Tales of the IGY (as posted on Usenet)
to sci.space.history (as well as sci.space.policy)
Len
acase@Glue.umd.edu (Andrew Case) wrote in message news:<bkikgh$n0t@y.glue.umd.edu>...
> Doug... <dvandorn@mn.rr.com> wrote:
> [to Len Cormier]
> >Len, your occasional comments here are always intriguing. You were in
> >the midst of people and organizations that were making history. Have you
> >ever considered writing a book of your own?
>
> I'll second that. I hope he stays too busy building spaceships to write a
> book, but if you find the time, Len, I'll be first in line to buy it.
>
> ......Andrew
> --
Andrew, with an entree like you and Doug have given me,
I guess I'll have to respond with some personal anecdotes.
Please note that these anecdotes are from a "fly-on-the-
wall" perspective.
Tales of the IGY
In spite of the stresses of the cold war, cooperation
during the International Geophysical Year, 1957-1958
was quite genuine. Friendship in the name of cooperative
science also appeared to be quite genuine.
However, I recall one humorous incident that seemed
to be going wrong. A group of Russians and Americans
were sitting around a table discussing what should go
into Volume VI of the Annals of the IGY--mostly
descriptions of programs that the various national
committees were planning for the IGY. Someone suggested
a schedule for program inputs. One of the Russians
began a rather heated discussion in Russian--which
practically none of the non-Russians understood.
The crescendo became more and more heated until the
Russian finally concluded with two English words:
ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE! At which point, all of the
tension vanished, and everone had the same common
human reaction and burst into laughter--including
the ranting Russian.
In deference to some people's sensitivity to having
proceedings tape recorded, we generally used court
reporters to take notes. Court reporters are remarkable;
however, they do not generally have a technical background.
This left us to translate raw notes that were made outside
of knowledgeable context--with sometimes amusing results.
The Lyman-alpha experiment was being discussed at one
meeting, and the speaker noted that a telemetry station
could download the current intensity reading--as well as
the peak reading from the previous orbit. In the court
recorder's notes this came out: "...and measure the
beak as the bird flew by."
There was an IGY satellite conference in Washington
during the week preceding the launch of Sputnik.
Although there was a substantial effort by some folks
to keep him out of the conference, von Braun was there
and was fascinated with the Russian sounding-rocket
program with live animals. During one paper by one of
the Russians, von Braun realized that the speaker was
the principal investigator for these experiments and
exclaimed: "Oh, you're the dog man!"
During this conference, the second secretary from the
Soviet Embassy asked me in Russian why the request for
extending visas for some of the Russians was being
denied. It seems as if they were hoping to do a little
sightseeing, and the conference had kept them quite busy.
I inquired and found out that there really was no problem,
only a technicality. So I told the second secretary
to ask again. When the visa extensions were granted
immediately, I acquired some unwarranted appreciation.
When it was our turn to go to Russia the following year,
everyone but me received two-week visas. I received a
visa for "tridnats dnei"--30 days, which I used to travel
quite extensively in the former USSR.
During the conference on 2 October 1957, I asked
General Blagonravov when they were likely to launch their
planned satellite. He replied "nakanune." This can mean
"on the eve"--which it did, or something rather vague
like in the next month or so.
On Friday evening, the Russians held a reception in the
Soviet Embassy. Per plan, they launched Sputnik during the
reception. Walter Sullivan, the science reporter for the
New York Times, had heard about it first. Rather than
making a grandstand announcement himself, Walter--being a
first-class professional--told our senior American IGY
scientist, Dr. Lloyd Berkner. Berkner was then able
to ask for everyone's attention and made the announcement
that "we congratulate our Soviet colleagues on their
successful launch an Earth satellite."
Of course, there was a lot of psychological fallout with
the launch of Sputnik. However, in my opinion, this was
not all bad. At the reception itself, I found that it was
almost immediately easier to communicate with some of the
Russians--as if some type of feelings of inferiority
suddenly vanished. Moreover, I think that many of our
wishy- washy "friends" started having second thoughts
about playing games.
After the reception, a couple of us National Academy of
Science staffers--as well as Drs. Dick Porter, chairman
of the IGY Satellite Panel, Homer Newell, Jr. (NRL and
later Associate NASA Administrator for Space Science) and
John Townsend (NRL and later head of Goddard)--went to
the National Academy to see if we could figure out
Sputnik's orbit from scraps of information from Riverhead,
Long Island and other places. Dick Porter felt that I
had made a key observation during the evening (and morning),
and later related the incident to the Satellite Panel. He
then said he had a phone call to make, and gave me the
honor of chairing the Panel for about fifteen minutes.
