deacef
habit

lite haa
Posthoneq

With si

SOVIET STAND

‘Community
of sputniks’

‘As

the United States first. satellite Explorer (officially

chri
in a) ae Alpha 1958, unofficially Yanknik) — hurtled on
i earth-circling orbit last week, U.S. citizens heard greet-

in
8s from Prof, Sedov, Soviet interplanetary expert.
“ . . ”
me community of sputniks idea put
Y Nikita Krushchev when the Soviet

b choing the

forward
launching took places

oy : :
iy, rote in the Soviet newspaper Pravda:

a © continue to consider

8: It is better to build ships

ee ty communi-
: :

a on to compete in the

a looked forward to
ul development of in-
fi sey Satellites and eventual
mar to the moon.
ment ¢ when the announce-
hat the first U.S. satel-
finally made its much-
ascent, people
pineed in Huntsville, Ala-
» and waved placards
Bans like “Move over
Miss,» Kk,” “Our Missiles Never
As Ajit “Space Is Ours.”
miles ey 1958 rushed 1,800
inal Abs to begin its latitud-
omea iting of the earth, it
that a load of inferi-

Ori

Sma gray fom te
hing. “Purdened American
Xn tend.

Ag this is really odd be-

aa oe _ So-called U.S.
sible i Issile team respon-
most. ¢ r the Operation is al-
a Xclusively German —
€rman scientists engin-
ot technicians, led by
aa Wehrner von Braun,
= a baron’s son who
e Nazi party in 1940

Was head. of Hitler’s

Slides ate. :
Souq tie station at Peen-

€ers
Profe
SI
JOin,

Ee von Braun’s V2s
le ay London out of the
Taining death and des-

t
that

Th

U.S. government has

Civiy ded the Exceptional
4n Award to Dr. Wehr-

ner

leq uae. Braun (above), who
Selena team of German
f Sts largely responsible

Or
S me Explorer. During the
ri World War von Braun
Many charge of Nazi Ger-
2 YS rocket station at
“Nemunde,

~ Jupiter

truction. And Londoners could
read with a sense of irony
the message sent by British
Defense Minister Duncan
Sandys,
son-in-law, to Dr, von Braun:

“Please accept my warmest
congratulations on your great
achievement which has thrill-
ed and delighted us here in
Britain.

“You and I had some dif-
ferences in the war. I am so
glad that we are now work-
ing together for the same
cause. I hope we may meet
personally one day.”

In a perhaps ominous, and
certainly cryptic, remark von
Braun is reported as saying:
“Fyen if the United States
tried to stop Russia’s working
speed by 20 percent, it would

take five years to catch up |

with her.” This, he thought,
was “the real problem.”

Prof. A. N. Nesmyanov,
president of the Soviet Acad-
emy of Sciences, was among
the first to congratulate the
Americans: “This is good
news. I congratulate Ameri-
can scientists on their efforts,
now crowned with success.”

Prof. von Braun himself
admitted after the launching
that the Russians “in actual
hardware... have put a half-
ton satellite into orbit, more
than 30 times heavier than
ours.”

The New York Herald Trib-
une said in an editorial that
von Braun could have Jaunch-
ed an earth-satellite two
years ago but was prevented
by inter-service rivalries.

It also blamed the
credible unimaginativeness”
of the then U.S. Defense Sec-
retary Charles Wilson, who
actually issued orders for-
biding von Braun. to allow
(the launching roc-
ket) to orbit.

“Partly because of Wilson’s
blindness to the psychological
importance of a satellite, and
partly because of air force
fears of army predominance
in missiles, the moon project
was fobbed off on an inferior
navy missile, the Viking (later
Vanguard), which many think

“in-

never had sufficient power of.
orbiting” — a conclusion re- .

inforced by last week’s sec-
ond flop.

Winston Churchill’s -

Launching of the first U.S. earth satellite,

Predictions on life of Explorer
differ, some ‘highly optimistic’

By PETER THOMAS

The successful launching of
the Explorer was achieved by
use of a well-tried rocket and
new fuel.

The main section, a U.S.
Army Redstone, is a modern-
ized V.2. This is reported to
be using one of the newer
liquid fuels, containing boron,
which burns at .very high
temperatures and gives a large
thrust.

The remaining three stages
burnt solid fuel. Although
solid fuel rockets are practic-
ally as old as gunpowder, the
fuels employed in the Ex-
plorer are comparatively re-
cent developments, and are
used because they burn stead-
ily and evenly and permit a
relatively light rocket casing.

The orbit of the Explorer
is less circular than that of

the Sputniks. Its distance
varies between 200 and 1,700
miles from the earth’s surface.
Unless this was deliberate it
suggests that the accuracy of
control of Explorer was
vather less than that of the
Sputniks.

The Explorer has been fired
in an orbit around the
equator in the same direction

as the earth rotates. This
means that it has reached
greater height than would

otherwise have been possible.

This also means that it can
only be observed from a
limited region of the earth’s
surface. It wil not be seen
from Canada.

The satellite will be tracked
by about 12 stations in a
broad belt around the equator.

Because of its elliptical orbit
it is hard to predict how long

it will stay up. A circular
orbit is probably more likely
to give a satellite a longer
life. The claim by General
Medaris of a life ranging
from 30 months to 10 years
seems, on the face of it, ex-
tremely optimistic.

The transmitter frequencies
of 108 megacycles are higher
than those used in the sput-
niks. This will give yet an-
other viewpoint on the nature
of ionized regions of the upper
air which are of much in-
terest to scientists.

Other information is being

obtained on cosmic rays,
meteorites and the satellite
temperature.

But perhaps the most sig-
nificant information is in the
reactions to the launching.
You don’t have to be scien-
tifically qualified to see these.

February 14, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 3