First Man In Space
By Harry Kursh
YOU’RE a special breed. That’s why you’ve been selected to be the first man into space. You squirm nervously in your space suit inside the ballistic-like metal container designed to hurl you into orbit. Outside, in an underground blockhouse, the project engineer’s finger is poised over the blast-off button. The countdown is in its final seconds—five, four, three, two, one— fire! …
This thing kind of looks like a little Deathstar, and it will only take 10 trips to build. Let’s do it!
Also, they claim the atomic reactor reaches tempuratures of 600 billion degrees. Does this seem a little high to anyone else?
Fortress on a Skyhook
The U.S. is working on plans for a satellite base, Defense Secretary Forrestal reveals. Take a long look at this man-made moon—and learn how it may rule the world.
By Frank Tinsley
EVEN Jules Verne would be amazed at the latest activities of the U. S. Department of Defense. Secretary James Forrestal disclosed recently that his department is working on a “satellite base” to revolve around the world like a miniature moon, as a military outpost in space.
To think, I’d always believed that redshift was caused by the doppler effect. How silly of me. Actually the light just gets really tired! (You would too if you’d traveled for 13 billion light years without a single vacation day). And of course blueshift occurs when the light is really happy or excited, like when it wins a race against… well anything really.
According to Wikipedia redshift was first used to measure the velocity of a star moving away from the Earth in 1868 so they really don’t have an excuse for not getting the memo. My only guess is that they couldn’t accept the fact that practically everything in the Universe is moving away from us and that the farther away it is, the faster it’s going. This of course leads to crazy ideas like the big bang.
Light Gets Tired and Turns Red
THAT light rays get tired as they travel for millions of years through space, fritter away a little of themselves century by century and end by changing color so that rays which started as blue ones may finish by becoming red is suggested by scientists. Astronomers have discovered that light rays coming to the earth from the most distant nebulae actually show what is called the “red shift,” which means the light from these nebulae is shifted a little toward the red end of the spectrum. What may be happening is that each tiny bit of each light ray may lose a small fraction of its substance as it moves through space.
The funny thing about this ad is that “NASA Space Telescope” was the original name of the Hubble Space Telescope and Perkin-Elmer is the contractor that delivered a flawed main mirror, requiring a very expensive and difficult repair mission.
Responsive Technology from Perkin-Elmer
The NASA Space Telescope: Getting ready for the clearest look yet into space
The NASA Space Telescope, scheduled for launch by the Space Shuttle in the 1980s, will orbit the earth at an altitude of 310 miles. Unlike ground-based telescopes which are restricted to a narrow spectral window and subject to distortions by the earth’s atmosphere, the Space Telescope will provide astronomers with the clearest view yet of the universe.
What percentage of Scientific American readers could possibly be in the market for an Inertial Upper Stage? Frankly I would be worried if someone was planning to launch a satellite, stumbled across this ad and proclaimed “Aha! Now I know what to do about apogee injection!”
USE THE BOEING IUS AND FORGET ABOUT
WORRIES 1 THROUGH 11
If you’ve been thinking about choosing the right upper stage to get your own spacecraft off the ground, you’re no doubt going through a little anxiety right now. What about reliability? How about performance? Who’s responsible? Costs? Accuracy? Things like that. We’d like to make a case for the Boeing Inertial Upper Stage — the only all-inclusive, worry-free, complete package available.
This looks like some kind of Geiger inspired S&M gear.
HERE’S WHAT WE’LL WEAR
Designers are already working on the styles the well-dressed space man needs to survive.
By Lloyd Mallan
Author of Men, Rockets And Space Rats
IT MAY or may not be true that clothes make the man, but one thing is certain: when he starts traveling in outer space his life will depend on the clothes he wears. For the past decade a unique group of clothing stylists has been hard at work determining the cut and materials of future fashions in space dress. None of this group is a designer by profession. Among its varied members are biophysicists; physiologists, anthropologists, electronic scientists and doctors of medicine. But they have one thing in common: all are willing to risk their own necks to perfect equipment that will make it safe for other men to fly through the alien vacuum of space. Acting as their own guinea pigs, they are locked into altitude chambers, spun wildly on centrifuges, and closed up in insulated rooms. In the process, they discover whether or not their space fashions are practical. And in order to be absolutely certain they plunge needles into their veins and spines, under their skin and over their brains. Wires connected to the needles carry their slightest physical reaction.
