The Challenge of Space Flight; No. 2; Planetary Exploration; WNYC

This is program to NASA, William H. Pickering, Director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Robert J. Parks, Planetary Program Director, and Clifford I. Cummings, Luna Program Director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.

Now to take you further into the exploration of space is Erwin Hersey. Thank you and good afternoon. Before we get into this discussion about how we will begin our exploration of the planets, it might be well once again to examine just what the exploration of the moon will mean in terms of planetary exploration. Planetary exploration is almost another order of magnitude beyond the exploration of the moon. Also it's a problem which you don't have in exploring the moon come up when you talk about exploring Mars, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, and even beyond. For example, during the next few years we will have to develop entirely new propulsion systems that can take us to the planets, nuclear rockets, electrical propulsion systems of various kinds. We'll have to find power systems capable of supplying electricity both for auxiliary equipment on board of space vehicle and for electrical propulsion systems.

The vehicle will have to be extremely reliable since we're talking about journeys now of the order of a year or more in almost every instance. The fantastic guidance requirements are almost beyond comprehension. When you stop to think that when you're talking about journeys which will go over millions of miles, an era of even minor magnitude close to Earth can mean missing a planet by as much as 100,000 or 200,000 miles or even more. I think you can sum up how difficult planetary exploration is by realizing that at this point we're not even talking about manned exploration of the planets while we are talking about manned exploration of the moon. It's certainly a feat of some magnitude and one well worth thinking about at this point. Before we begin our discussion of exploration of the planets however, it might be well once again to examine just why we have made it a national goal to get to the moon by the end of this decade.

I think one of the best comments on why we are doing this was that of Dr. Edward Welch, chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council at a recent meeting of the American Rocket Society. Since the most expensive and the most hazardous project in our current space effort is the manned round trip to the moon, another appropriate question occurs. Is the lunar trip necessary? The answer is yes. Let me say however that it's not easy to give an educated answer to a question about something which has never been accomplished. I've heard a number of seriously expressed decorations of ignorance on the subject of space. I will cite two examples, the first of which you heard many times before. Quote, why go to the moon? Why don't we stay here and watch our television sets like God intended us to? And a comparable statement was made with intense seriousness in a public meeting some time ago by a man in high public office, he asked why spend our money to go flying around in space.

If there are people up there in Mars that then spend their own money and come down here and show themselves. That's the end of that quote, I happen to be there when that one was said. Those examples reflect the thinking of the type of people who considered the horseless carriage, the surgeon's scalpel, and indoor plumbing has worked to the depth. If they had had their way the wheel would have been smashed with stone-headed clubs as soon as we invented. Incidentally you may have heard or read that some scientists are opposed to the moon program. There may be a few take that position, not many, but a few, but why? Well this may come as an astonishing thought to some, but scientists are people almost the same as the rest of us. Seriously, however, some scientists have been concerned less so much of the money involved go for the production of hardware that not much would be left to go to foundations, universities and research organizations for deliberate and careful scientific study. They do not, in my knowledge, challenge the need for space exploration.

Therefore, however, some want to send scientific equipment and not use so much spacecraft space on men and food and safety equipment and oxygen tanks and so forth. The advantages, however, of men in space vehicles seems to me to be obvious. There are observations, maneuvers, actions and inactions concerning which decisions can be made by men and cannot be made by instruments alone. These facts are equally applicable in my judgment whether the spacecraft is on a mission to maintain the peace or on a mission devoted solely to increasing our scientific knowledge. But why the moon? The fact that there is no other place so near in space where we can test the equipment and the men for future space travel. To reach the moon is a tangible object in a sane space program and any practical program sets targets in time toward which the activity is geared.

