problems of piloting advanced spacecraft during landing. (FRC Release 7-64; NASA Re-lease 64-93)
World's Fair opened in New York, its U.S. Space Park featuring such exhibits as full-scale mockup of Saturn V's first stage boat tail, Gemini-Titan, Mercury-Atlas, Delta, and the X-15. (Goddard News, 5/4/64, 3)
USAF information office Was quoted by Stuart H. Loory in New York Herald Tribune as saying that since 1959, 12 SAC operational training missions of Atlas ICBM had been failures AF had called in General Dynamics Corp. engineers to help solve the problems. (Loory, N.Y . Her. Trib., 4/22/64)
AFSC/BSD commander Maj. Gen. W. A. Davis, asked at Cape Kennedy press conference to comment on the recently reported Atlas ICBM failures at Vandenberg AFB, said: "There are several possible reasons for the failures. The Atlas is a complex piece of machinery that has a habit of using up some of its reliability with age. SAC has been taking Atlases off of operational sites, where they have been for a year or more, placing them on the stand at Vandenberg and firing them. "I feel that this type of test is not operational realism as SAC calls it. You take the missile out of its environment, load it on a plane, fly it 1,000 or more miles, load it on another stand and fire it. This requires dis-connecting and reconnecting wires and fuel lines and installing destruct packages and some instrumentation for the training launches." (AP, Wash. Post, 4/23/64)
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