Aug 26 1969
From The Space Library
Moon landing would change human lives, British novelist and scientist C. P. Snow said in Look "I am afraid that in the long run, perhaps a generation, perhaps longer, it will have a bad effect. It will give us the feeling, and the perfectly justified feeling, that our world has finally closed in. This is forever the end of the mortal frontier." Space enthusiasts thought lunar landing would liberate human imagination but "I believe . . . that human imagination is going to be restricted-as to an extent it was when the last spots on the globe had been visited, the South Pole and the summit of Everest. Nowhere on earth for adventurous man to go. Very soon, there will be no place in the universe for adventurous man to go." (Look, 8/26/69, 68-72)
NASA announced award by LaRC of $2.5-million contract to Ling-Temco-Vought Aerospace Corp. to design, develop, and flight-qualify larger 1st-stage solid rocket motor for Scout booster. New Algol III motor would have 44- or 45-in dia, 4 or 5 in wider than Algol IIB, and would enable Scout to place 400-lb payload, 100 lbs more than IIB capacity, into orbit with 300-mi altitude. (NASA Release 69/126)
Bright red lights, believed by observers to be meteors, flashed across California, Nevada, and Arizona at 8:50 pm PDT. North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) later identified lights as parts of Soviet booster burning during reentry. Booster had launched Cosmos CCXCIV Aug. 19. (AP, W Star, 8/27/69, A5; later ed, A13)
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