For a moon trip, we need the following – powerful rockets, sophisticated spacecraft, trained and carefully selected astronauts and a protection against the multiple hazards of space travel. These are requirements for all outer space exploration and the moon project gives a chance to develop them. Moreover, we can be certain at any nation which can successfully master this objective can do many other things which can threaten or protect the world's security and which can contribute greatly to the scientific knowledge so important to improving living on Earth. One of the major questions with regard to exploration of the moon is how we should go about the job. Should we use the direct flight method or should we use the rendezvous technique? In the direct flight method, we would build a tremendous vehicle weighing millions and millions of pounds and launch it directly from Earth to the moon. In the rendezvous technique, we would literally shoot up pieces of a vehicle and launch it

from an orbit around the Earth. At the moment, serious consideration is being given at the top government levels as to which technique should be used. Recently, I asked Dr. Werner von Braun, director of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, when a decision could be expected as to which technique would be used. When do you expect that initial decisions at least relative to rendezvous versus direct flight will be made? Well, I expect the decision to come out of NASA headquarters no later than Christmas 1961. We are presently all involved, and when I see we do not mean just the Marshall Space Flight Center, I mean all NASA centers, plus many people at headquarters, plus people from industry who make studies on their contract, and all these facts are presently accumulated, compared, evaluated, processed in electronic computers and so forth, and I think we are rapidly putting

all the facts together so the Associate Administrator will probably make the final decision or the final recommendation to the Administrator will have all the facts of these fingertips. One of the most important elements in any project such as this, when you are talking either in terms of lunar exploration or planetary exploration, is the vehicles which will take you there. In the course of the same interview with Dr. von Braun, we discussed some of these vehicles. One of the first of the second generation vehicles is the Atlas Centaur. This uses the Atlas ballistic missile as the first stage or boost stage, and uses a new type of upper stage, a locks hydrogen, liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen engine, which is now in the development stages. I asked Dr. von Braun how the development of the Atlas Centaur was going along, and then asked him how the development of the Saturn vehicle was coming along.

The Saturn vehicle is of course the vehicle which we are planning to use in our lunar exploration and early planetary exploration flights. To get back to these launch vehicles again, what sort of time schedule are we talking about with regard to some of the vehicles you've mentioned? For example, when can we expect the first Atlas Centaur flight, for example? The first Atlas Centaur flight is scheduled for very late in 61 or very early 62. We had a number of difficulties with the Centaur mainly in the liquid hydrogen engine field, but as I said before, Centaur was the guinea pig for this new technology, and when you try to enter a new, unknown field of technology, you must expect surprises. I think the companies involved in the meantime, bitten themselves through the difficulties, and I think we are over the hump.

I'm not saying that Centaur will be a very reliable and satisfactory vehicle right from the beginning, but I think you give that another year or two, and the bugs will have been worked out and then Centaur will be a good reliable workhorse like many other missiles on our stable. And how about the Saturn program? How is that progressing? I know that a first flight is expected in the very near future, and one of the successive stages in this program. Well, now the two big items in Saturn development were, of course, the development of the first stage, which was conducted at the George C. Marta Space Flight Center in Huntsville, where I work as an in-house project, and the development of the second stage, which is in the hands of the Douglas aircraft company in Santa Monica, California. As far as the first stage is concerned, we bear fortunate enough in Huntsville to have an engine at our disposal, which is really reliable.

That engine is an offspring of the ICBM and IRBM developments. The similar engine was used in the Atlas ICBM and the Thor and Jupiter IRBMs, our engine contractor, Rocketdyne, as we find and simplify this engine even further. And this is a real reliable engine today. I'm happy to report that none of the engine, engines of this type, we call the H1 engine, that was built on a production basis, had ever any failure whatsoever. It's remarkable, right? It's almost embarrassing when we talk to our reliability experts about this thing, and they talk about emergency shot-off devices or fire-fighting equipment and so forth, that they propose to build in the tail section.

You can justify such equipment only if you have a limited reliability that you are trying to fight with this, and when they ask us for figures, all we can call this 100% demonstrated reliability. So, there's very little theoretical gain in things like building an engine outkeep ability in the booster and things like this. We're still doing it, but the engine is just mighty good, this is all I have to say. So over the first stage, we had no difficulty at all running cluster tests on the test stand. Every single one of our tests, even with the entire cluster of lead engines, was a full success, and this booster has just come along a lot better than we had hoped to expect. Now, let's come to the second stage. I said the second stage on development as Douglas. Douglas has done a very fine job developing the stage, but they encountered the same engine difficulties that Conveyor had with the Centaur because it's the same engine.