But out of it all, in just ten years, have come the means to prevent the horrors that could happen in space to the unaccustomed human body. Aeromedical scientists at the Air Force’s Wright Air Development Center (who supplied photos on these pages) now know that man can fly beyond the atmosphere without his tissues exploding, brain hemorrhaging, blood cells dying or lungs collapsing.
Launching Tomorrow’s Satellite
When the first man-made satellite is launched on its orbit around the earth, it will owe its existence to the thousands of missiles which have preceded it, and to the careful analysis of their patterns of flight. The Univac Scientific of Remington Rand has speeded this effort immeasurably, handling flight analyses for the nation’s guided missile program.
Each missile firing, each analysis, involves enormous amounts of in-flight data, with manual computations normally requiring from 250 to 500 hours. This staggering work load is accomplished by the Univac Scientific Electronic Computer in approximately 4 to 8 minutes.
Laser May Guide Space Ships
GREATLY amplified light beams may provide optical lane” navigation systems to guide planes or spaceships of the future, using a newly-developed material.
Scientists at the IBM Research Center, Yorktown, N. Y., have announced a laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) that gives the first continuous beam of amplified light. It uses uranium ions in a cylindrical 1-1/2-in. crystal instead of the ruby in a previously-announced laser (see p. 94, Nov. ‘60 S&M). The earlier amplifier could transmit light only in widely-spaced pulses of about .001 second and needed about 500 times as much power as the uranium type. IBM says future refinements now depend on improved optical design rather than advances in materials research.
ALL ABOARD FOR OUTER SPACE!
Is this the ship that will take us to earth’s first manned satellite?
By G. Harry Stine, Viking-Aerobee Operations Engineer, White Sands Proving Grounds
ON May 24, 1954, a Navy Viking rocket thundered 158 miles into space.
As recently as February 1949, a V-2/ WAC-Corporal “Bumper” rocket soared 250 miles into the sky over New Mexico’s White Sands Proving Grounds.
Just last year, an Air Force pilot flew the Bell X-1A rocket plane “above 80,000 feet” and at more than twice the speed of sound.
We have built rockets which have gone beyond the earth’s atmosphere and returned; they have reached altitudes where the remnants of the atmosphere around them were a better vacuum than that in a radio tube. We have sent men to altitudes where their blood would boil if they were not protected by a pressure suit and a pressurized cabin.
Rocket Flight Dream or Reality?
Prophetically depicting what future commercial rocket flight “space ships” will look like, a recent motion picture features scenes showing a passenger rocket taking off from a long runway (left) and another super-rocket ship being nosed out of its hangar (left center) in preparation for a transcontinental flight at speeds surpassing 1,000 miles per hour. Bona fide rocket experimenters, however, acknowledge that it will be a long time before passenger rockets will be practical.
In the photo at right, an experimental rocket is seen just at the moment of leaving the ground. Rockets do not have to be shot into the air in order to conduct tests, but are usually “launched” on a proving stand, special instruments indicating power, rate of climb, and other data.
Much in the manner of pioneer aircraft experimenters, groups of rocket fans are constantly seeking to improve rocket flight in an effort to hasten the day when commercial rocket travel will be practical. Left——German experimenters with a newly developed rocket. Above—Test plane fitted with a rocket motor at tail. Rocket motors have also been tested in boats and automobiles.
Lunar Explorers May Ride in Squirrel Cage
SPACE explorers may roll around the moon’s surface in a squirrel cage-type vehicle much like this one.
Once a space craft lands on the moon, the collapsible Moon Sac would be inflated, then equipped to house and provide for explorations by a two-man team. The inflating gas would also serve as an atmosphere and allow natural breathing, speaking and eating.
The lightweight, bar-bell-shaped vehicle was designed by Scully-Anthony Corp., a division of Scully-Jones Co., Chicago, 111
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Moon Farms to Banish Starvation
FIFTY years from now much of the world’s food may be grown high in the sky! Tomorrow’s farmers may raise their crops on artificial “moons” that have been launched into space and move in orbits around the earth. And the successful agriculturalist will probably be a combination chemist, biologist and engineer.Fantastic as it may sound, this revolutionary type of farming is more than possible. Five years of intensive research in this country and 60 years of study by five other nations have explored its potentialities. This news comes from the very conservative Carnegie Institution of Washington which has released a 357 page report on the almost unbelievable new science of “algal culture.”
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