Sputnik had caught us by surprise. Perhaps, some of us,
myself included, should have picked up on some rather
obvious clues that we had missed before. Our Minitrack
system was designed for 108 MHz, which we thought was
to be the international standard. However, in fairness,
the Russians had pointed to an article in their "Radio"
magazine that spoke of using 20 MHz and 40 MHz signals.
We had mistakenly concluded that these would be additional
frequencies, and that the Russian satellites would transmit
on 108 MHz as well.
Our Baker-Nunn satellite tracking cameras were not yet
operational, when Sputnik appeared on the scene. Accordingly,
our Satellite Panel held an emergency meeting during which
it was decided to accept Ballistic Research Laboratory's
offer to modify some ballistic tracking cameras and
theodolites as a temporary means of tracking Sputnik. The
members of the Satellite Panel then went home. Soon
thereafter, I received a call from BRL: they would not be
able to meet the schedule, unless someone authorized overtime.
I thought about the situation for a few minutes. I could ask
my boss, he could ask someone else, etc. The intent of the
Panel was clear, and I felt that the Panel would back me up,
if necessary. So I drafted a telegram authorizing the
required overtime. I got a call back from BRL: they had
never seen anything move through the system that fast. As
far as I know, no one other than the BRL folks and myself
ever knew anything about that incident.
At the National Academy of Sciences, we in the IGY satellite
office--initially two of us plus a secretary--had either no
authority and responsibility, or else a lot of authority and
responsibility. It was almost an option. About a year
before Sputnik, I had learned from Dr. Massey in England that
he would like to involve two university teams--one in Ibaden,
Nigeria and the other in Singapore. My friends at JPL had
told me that they had two surplus Microlock telemetry sets
available. George Grimminger, of standard atmosphere fame,
had offered Air Force support wherever it might be useful.
The situation seemed to need a little glue. So I called
Massey, Grimminger, and my friends at JPL and, voila, two
new telemetry stations on the Equator.
Although Vanguard was a basically good program, with no
more than the normal developmental problems, a number of
people were getting more and more concerned that the U.S.
was going to be second when it came to launching the first
Earth satellite. The U.S. was trying to preserve the
"research" heritage by deriving the first stage from the
Viking, rather than from a ballistic missile. The
Vanguard was a rather sophisticated vehicle for its time.
Gross mass was only a little over 10 tonnes. Fineness
ratio was 19:1, similar to the Viking. In 1959, after I
had moved over to NASA headquarters, I found myself
wishing that I knew a lot more about Vanguard. John
Hagen, the NRL Vanguard Program Manager, was scheduled
to testify before Congress on the Vanguard program. He
wasn't sure that he was going to be able to make it, and,
somehow or another I was thrown into the breech. I was
sworn in and was about two minutes from H-hour, when John
mercifully showed up.
Meanwhile back to May 1957 at the satellite-race ranch,
Porter, Van Allen, Pickering and von Braun were trying to get
official recognition for Jupiter C--which was derived from
the Redstone and had a "tub" of, if I recall correctly,
11 solid rockets derived from the WAC Corporal by JPL,
surrounding three more of these solid rockets, and topped
off with a similar, single, final, fourth rocket stage
integrated with the cosmic ray experiment payload. The modified
Redstone could reach orbital altitude, at which point the
"tub" of solid rockets, which was spinning at 700 rpm for
spin stabilization, separated. Dick Porter was on the
Homer Jo Stewart committee looking into whether or not
Jupiter-C should be given the go-ahead. Porter was
criticized for being on the Committee, since he worked
for General Electric, which made the first-stage engine
for Vanguard; however, Dick Porter had voted in favor of
allowing Jupiter-C to proceed--contrary to a supposed
conflict of interest. Van Allen and George Ludwig, one
of his grad students, continued to work with JPL on
developing the vehicle and payload without official
recognition. This effort culminated with the launch of
Explorer I, 1958-alpha on 31 January 1958. At the
press conference at the National Academy of Sciences
that evening, the famous photo was taken of Van Allen,
Pickering, and von Braun holding an ExplorerI
"copy" above their heads. I remember moving out of the
way of the photographer.
Explorer II failed. Explorer III had more complete
instrumentation and was launched on 26 March 1958.
About a month before announcement of the Van Allen
radiation belts--over pizza at Luigi's--Van Allen
remarked that they had been unable to decipher the data
from Explorer. What had happened was that the Geiger
counter was designed for expected cosmic ray radiation
levels, and was unprepared for the unexpectedly high
radiation levels encountered within the soon-to-be-
discovered VanAllen radiation belts. The dead time was
too long, and one count would set off the counter and it
would remain in this state with repeated hits during the
dead time. Twenty five years later at a conference at
the National Academy of Sciences, Van Allen was recounting
sorting out the data and remarked that "someone had plugged
these two stations into the Equator..." This evidently
helped to sort things out.
