January 1965
From The Space Library
Reviewing Apollo program progress, Dr. Joseph Shea, Manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office at NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, said that NASA had characterized the program as a series of phases. He explained that 1963 and 1964 were years of detailed designs and initial developmental testing; 1964 and 1965 were years of extensive ground tests and qualifications for flight; from 1966 on, ground tests would be supplemental to extensive flight tests, initially on the Saturn IB and later on the Saturn V. From his visits to almost all of the major Apollo hardware contractors, Dr. Shea said he could report that all of the subsystems associated with the command and service modules "are well along in their ground test programs. "Almost all elements are on schedule and the test results indicate that the designs will meet our program objectives. By early this year, all subsystem hardware will be undergoing the rigorous qualification tests which we require before certifying such hardware ready for flight. . . . By the end of 1965, there will be three Apollo spacecraft in continuous ground testing. 1964 was, in retrospect, a year where milestone by milestone, we have achieved Apollo objectives." (NAA S&ID Skywriter, 1/15/65, 1, 4; Witkin, NYT, 1/24/65, 60)
Dr. William H. Pickering, Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in an article in Astronautics and Aeronautics for January: ". . . With Ranger VII, the prime factor was the expectation that the Apollo mission would choose a landing area on one of the smooth `maria.' So it was of great value to this program to find out as much as possible about the mare topography. In particular, it was necessary to know if these areas were really lava flows and, if so, how much was exposed lava and how densely the small craters were scattered over the surface. "Ranger gave some of the answers. In some areas, at least, small craters were indeed strewn very thickly. Probably such areas lie along the rays which radiate from some of the more recent large craters. Between these ray regions the surface of the mare appears to be quite smooth. No large rocks or fissures are apparent, although the general roughness may be comparable to some terrestrial lava fields where the lava is of the ‘pahoehoe,’ or fluid variety. However, the absence of any significant number of features showing edges with a small radius of curvature, and the presence of small craters which have been filled with debris, point to erosion as a significant modifier of the primeval lunar surface. This erosion could arise from meteoric bombardment and the effects of solar radiations. Estimates of the depth of surface which has been eroded away range from 5 to 50 ft. . . ." (A&A, 1/65, 18-20)
GAO charged that mismanagement of the Nimbus meteorological satellite project resulted in unnecessary costs of $1.2 million. The report claimed that Nimbus' project manager at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center "did not effectively carry out his responsibility" for flight planning when it became evident that the spacecraft had become overweight and that he allowed the contractor to continue working toward the original design goal "even though it was clear [the effort] would be futile" because of booster limitations. Dr. Homer E. Newell, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science and Applications, rebutted the GAO allegations: "The costs which were incurred on the Nimbus project during the 5½ months between May 1961 and November 20, 1961, were for the development of the fully redundant Nimbus system to satisfy the requirements of the Plan for a National Operational Meteorological Satellite System. . . . Our effort to achieve the redundant system in the first Nimbus flight was continued as long as possible. . . . we did not want to take the step of dropping the redundant system, even for the first flight, until we were sure we had to." (GAO Nimbus Rpt., 1/65; M&R, 2/8/65, 9)
Writing in the January 1965 issue of Astronautics and Aeronautics, Dr. Harold B. Finger, Manager of AEC-NASA Space Nuclear Propulsion Office (SNPO), summed up the various components of the advanced nuclear propulsion program and emphasized the importance of the solid-core nuclear rocket within the field: "Solid-core nuclear rockets are the best understood and most nearly developed of the many advanced nuclear-propulsion concepts being investigated in this country. They offer the most assured and earliest possible means for very substantial improvements and advances in space-flight propulsion capability. Furthermore, because solid-core nuclear rockets rely heavily on technology and techniques of chemical rocket engines and although much extension of these techniques is required, no fundamentally new engineering approaches are required to develop this new breed of substantially improved rocketry for actual flight use. Solid-core nuclear rockets can be relied on for our future space missions. "Progress has been made in electric propulsion, particularly in the thruster area, and important research data and technology are also beginning to be provided in the difficult area of nuclear-reactor electric generating systems required for prime electric propulsion. "Beyond these systems, other advanced nuclear propulsion concepts are not yet well-enough understood to justify undertaking significant development efforts." (A&A, 1/65, 30-35)
Nine areas of scientific experiments for the first manned Apollo lunar landing mission had been summarized and experimenters were defining them for NASA. Space sciences project group expected to publish the complete report by Mar. 1, to be followed by requests for proposals from industry on designing and producing instrument packages. A major effort was under way by a NASA task force making a time-motion study of how best to use the limited lunar stay-time of 2 hr. minimum for the first flight. (Av. Wk., 2/1/65, 13)
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center announced it would negotiate with Radiation, Inc., of Melbourne, Florida, for a contract to develop a new weather measuring system to be tested aboard the Nimbus B meteorological satellite. The new equipment, Interrogation Recording and Location System (IRLS), would tie together weather observations made on the ground and in space as well as oceanographic measurements. (GSFC Release G-1-65)