And so, when this engine difficulties hit, it affected their work a little bit also. On the other hand, it didn't hurt their work as nearly as hard as it did Conveyor for the simple reason that Conveyor had planned to fire a number of Centaur and 61, because this engine difficulties, they were not able to do it, whereas Douglas had always planned to fire their first live second stage on Saturn only after the basic booster which we developed was proven out in flight. So we can actually see that the Saturn program was not delayed, but this engine difficulties simply because it had been planned right from the outset to use these engines a little later in the game. We had, of course, hope that the Centaur program would really ring out the engines for the Saturn, but it looks like it would be testing both at the same time.

I think Centaur may still benefit from some of the Saturn testing also. To come away from the actual launch vehicles themselves now for just a few moments, the original purpose of the NOVA, the proposed NOVA vehicle, was as a launch vehicle for the Apollo Space capsule, or to test, well, yes, for the Apollo capsule, would you just tell us a little bit about what the Apollo capsule is and how it's a follow-on to the Mercury and possibly even what becomes beyond Apollo? Let me first clarify the relationship of Apollo to boost Saturn and NOVA. Apollo is at least as closely related to Saturn as it is to NOVA. The difference between NOVA and Saturn C3 and C4 being, as I pointed out previously, that with NOVA, the Apollo capsule could be carried to the movement back in the direct

flight without orbital stopover, where C3 and C4 wouldn't need several, or at least one rendezvous maneuver in the case of C4. The Apollo is the same basic spacecraft for all of these flights. Basically, Apollo is a large capsule, it looks a little different from the Mercury capsule that can accommodate three men, but it's actually a lot more than just a capsule, and we even scoff at this term a bit. The capsule itself, the heat-protected portion of Apollo, is what we call the command module. This is the space, pressurized space, heat-protected from the outside and equipped with life-support equipment, which will really accommodate the crew, but attached to this command module will be a propulsion system, which gives this capsule a certain maneuverability in space.

For some missions where we don't need the full payload capability of Saturn to carry this capsule and the propulsion module into orbit, there may even be an additional small space laboratory attached to it, which we call the laboratory module, and then there may be another additional unit that is called the mission module, which may include all the instrumentation needed for a specific experiment or measurement in orbit, where equipment is involved that is needed for the experiment, but must not necessarily be retrieved back to Earth, and therefore need not be carried within the heat-protected portion of the capsule. This we call the mission module. And basically, the entire Apollo spacecraft being made up of all these modules can be put together like a tinkertoy in various fashions, so that depending on the mission profile, you can fly it this way or that way.

For example, if we go with a big Saturn, like a C3 or C4, just into orbit to that capsule, we can carry quite a sizable space laboratory along with it. It's the same capsule as to make a trip around the moon, we need more propellant, we can carry a few payload, and we'll probably have to leave that space laboratory back home, we wouldn't need it for that flight anyway. So this whole conglomeration of modules, always with the command module being the center piece of the whole thing, this is what we call the spacecraft Apollo. Well, obviously from what you've said, the Apollo, the whole Apollo system has a tremendous flexibility for use in space work, in other words, it's not going to be simply a matter of using it to send a three-man team to the moon and bring them back. It's going to be considerably broader than that. Could you, for example, use some sort of modular arrangement employing Apollo as a laboratory in space, an orbital laboratory, let's say?

Well even the command module all by itself can be used as a laboratory, you see it can accommodate three men, it is equipped with an airlock, so it is entirely possible, for example, for one man to get in a space suit out into the airlock, depressurize the airlock, and leave the capsule in orbit with the two other men remaining inside the command module. This man could conceivably go after, take a look at the propulsion module, and then come back into the capsule, so it will permit us to familiarize astronauts with working conditions in orbit, including things like basic orbital maintenance, repair, fueling operations, this kind of thing. So you actually, we actually wouldn't be too far wrong in referring to it as a first space station in certain missions. So this is right, I mean the basic Apollo capsule would be a minimum solution of a space