I think that I remember that the total multi-year budget
for Van Allen's experiment, including instrumentation
development and testing, data reduction and analysis,
etc. was only about $300,000. And that covered both the
cylindrical Explorer satellites and the spherical
Vanguard satellites.
With one or more satellites in orbit, new discoveries
were just around the corner. For obvious reasons, the
Defense Department wanted to know more about such things
as a more precise distance between the continents, the
Earth's flattening, etc. Dr. John O'Keefe of the Army
Map Service was particularly interested in the value for
the Earth's flattening. We--the U.S.--estimated the
flattening at 1 / 297. The Russians estimated the
flattening at 1 / 298.3. It didn't take much tracking
to find out that the real value was 1 / 298.3. John
said it wasn't the 298 that bothered him so much, --
but that 0.3... He had already had high respect for
Russian theoretical geodesists, but this really got to him.
We had three, important volunteer groups supporting the
IGY satellite program: 1) Moonwatch, established by
Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory to acquire a
satellite visually in the event that radio transmission
failed; 2) Moonbeam, established by Norton Goodwin in
conjunction with the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL)
to track satellite radio signals; and 3) Phototrack, also
established by Norton Goodwin in cooperation with the
Society of Photographic Engineers and [Scientists?] to
acquire photographic data of satellite tracks against
the background stars. These organizations were easily
orphaned, so I ended up being the "mother hen" for all
three volunteer groups at the National Academy--and
later at NASA. The volunteer groups did some remarkable
work that was not always appreciated. The Phototrack
program actually accomplished the "impossible" by
obtaining precisely timed (with WWV) simultaneous
photographs in North America and Europe of the same
satellite against the star background. Unfortunately,
the NIH factor seemed to preclude adequate appreciation--
and even usage--of this potentially valuable information.
My job at the National Academy of Sciences continued
to get me into places that were rather heady for a
young scientist / engineer with only a BA in physics
from Cal Berkeley. It seemed to carry over to meeting
high-powered scientists in other countries as well.
At the 1958 IGY meeting in Moscow, Dr. L. I. Sedov,
the nominal head of the Russian IGY satellite
scientific program, was getting ready to give his
paper in English. I was preparing to give a paper on
"Simplified Satellite Prediction from Modified Orbital
Elements" in Russian. So I worked closely with Sedov's
assistant--getting Sedov's paper in good English, and
my paper in good Russian, including good pronunciation.
I was quite honored when Sedov gave out two very nice
"mezhdunarodniy geofizicheskiy god" (IGY) pins: one
to his counterpart, Dick Porter, and one to me. I
really hadn't given much thought to the fact that my
Russian was probably not good enough to handle the
Q and A period, if someone asked a question in Russian.
Sure enough, someone did. However, I was off-guard
enough that I happened to understand the question and
had the right Russian words for the answer--all without
a moment's hesitation. It was only afterwards that I
thought: now, that was lucky.
I was quite capable of screwing up as well. I had
taken far too long getting Volume XII of the Annals
of the IGY (First Results of Rocket and Satellite
Research) back to Pergamon Press for publishing.
Dr. Homer Newell was the editor, but had graciously
decided to show me as co-editor. The Russians were
already thinking that we were purposely holding up
the publication, because they had reported so many
good things that they were justifiably proud of.
Finally, I took the box of manuscripts to the Post
Office for mailing to Pergamon. It was late in the day,
when I discovered they would not take a check to cover
the cost of registration and insurance, and I did not
have enough cash. The clerk then said: "the U.S.
mail is safe." So, not wishing to delay things any
longer, I let the uninsured, unregistered package go
into the system. Big mistake. The U.S. Post Office
had just installed a new sorting machine--a mangler,
actually. So the package disappeared without a trace.
The situation threatened to go internationally ballistic.
Lloyd Berkner then called his friend, Arthur Summerfield,
who happened to be Postmaster General, and finding the
package became a Post-Office high-priority. It finally
showed up about a month later. Still painful.
Volume XII basically reported the large number of papers
presented in Moscow at the August 1958 meeting. Lantern
slides were the standard presentation media of the day.
We had brought our own projector--a rather formidable
piece of equipment, but nonetheless small enough to fit
on a small table. The Russian equipment comprised a small
van that occupied nearly all of the large central aisle of
the main auditoriaum at the University of Moscow. One of
the British reporters asked me: "Tell me, do those two
pieces of equipment perform basically the same function?"
I said, "Yes." "Very interesting," he replied, in an
obvious reference to the relative size of our launch
vehicles.