In an article in the Indianapolis Star discussing Soviet medical practices observed during his visit to Russia at the invitation of the Soviet Academy of Science, Dr. John M. Keshishian, associate in surgery on the George Washington University School of Medicine faculty, said: "It is not generally known that just before Voskhod was ordered into reentry, the pulse rate of one cosmonaut dropped to 40. "When your pulse rate drops below 40 heartbeats a minute, you're in trouble. "The Russians haven't said anything about this . .. but it could be another one of the problems their space medicine is encountering for which there seems to be no ready solutions. "For example, some Russian cosmonauts have suffered severe. hallucinations, both in flight and afterwards. Others have suffered equally severe and, thus far, inexplicable vertigo during which they can't be certain whether the floor's coming up to meet them or vice versa, or whether they're spinning, or the room is. And Russian physicians have found that . . space flight environment-possibly weightlessness-draws calcium from the blood and expels it in the urine." (World Book Encyclopedia Science Service, Inc., Keshishian, Indianapolis Star)
In an article in Foreign Affairs entitled "Slowdown in the Pentagon," Hanson W. Baldwin said: "The sprawling bureaucracy of big government; the control of major military or paramilitary projects by agencies over which the Defense Department has no direct authority, including the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Bureau of the Budget; congressional legislation and executive regulation-social, political and economic; the tremendous size and complexity of the Armed Forces; overcentralization and overregulation in the Pentagon; too much service rivalry and not enough service competition-all these and other factors have become built in roadblocks in defense development and contracting. "The creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has provided another type of problem. NASA stemmed from the same kind of political philosophy that nurtured the AEC. Atom bombs were too powerful to allow the generals to play with them; ergo, a civilian agency must control nuclear power-and it must be channeled away from nasty military purposes. The same scientific-political pressure groups that advocated this concept helped (with President Eisenhower's approval) to establish NASA, again on the theory that space efforts must be controlled by civilians and that space must not be used for military purposes. . . . "But in the case of NASA, the problem has been compounded. For while the AEC is essentially a research and production agency, NASA is an operating agency as well. From a small highly efficient aeronautical research agency, it has now expanded into a gargantuan multibillion-dollar empire, with tentacles all over the country, managing the biggest program on which the United States has ever embarked-to place a man on the moon. "In its early years, NASA was sluggishly if at all responsive to military needs, and the Pentagon itself was inhibited from any effective space developments (though, curiously, the only effective space boosters available were military ballistic missiles). Gradually the liaison, due to Dr. [Edward C.] Welsh and others, has been greatly improved. Numerous military officers, active and retired, now hold some of the most important positions in NASA, and in addition the Armed Forces have furnished most of the astronauts and by far the most important part of the facilities and services used by the agency. The two-headed control still offers difficulties, but today the main stumbling blocks to the rapid development of military space projects are Secretary McNamara and his Director of Defense Research and Engineering, Dr. Harold Brown, who in his new political role in the Pentagon has become a remarkably unadventurous scientist. "Often the President's Scientific Adviser, whose contacts with Pentagon and other Government scientists cut squarely across organizational lines, has also acted as roadblock to new developments. He exercises tremendous power without either specific responsibility or specific authority; therefore, his intervention often not only delays but confuses. The Adviser's great power stems largely from his White House status; unfortunately around him has grown up a small but important office manned by men more impressive as bureaucrats than as scientists, who represent, in effect, another echelon of delay. . . ." (Foreign Affairs, 1/65; CR, 2/4/65, 2007)
Committee assignments for both parties were made in both Houses of Congress. New members on the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences: Walter F. Mondale (D-Minn.), Joseph Tydings (D-Md.), Len B. Jordan (R-Ida.), and George D. Aiken (R-Vt.). New members of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics: Roy A. Taylor (D-N.C.), George E. Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.), Walter H. Moeller (D-Ohio), William R. Anderson (D-Tenn.), Brock Adams (D-Wash,), Lester L. Wolff (D-N.Y.), Weston E. Vivian (D-Mich.), Gale Schisler (D-Ill.), and Barber B. Conable, Jr. (R-N.Y.). (Comm. Off.)
Marvin L. White. AFCRL'S Space Physics Laboratory, predicted the sun was encircled by "rings" of electric current totaling nearly 200 billion amps. Although total current was high, White postulated that the current density was low because the current was spread over a large area; he predicted current density to be about three trillionths of an ampere per square centimeter, the same order of magnitude as in the earth's atmosphere. White's calculations were based on particle flux data from MARINER II. (OAR Research Review, 1/65, 1-2)
With launch of two balloons to 87,000-ft. altitudes from Chico, Calif., AFCRL, began one-year series of high-altitude balloon flights to measure moisture in the stratosphere. Series would consist of vertical soundings-25 in all, at the rate of two per month-in which all data would be obtained in recoverable instrumented payload parachuted to earth when balloon descended to 30,000 ft., and horizontal soundings-five 11-day flights at float altitudes averaging 75,000 ft.-in which data gathered over thousands of miles would be telemetered every two hours to ground stations. ( OAR Research Review, 5/65, 15-16)
In an article on detecting extraterrestrial life, William R. Corliss in International Science and Technology described some of the plans for collecting data on possible life-forms elsewhere and some of the factors making the search for extraterrestrial life so challenging. He noted the complications for Martian life-detection if retrorockets were necessary to brake the landing of a scientific package: "First, of course, they add weight to the landing package, right where it hurts the most. Also, their control adds complexity and increases the chance of failure. Finally and perhaps most importantly, they would make the problem of life-detection more difficult and any results more ambiguous; the rocket exhaust would tend both to fuse the surface of the landing area (maybe even killing any existing organisms), and to add combustion contaminants of its own in the most crucial area-around the lander." He listed the variety of experimental instruments proposed for detecting extraterrestrial life (or clues of life) and explained why the dependability of these instruments-based on different physical and chemical principles-varied widely. (Int. Sci. & Tech., 1/65, 28-34)
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