station, it is not larger than necessary to permit these three men to re-enter the atmosphere safely and all that heat protection equipment, but I do not think that you can take all kinds of scientific measurements from inside the command module, it is too heavily padded with heat insulation material and so forth, and especially built a little laboratory carried along, I would enable you to do a lot more. Dr. von Braun's comments on the reliability of the satin first stage were more than borne out by the first successful flight test of the stage just a few weeks ago. Earlier as you remember, Dr. von Braun discussed the rendezvous versus direct flight technique in lunar exploration and indicated that a decision on this would be forthcoming in the near

future. I think it's safe to say that regardless of whether we decide to go to the moon by the direct flight method or the rendezvous technique, that the development of the rendezvous technique is essential for planetary exploration. One of the foremost advocates of rendezvous for lunar exploration is Dr. Arthur Cantrowitz, Vice President of AFCO Corporation. At a recent panel discussion at the American Rocket Society meeting here in New York City, Dr. Cantrowitz asked Robert A. Gilruth, Director of Project Mercury for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration what was being done to develop rendezvous techniques in the shortest possible time. Here is Mr. Gilruth's reply. The alternate technique question whether rendezvous was under serious consideration to the answer, and of course indefinitely yes, you can do things with rendezvous weight-wise and vehicle-wise that you can't do by the direct approach provided with can make good

on these space operations. I mean, dealt with this subject of bet in my prepared talk, it's my own personal feeling that this area has to be pursued with a great figure because the payoff would be so great. If it does work, not only for these more immediate motions of this decade, but certainly for future motions, I believe in the cards for planetary exploration and so on. I'd like to ask you a question in this connection, what is it since as you pointed out rendezvous could make a tremendous impact on how, firstly, we could get a conversation, what are we doing to establish whether we can depend on rendezvous for simplifying the subject for

us? When will we try rendezvous experimentally? Now, yesterday Mr. Web said something about how there was going to be something quite rendezvous next year, but not rendezvous. He was kind of a fun state. He worked once in a set. Well, I didn't elaborate. I didn't hear what Mr. Web said either, so I'll try to comment on it. The kinds of studies that have been going on relative to rendezvous, of course, have been the study that you have to do first to show the potential for such a maneuver. There are many problems involved in this that are not all want to be called guidance problems. There are fundamental problems that are flying out. We're not only rendezvous, but getting out on the moon and doing useful things when you get there. I don't know how familiar with this state of the space suit technology, but in the kind of space that's the best available in this country today, here, about as normalized as if you're

inside of a low-pressure tire when the suit is inflated. Now, there's no fundamental reason why this has to be true. But when you're in space, of course, and if you ever scratch yourself by that, I mean, it's scratched the suit to the point where you make a slight puncture. The effect would be much more serious than just letting your blood open if you cut yourself. In other words, this man's personal equipment problem is, in my opinion, one of the very important problems to be solved in this whole picture. And we're going to need not only many good minds on this, but some good mechanical engineers figure out the best ways of flipping a man so he can work in a hard backing, still a useful work.

It's actually coupling machines together, preparing things that might have gone wrong during the launch and getting ready for the next step. I think what you said, I could feel about the difficulty, but why don't we begin to do something about this? Well, work is already going ahead after on this, but I can't this time give you any schedules or plans. I think this is a hard plan. I think this is going to be an appropriate. Do you have a feeling that we'll learn a great deal by paper studies about the kinds of very interesting and understandable problems you've mentioned? And it seems to me that the emphasis on paper studies is a little bit for me to understand. You are listening to the second program and the challenge of space flight series yet to be heard from William Pickering, Director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute

of Technology. Robert J. Parks, Planetary Program Director in Clifford Eye Cummings, Luna Program Director Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology. Now here is Mr. Erwin Hersey, Editor of Astronautics and Director of Publications for the American Rocket Society. Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology is charged with the Unmanned Lunar and Planetary Exploration Programs. An introduction to the Planetary Exploration Program is provided by Dr. William H. Pickering, who is the Director of the Laboratory. Now if we go further out of course we then come to the Planetary Program and Mars and Venus and of course the nearest neighbors to the Earth and the first measurements and will be conducted by probes to Mars and Venus. In a general way the approach will be that the first probes, the early probes will be fly by experiments to go fairly close to the planet and make observations on route and passing a planet.

