Astronautical and Aeronautical Events of 1962 - NASA's History Office

154 ASTRONAUTICAL AND AERONAUTICAL EVENTS OF 1962
flight because this does require another booster on the part of the
Russians as well as ourselves.
“Ever since the Space Agency has been formed we have been
waiting for this other shoe to be dropped. People have told us
every month, the Russians are going to produce this big booster
in the next few months. Now four years have gone by and they
have not yet shown us this big booster. To the best of our knowl-
edge they have developed lighter-weight nuclear weapons and
ballistic missiles rather than bigger space boosters. This is not
to say that they may not be doing this. All I am saying is that
they will require a bigger booster to land men on the moon.”
August 16: Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in London press
conference, said he did not believe the U.S.S.R. was leading the
U.S. in space exploration.
“We have been putting all kinds of satellites in the air for
meteorological readings and other scientific information, . . .”
but the U.S. has not been indulging in “the same kind of spec-
tacular” as the U.S.S.R.
“I think we should develop achievement upon achievement
until it should be almost a matter of course for us to go to the
moon, rather than indulge in the spectacular.”
Dr. Wernher von Braun, Director of NASA Marshall Space Flight
Center, said in Blacksburg, Va., that dual space flight of VOSTOK
111 and IV “was impressive from the standpoint of the whole
operation, . . . [but] it does not look like the Russians used any
new equipment. I don’t think there was a technical break-
through. . . .”
When asked to comment on US. prospects of being first to
reach the moon, Dr. von Braun said that manned lunar flights
would require rockets bigger than any used either by the US. or
U.S.S.R. so far. “We have such rockets under development,
and the Russians also have to develop a new rocket to do this
job . . . . Therefore I don’t think we have any serious handi-
caps to overcome so far as the lunar program is involved.”
Sir Bernard Lovell, director of Jodrell Bank Experimental Station,
England, said that flights of VOSTOK 111 and IV indicated “the
Russians have a clear space superiority in the military, if not the
scientific, sense.” He urged that the US. and U.S.S.R. join each
other in a cooperative attempt to explore the solar system with
manned space ships.
Congratulating the U.S.S.R. for success of its VOSTOK 111 and IV
space flights, Prof. Hermann Oberth, leading German space
scientist, added: “I am convinced that the Americans will soon
come up with something similar.”
NASA announced that a second attempt to send a Mariner probe
towards Venus would be made within the next few days. The
spacecraft and its mission would be identical to that of the fist
Mariner probe, which had to be destroyed shortly after launch
on July 22, 1962, because of a deviation from planned flight path.
Soviet press agency Tass said that the cosmonauts traveling in
weightless state could not depend on their sensory organs for
correct signals. The cosmonauts had to rely on instruments to
determine whether they were upside down or not, Tass added.
0 Prof. G. V. Petrovich, Soviet rocket specialist, wrote in Komsol-
skaya Pravda that within a few decades the solar system will