To the best of my knowledge, Homer Newell and
Jim Van Allen were good friends. However, some type of
misunderstanding led Newell to believe that Van Allen
was no longer supportive. It so happens, I was the
third person in a group of three at a reception, when
Hugh Dryden offered the position of NASA Associate
Administrator for Space Science to Van Allen.
VanAllen rather liked being a professor in Iowa, and
turned down the invitation on the spot. Dryden then
asked Van Allen for a recommendation, and Van Allen
immediately recommended Homer Newell for the job.
Some time later, I was returning from a trip and had
an opportunity to share a cab with Homer Newell. This
seemed like a good time to relate this incident to
Newell--apparently with good results.
The IGY had already lasted 18 months--rather long for
a year. The IGY was supposed to coincide with the
peak of the 11-year solar flare cycle, which was
beginning to wane. So the National Academy established
the Space Science Board to continue the IGY space
activities. As before, I was privileged to meet many
outstanding people in various scientific fields. I was
also able to observe what decent folks these
outstanding people tended to be. None seem to be
too embarrassed to ask a simple question, if they did
not know the answer. They seemed far more interested
in additional knowledge, than being worried about a
small dent in their reputation. They also tended
to have a good sense of humor. At one of the meetings,
there was a discussion of how to design instrumentation
for detecting life on Mars. Someone--I forget just who
--remarked that this was very difficult to do, given our
present scarcity of knowledge. Basically, you could
try to devise a way to examine lichens and other
microscopic life forms--only to have the apparatus and
its parachute get hung up in a tree or stomped on by an
elephant. ROFL.
With the launch of Sputnik, there was a lot of pressure to
move the U.S. space program to a much higher level. At
our impromptu meeting on the evening of 4 October 1957
at the National Academy of Sciences, Homer Newell
remarked that the U.S. should be prepared to spend far
more money on the space program--perhaps, gasp--a
billion dollars per year. There were three primary
candidates for becoming the nucleus of a new space
agency: Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA),
the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
(NACA), and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I remember
being in Dr. William Pickering's office, when Pickering
showed me a Congressional Bill to make JPL the new
space agency. NACA, under Hugh Dryden--a complete
gentleman and well-liked scientist--had directed NACA
to be a splendid research agency that served civil, military
and commercial aviation in a truly remarkable and selfless
manner, got the nod. I remember that even Van Allen--a
later, vociferous critic of what NASA had become--had
originally testified in favor of NACA's getting the job.
We need to reexamine how Hugh Dryden and NACA
operated in pre-NASA days.
Since I was still flying in the reserve as a Navy fighter
pilot and had checked out in jets in 1950 and had the
required amount of flight time, I considered using my IGY
"blue chips" to get into the Mercury program. However, I
considered the X-15 program, and even the Dynasoar program,
considerably more dignified than rolling up in a ball of
fire more as a passenger, than a pilot. But all of these
programs, including the X-15 program required a potential
applicant to be far more aggressive than I was at the time.
I had repeatedly requested test-pilot school; however, I
now know that successful applicants tend to be very
persistent and aggressive. Anyway, by that time, I had
already gotten the "find a better and cheaper way to get
into space" bug. When I couldn't get any interest in a
space transport at NASA in 1960, I decided to go to
North American Aviation. By 1967, I had decided that
government and big industry was unlikely to find better
and cheaper ways of getting into space. So, I formed my
own commercial space transportation company. That kept
me busy for the next 36 years. Along with raising six
kids, acquiring step-father rights to three more later on,
and interacting with 11 grandchildren. (And now the
first great grandson).
But with all this preparatory work, I sometimes think it
may be time to get rolling on a real project of my own.
Unfortunately, I did not realize early on that raising
money from the public is pretty much the prerogative of
government and religion. It is likely to be illegal,
immoral, or both for an entrepreneur.
PanAero has a nifty, (then) unpublished concept for the
X PRIZE that could be in the air in about eight months--if we
only had the $2 million we ain't got. The unpublished
concept avoids many technical problems, and results in a
remarkably gentle way to get to 100 km and back. I'd like
to fly it. I think designer / pilots are a good way
to constrain costs because reasonable calculated risks
become more reasonable. I am waiting for FAA to finish
reviewing my second-class medical application. (Now
done--along with a renewall with no restrictions). At my age
--I learned to fly in WWII--the FAA tends to give you
somewhat more scrutiny, although my earlier third-class
certificate also had no restrictions. I guess I'll have
to admit that the time for raising money for the X PRIZE
is running out; but there are plenty of other interesting
projects out there. (As you will notice by our revised
web site, we have shifted back to orbital vehicles as
our main priority).
Well, Andrew and Doug, you only have yourself to blame.
I should not be encouraged.
Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc. and Third Millennium Aerospace, Inc.
len@tour2space.com ( http://www.tour2space.com )