These will be followed by orbiting and landing experiments where perhaps a part of the vehicle is landed and it will then transmit signals to the remainder of the vehicle in the vicinity of the planet which in turn will relay the signals back to the Earth. And then we consider the problem of exploration of the planets. Of course we have an entirely new area of science opening up because here we are talking about bodies comparable in size to the Earth about which we really know very little. From our astronomical observations taken from the surface of the Earth. By taking observations from the top of the atmosphere we hope we are going to learn more about the planets. And of course when I say very little is known that is obviously discounting the results of a great deal of study. There is a lot known about the planets but still the possibilities which we will have from a vehicle in the immediate

vicinity of the planet of course will open up a tremendous field. And finally when we land on the planet the prospect of answering in detail the fascinating question of whether there is life on the other planets and if so what is the form of that life this prospect is indeed a fascinating one. I would like to note that there are some problems with planetary exploration namely the astronomical problem which says that in order to get to the vicinity of a planet with any reasonable amount of energy in the launching vehicle and any reasonable communication distance when in the vicinity of the planet the launching periods are going to be determined by the astronomical facts of the orbits of the various planets. And here I note that Venus for example will give us an opportunity about every 19 months. And you see approximately in the calendar years approximately the periods when Venus launching can be conducted

and when Venus encounters would take place. In the same way with Mars where the period is closer to two years a little over two years. And so this means that the number of opportunities to conduct planetary experiments is indeed limited by these astronomical facts. Therefore we must then take advantage of the planetary dates to conduct the experiments and to conduct experiments where there is complete reliability and assurance of success as possible. This I think poses a very interesting point here that when you are engaged in interplanetary missions you can set up your launching schedule and it's a launching schedule which you which just will cannot slip either you launch on schedule or you wait a couple of years.

This is rather different from the normal guided missile exercise. Now both the planetary and the lunar programs involve the problem of communication over very great distances. And for this a deep space instrumentation facility for tracking and receiving signals from the planet has been established by the United States. I just point out that this facility consists of three stations in California, South Africa and Australia. And these three stations are roughly 120 degrees apart around the earth. So they turn the three out and then they completely cover the orbit so that vehicles launched to lunar and planetary missions can be observed at all times by at least one of the stations. Currently the lunar and planetary missions are requiring launching vehicles having a ability of putting or giving the payloads large amounts of energy. As we know the escape velocity is where two times the selected satellite velocity and therefore twice the energy.

And so the payloads which can be carried to the moon and the planet and the correspondingly reduced what can be put into satellite orbits. The requirement on launching vehicles then goes up and the missions which can be conducted then sharply circumscribed by the launching vehicles available. The present U.S. program in visitors using first the Atlas of Gina following this by the Atlas center and eventually by the Saturn. I don't think I mentioned the name by which the planetary program is being called it will be known as a Mariner and will be followed later by the Saturn launched planetary program which will be known as the Voyager. That was William H. Pickering director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology which is in charge of the lunar as well as the planetary exploration program for this country. At the beginning of this program I mentioned that the exploration of the planets is almost an order of magnitude more difficult than lunar exploration.

I think this became evident in the course of a recent interview I had with Robert J. Parks who is the director of the planetary exploration program of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It may be an odd thing to say but in terms of the conquest of space the moon is a relatively easy objective. I know this is a terrible statement to make but when you're thinking about the exploration of space the moon is relatively close. For now for example moving to the planets in addition to the problem of launching a payload to the planet you've got other governing factors. For example when is the planet available to you for exploration? So perhaps before we get into the actual planetary exploration program what is the schedule of closest approach of Mars and Venus to Earth when we can actually try to explore these planets? Certainly the facts of the orbits that the planets have around the Earth in relation to the Sun rather in relation to the Earth make it feasible with our present launch vehicle capability of launching only at very special opportunities.

For example to Venus we have an opportunity of launching approximately every year and a half it's actually about 19 months and you may have a one two or at most three months opportunity once every year and a half approximately. Two Mars the same situation applies except here the opportunity comes only every two years approximately two years and one month. Something has always bothered me about this is the governing factor only the fact that we don't have a propulsion system good enough to enable us to make these flights at any time or is this a permanent governing factor that we can only make these flights every 19 months or every two years. Now this is not a permanent governing factor it's related directly to the launch vehicle capability you have. Now it turns out to launch at any time other than these optimum times you are effectively making extremely inefficient use of your launch vehicles.

