Mar 16 1976
From The Space Library
The 50th anniversary of Dr. Robert Goddard's successful launch of the world's first liquid-fueled rocket at his aunt's farm near Auburn, Mass., was observed in a re-enactment at the launching site-now marked by a granite monument-and in 15th anniversary ceremonies at the Goddard Space Flight Center, which also launched a commemorative rocket. Dr. Goddard had written on space navigation while still in high school; his early theoretical writings prompted the New York Times to print an article on its editorial page in 1920 saying that Dr. Goddard was ignorant of elementary physics if he thought a rocket would work in the vacuum of space. The Times ran a correction on 17 July 1969, the morning after the Apollo astronauts were launched toward the first lunar landing.
The original rocket launched by Dr. Goddard in 1926 was about 3 m high, traveled a little more than 12 m upward, and attained a speed of 56 m in 2.5 sec. powered by a combination of gasoline and liquid oxygen. By contrast, the Saturn V rocket with its Apollo payload stood over 110 m tall and could cover 25 km in 2.5 sec powered by a mixture of kerosene and liquid oxygen, a fuel remarkably similar to that used by Dr. Goddard. Although, as GSFC Director Dr. John F. Clark pointed out at the Center re-enactment, "Not a line appeared in a single paper about the Auburn flight ... In fact, the attention he did get in the early 1920s was adverse . . .," Dr. Goddard continued his work in New Mexico in the 1930s and flew his rockets to heights over 3 km and at speeds up to supersonic.
Of Dr. Goddard's concepts, Wernher von Braun said: "Goddard did most of the basic research and development that made possible rockets such as the Saturn V." Dr. Goddard had died in 1945, but his widow had attended the dedication of the Center when it opened in 1961; she had planned to attend the re-enactment in Auburn, but a heavy snowstorm swept New England 16 Mar. and seriously curtailed attendance at the event. Astronaut Eugene Cernan, principal speaker at the Mass. ceremonies, had reached Boston's Logan Airport only an hour before it was closed down by the storm, and was taken by car to the scene as the scheduled helicopter could not fly. (NYT, 16 Mar 76, 16; W Post, 17 Mar 76, C-2; (GSFC News, Mar 76, 1; Worcester Telegram, 17 Mar 76, 1; report of commemorative committee, Auburn Rotary Club, 19 Mar 76)
Timing the rebound of laser pulses aimed at reflectors left on the moon by Apollo astronauts had served to reinforce Einstein's theory of relativity, according to a study in Physical Review Letters reported by the New York Times. The equivalence principle-that objects of different weight fell at essentially the same speed-was tested in the 16th century by Galileo, who showed that all bodies responded similarly to gravity regardless of size or composition. Einstein's theory was based on a related assumption, that the mass responsible for an object's inertia was equivalent to the mass responsible for the gravity that it generated. However, if the gravitational pull of the earth were influenced by the sun's gravity, the relationship between a body's inertia and its gravity would not always be uniform, and the report described experiments to test a theoretical departure from equivalence. An eclipse of the sun in 1919 had been used to test Einstein's theory, and showed that light from distant stars was bent-as expected-as it passed through powerful gravity near the sun. Other experiments-bouncing radar beams off Venus and Mercury to see if the beams were bent or lengthened by the sun's gravity, or monitoring round-trip signals to Mariner 9 as it sailed behind the sun or radio emissions from quasars in that direction-had narrowed any deviations from Einstein's formulation to a small margin.
The experiments reported recently were independent analyses of 1389 measurements of round-trip travel times of laser pulses aimed at moon reflectors, to detect changes in earth-moon distance to within 127 mm. If earth gravitational energy were influenced by the sun's gravity, the effect would alter the earth's gravity more than that of the moon, and the moon's motion about the earth would deviate by as much as a meter from conventional predictions. The experiments showed no such effect. (NYT, 16 Mar 76, 17)
The Energy Research and Development Administration requested proposals for what the Wall Street Journal called a "scaled-down" Institute for Solar Research; a modest facility with a budget of $4 to $6 million in its first year. The National Academy of Sciences months ago recommended an institute with a wide research role, a staff of about 1500, and an annual budget of $50 million; unsolicited proposals had been arriving from nearly every state, with many politicians interested in having the institute locate in their constituency. ERDA would operate the facility through contracts with any organization, including nonprofit groups, corporations, universities, or state or local governments, and operations should begin by early 1980, according to Robert Hirsch, an acting assistant administrator of ERDA, at the press conference. The institute was a requirement of a 1974 law calling for various solar-energy demonstrations to be financed by the federal government; ERDA wanted initial proposals for a 5-yr operation, with future functioning dependent on performance and availability of funds. As ERDA currently contracted out most of its solar research to private facilities, a reporter asked why its work called for a special institute instead of expanding the current research program; Hirsch responded, "because the law requires it." (WSJ, 16 Mar 76, 3)
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