Sep 1 1965
From The Space Library
Nike-Apache launched from NASA Wallops Station carried 80-lb, instrumented payload to 94-mi, peak altitude and impacted 74 mi. downrange in the Atlantic, Conducted for the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies and the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory, the experiment telemetered measurements of electron and ion densities and temperatures, to test and compare the operation and performance of five different types of ionospheric plasma probes. (Wallops Release 65-53)
GEMINI V Astronauts Leroy Gordon Cooper (L/Col., USAF) and Charles Conrad, Jr. (LCdr., USN) finished the last day of their general debriefing at Kennedy Space Center, NASA. (UPI, NYT, 9/2/65, 15; Wash, Post, 9/2/65, A14)
Gemini 5 Crew Debriefing Part 1
Gemini 5 Crew Debriefing Part 2
Fuel cells used in the GEMINI V mission August 21-29 were being developed by General Electric Co, for commercial use, Dr. Arthur M. Bueche, GE vice president for research and development, told a news conference in New York City. The first models, expected to be ready next year, would provide only 12 watts (GEMINI V cells provided 2,000 watts) but could power remote television cameras and other communications equipment, Larger units might soon provide emergency power to homes, Dr. Bueche said. (NYT, 9/2/65, 38C)
Man can withstand spaceflights as long as 30 days without suffering serious biological damage, L/Col. Edward C. Knoblock, director of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and member of the medical debriefing team for Project Mercury flights, told the annual convention of the American Association of Clinical Chemists in Chicago. Although GEMINI V relayed signals on the rate of breathing, body temperature, heart heat, and perspiration, the more sophisticated equipment needed to reflect the astronauts' body chemistry would be available on the proposed 14-day flight of a larger manned orbital laboratory. (Powers, Chic, Trib., 9/2/65)
"The Pentagon has surprised almost everyone with its promptness in applying the first squeeze of censorship and news management to its new Manned Orbiting Laboratory program," wrote William Hines in the Washington Evening Star. "Most people assumed that soon after the military got a manned role in space, it would start classifying it, but few could have foreseen the rapidity with which restrictions came. The elapsed time from President Johnson's announcement of the start of MOL at his press conference last week to the Pentagon's first fumbling bit on news management was exactly 2 hours. "Reporters trooping to an MOL briefing at the Pentagon were instructed that they would not be allowed to make tape recordings or to mention the name of the official (Dr. Albert C. Hall, Deputy Director of Research and Engineering), who was briefing them... "The Defense Department is not the only traducer of a free news flow. The space agency gives news management the old college try every time a manned spacecraft goes up. "Of all the significant news locations in a Gemini flight, the only one not covered by the combined news media ... is the most important one of all, the mission control center at Houston. "It is not a secret place, not one in which unnecessary traffic is discouraged... "But neither camera nor tape recorder nor pen-and-paper reporter is allowed in the non-secret room at any time during a flight... This is not to suggest that there has been any coverup to date, In the course of missions, [Christopher] Kraft gives regular, full, and apparently frank accounts of flight activities and opens himself to detailed questioning. So do his associates. A mission commentary of less consistent accuracy and authenticity is broadcast. "But whether or not there has been suppression to date is not the point. All flights so far have ended happily, and nothing succeeds like success. There has been no reason for a coverup. "The point is that the opportunity for news management definitely exists in mission control-and it is an axiom of political science that where opportunity exists, there are always people waiting to seize it." (Hines, Wash. Eve, Star, 9/1/65)
Backup Interceptor Control (Buic), first site of USAF 13-site computer controlled radar system for detection of enemy aircraft, became operational at North Truro, Mass. The 13-site system, which would eventually cost $100 million, was designed by AFSC to assume air defense of the U.S. should the Semi-Automated Ground Environment (Sage) system fail or be destroyed by enemy attack. (UPI NYT, 9/2/65, 18)
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