It would take many many times as much booster power to do it at some other time than during these optimum times it falls off extremely rapidly. So for at least many years to come we are going to be limited pretty much by these opportunities. Let's get down to the basic objectives of the planetary exploration program now are they pretty similar to the lunar exploration program. Yes they are similar we have at this stage of the game reverse order on our objectives our primary objective is to conduct the unmanned scientific exploration of the planets and the interplanetary space. But we have already a very significant secondary objective here of laying the base that's going to be required for the eventual man exploration of the planets. Is your program firmed up to the extent that the lunar exploration program is firmed up that is can you tell us when mariners voyage is when manager of mariners launches are planned for example and what the launching vehicles are. So the early projects here are firmed up we are at the present time paced pretty much by the availability of launch vehicles and we are using the same launch vehicles as a lunar program is.

We will first be using the Atlas Agina B vehicle and we have a schedule launch in 1962 to Venus using this vehicle. After that time through perhaps 1967 we have a series of mariners shots in which we are contemplating taking advantage of each opportunity to Venus and Mars beginning in 1964 with a larger version of the mariners spacecraft that can be launched by the Centaur launch vehicle. How many launches do you plan of mariners vehicles? Well this will depend a little bit on how things go we are attempting to have at least two launches at each opportunity to the planets. And if we go through 1967 this will encompass something like three or four opportunities at Venus and two at Mars. And what are the basic experiments planned for the mariners vehicle?

The first experiment that we have on board the mariners. Well first I would like to point out that they come in two categories. One of those are related directly to the planets themselves trying to observe features characteristics of the planet themselves. And the other category is that making of measurements of the interplanetary space while you are traveling to the planets, both of which are some significance. The planetary measurements on mariners, which as I mentioned before is scheduled to Venus first, is intended to try to get more information as to the actual temperature of the planet. Measurements here on Earth have indicated that the surface temperature may be as high as 600 degrees Fahrenheit. But we are not sure of the mechanism that is causing the radiation, the radio radiation that we measure here on Earth which imply these temperatures. By getting close enough to the planet and by being able to sweep across the surface and differential effects across the surface, we think that we can establish much better what that mechanism is. And therefore whether or not it is an actual temperature of the surface or could perhaps be the temperature at some ionosphere, highly active ionosphere, higher above with a surface temperature below or than that.

And what about Voyager, which is one step beyond mariners, what type of vehicle will that be, what sort of experiments will it perform and so forth? Well, this is looking ahead also to the use of the Saturn launch vehicle, but used here for the planetary exploration program. As Mr. Cummings indicated, we are being held up a little bit or not necessarily held up, but we are pending Earth, firming up what our plans are dependent upon what the launch vehicle performance capabilities will in fact be. But we are looking forward to having spacecraft that can simultaneously put objects in orbit around and landing capsules on the surface of the planet. This will permit us to make simultaneous measurements both down at the surface and looking in as it were from the orbiter and will also permit us to use the orbiter as a relay link in sending the information from the landing capsule back to the Earth. Will any of this instrumentation which is actually landed on the planets be capable or our experiments planned which would attempt to detect the presence of life forms?

That is one of the very fundamental and very fascinating questions that we are attempting to try to answer this as rapidly as we can. Yes, we are going to be trying to determine whether or not life forms by a number of different techniques, some of them even were looking forward to in the Mariner series early. There are such things as infrared spectrometers which can give us indications of life forms on the planets. Tv pictures perhaps even close-up tv pictures that could be taken from a landing capsule of course could give one way of determining when a life exists. We have rather sophisticated experiments that are being evaluated at the present time that can actually do what a scientist would do here in trying to establish life forms such as looking through a microscope and looking for the effects of small life forms. We expect that one of the best ways of determining this may well be that of looking for microorganisms because you know for example on Earth that these types of organisms exist almost anywhere on Earth,

whereas the larger forms of life might not and if you just choose an arbitrary place on Earth and by the same token on the other planets we might be better off by taking our initial steps to looking for the micro-type life organisms. Will your Voyager experiments also attempt to sample the planetary surfaces? Yes, we'll be sampling both the atmosphere on the way through the atmosphere and these landing experiments and also we'll be trying to sample a surface and subsurface characteristics and be looking for any other surface indications of life forms that might exist. Well when I started out this interview I said that this was one of the most fascinating parts of the whole space program and certainly from this very brief discussion it's obvious that it is and will continue to be for many many years. The pace of the US space program can perhaps best be judged by the fact that five years ago a discussion of such things as lunar exploration let alone planetary exploration would have been considered utterly fantastic.

And yet here we are today hearing a full scale rundown on what the US plans to do in these areas. In fact we can even go one step further than that. In the course of a recent interview I had with Bob Parks and we've just heard and Clifford I Cummings the director of the lunar exploration program for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We began talking about what comes beyond the lunar and planetary exploration programs. These programs will run through 1970 and certainly we will continue the manned and unmanned exploration of the moon and the planets. But what lies beyond that? Mr. Parks? Yes we're already studying the question of some of the factors that relate even beyond the two planets that I've mentioned here which happen to be the two closest ones and therefore the easiest to explore. We are looking at the possibility of making experiments at Mercury which is the planet that's closest to the sun and other solar probes.

You know the sun has tremendous influences and practically the primary influence in our daily life here through various mechanisms and that of understanding the sun in more detail could have tremendous effects on what we can predict, how we perhaps what we can control in our own environment here. This we can study the sun both by getting closer to it in the plane of the ecliptic that is the plane in which most of the planets revolve around the sun or we perhaps could make some significant measurements by getting out of the plane of the ecliptic and looking at the sun from a direction that no one has ever been able to do before. This would be a particular interest to see the latitude effects of the sunspot cycles on the sun for example. This requires very high performance in launch vehicles to get either close into the sun or to get out of the plane ecliptic. Also this is true for looking at the large planets that are outside of Mars. Jupiter is the next one and the next set outside is even as far as Pluto and Uranus and some of those.

We are looking forward to the capability of doing this type of experiment. As I mentioned the limiting factor right now is largely the launch vehicle capability we are looking forward to electric propulsion as being one technique which can provide us this capability. It looks a particular interest when you are talking about getting farther away from the sun than say Mars for example. Because once you get there the solar power drops off so rapidly as it does not a good technique for providing the power you need on board the spacecraft anymore and the nuclear power sources available with the electric propulsion systems can also provide this power. Mr. Cummings what about further exploration of the moon? The moon is a fairly large body and when we think of the trouble that the explorers of the 17th and 18th centuries had with exploring fairly small bodies in some areas. How do we go about really exploring the moon? This will be quite difficult and of course it won't be much like the Lewis and Clark expeditions. You don't have rivers to paddle down or anything like this and the fact that there isn't any supply of oxygen or any supply of water is going to make it difficult.

They will have to set up bases there on the moon as much as we have set up bases in Antarctica and realize that in Antarctica we do have the air but to get water you have to melt the ice. So I suspect that they will get the water by in essence boiling it out of the rocks too. There are techniques that look pretty reasonable here and they will be able to perhaps generate their own water. But there will be significant problems and they will be comparable to the ones that we have in the Antarctic and we will have small exploration teams and then they will go out as they have done their role away from their camps and take measurements, take samples, do analysis, move about on the surface in a fairly limited way. Having many of the same types of problems that we have and moving across the Antarctic where there are big crevasses and the danger of falling through they will have the same type of dangers I suspect on the moon too.

Let me again try to put you on the spot and ask you how long you think it will be before a man pretty well knows the surface of the moon from all the way around it let's say. Considering how large it is considering the problems that exist of really doing an exploration job. When you say really doing an exploration job that's a difficult question because I think that some would say that we understand that Arctic well enough others would say they do not. And if you put it in the same category then you can say that 20 years of exploration is not enough others would say in 20 years I have a basic understanding. I think that after you had a basis on the surface for 10 years you are going to feel that you know most of the fundamental things but if there is a particularly choice out cropping of some mineral some place on the moon that we don't know about we may not find it for another 50 years just as there have been things in the darkest parts of Africa that still have not been found. And we are talking about something that is a size of Africa that you realize here.

You wouldn't care to put a date on when this after 10 years you mentioned would be would you. I said after 10 years after we put the first basis up there and I don't think we can talk about having bases with men even with our present accelerated program any earlier than about 1970. So by 81980 hopefully we would know a great deal. Well I think that is just amazing to sit here and talk about this when as of exactly four years ago the first satellite went up and I think the space program is certainly moving faster than anybody ever anticipated. One last question we've pretty well discussed what comes immediately beyond the lunar and planetary exploration programs but let's try and get into the blue sky area just a little bit I'd like to ask both of you. Once we have pretty well explored the man that is the solar system our own solar system. And there is a huge jump to the next area that is the area of the nearest star let's say.

How long I'd like to put you both on the spot again and ask you how long do you think it will be before we are capable of sending even an unmanned vehicle to the nearest star and getting back valuable data about bodies stellar bodies outside our own solar system. I would like to make one comment first of all when you start talking about this you should no longer talk about blue sky it's all dark sky it's all black out there. And so we're way way beyond the blue sky thinking when we talk about space like that. I'm afraid that my own comprehension and my own vision is so limited that I cannot foresee the possibility that we will get outside of our own solar system. Something entirely different has to happen as far as I'm concerned with regard to thinking our whole thinking process our methods of transportation. I think we would have to find something that indeed travels many times the speed of light and the theory of relativity says this isn't going to happen.

And so I think from a practical standpoint I cannot visualize it. Mr. Parks would you like to take a crack at that one? As you say this next step is a real big one. You're talking at distances here of course that we have to measure in light years. Now even with traveling at the speed of light the nearest other items that would be of interest to us are at least the order of five light years away and majority of them are many many many times that factor. And as much as the best velocities we've been able to achieve so far even on the drawing board really our very small fraction of the speed of light would take years to get there. Now listen itself I don't think it doesn't rule it out completely because we may be able to develop techniques in time that would permit the lifetimes that would be required to send something out there that would take a lifetime or several lifetimes to reach these points and send it back.

That's a big task because right now we're quite involved in just getting lifetimes at the order of years that would be required in getting to the planets and particularly back again if we want and if we wish to do that. So it is a big step but I can visualize a time that we would have these lifetime capability and if we and once we had it then I think we could certainly visualize a plan experiments which would be initiated here for our children or grandchildren to reap the benefits of. I think you would both agree at this point that certainly there is enough for us to explore within our own solar system to keep us our children our grandchildren probably our grandchildren's grandchildren busy. That gets an absolutely true statement. Thank you very very much Mr. Cummings and Mr. Parks for being with us today I've really enjoyed this talk with you. You've been listening to the challenge of spaceflight another program in the public interest conceived and produced by your city station today our topic was planetary exploration participants included Edward Welch executive secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council Dr. Werner von Braun director George C. Marshall Space Flight Center National Aeronautics and Space Administration author Cantrowitts vice president Afco corporation Robert A. Gilworth director project mercury National Aeronautics and Space Administration William H. Pickering director Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Robert J. Parks planetary program director and Clifford I Cummings Luna program director

Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology now here is Irwin Hersey to tell you more about next week's program. Next week we're going to discuss satellite applications. We've all heard a good deal about the various kinds of satellites both this country and Soviet Union have put into space. Next week we'll take a look at some of these satellites especially those satellites which have applications which can affect our daily lives to a considerable extent communication satellites about which there's been a good deal in the papers recently navigation satellites which can help ships and aircraft navigate in all kinds of weather with much more easily than they can at the present time meteorological satellites which can help us track storms when they are just starting and not when they are right on top of us. And of course observation satellites which could help us to detect enemy attacks.

Our guests next week will include vice president Lyndon B. Johnson, author Cantrowitts vice president of Afco corporation, John Pierce director of research for Bell Laboratories, F. W. Rahl Durfer chief of the U. S. Weather Bureau, NASA administrator James E. Webb, and Sydney Sternberg director of project Tyros for the RCA. Astroelectronic products division. Thank you. The challenge of space flight is produced by Harold K. Halpern and Bob Costigan. Thank you very much.