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

ASTRONAUTICAL AND AERONAUTICAL EVEWI”T OF 1962 49
Blank, professor at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute
of Rehgon, said in Williamsburg, Va. If space exploration discovers
rational people living on other lanets, religious people
on earth ‘fwilI have to abandon paroc g
ialism and reach for a
God who is less comfortably near than we have wanted to believe.”
April 7: Atlas-Centaur launching from AMR was again postponed,
this time because of high-altitude winds.
A censored transcri t of testimony before a closed hearing of the
House Defense lppropriations Subcommittee by Dr. Harold
Brown, DOD’S Director of Research and Engineering, on March
19, was released, disclosing questions by Chairman George H.
Mahon on security aspects of the prepared statement which outlined
DOD’S R ~ projects. D Dr. Brown replied that it was necessary
under the US. system to inform the public, that no numbers
of weapons or s ecific capabilities of weapons were given, and that
“having the ot 2: er side know what we are thinking can in some
cases be useful.”
Sir Bernard Lovell, Director of England’s Jodrell Bank radiotelesco
e, said in an interview in Los Angeles that Soviet secrecy
wit K regard to their space launches was justified. “There are
two ways of looking at this thing, you know. In scientific
circles it is customary not to announce an achievement until it
has actually proven a success.”
Educational Testing Service received a $30,300 grant from the
National -Science Foundation for the showing of science films
over stations of the National Educational TV Network of 58
stations.
State Board of Education in Minnesota voted to stop requiring
any science or mathematics as prerequisite to high-school graduation.
Members argued that some students were not suited to
courses in science and mathematics.
April 8: Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in a Tass interview, said:
“It is now necessary to determine how long a man can operate in
outer space without prejudice to his health-five days, ten days,
or more. This is one of the main tasks before proceeding to more
complex flights to the moon, for example, or to the establishment
of orbital or interplanetary stations.” He criticized the U.S.
for being “reluctant” to file details of the Glenn flight with the
U.N. “The best information about outer space has been obtained
in the U.S.S.R. The Americans can benefit more by our
experience than we by theirs. Some people in America are not
interested in exchanges of scientific information.” The US. had
submitted information concerning the Glenn flight to the U.N.
on April 3,1962.
Surveyed by the Washington Post on the proposaI to fire rockets
loaded with radioactive waste into outer space, Washington-area
clergymen responded variousIy. Comments on the proposal
ranged from a “dreadful desecration of the Heavens” to a “fulfillment
of the divine commandment to protect man and the earth
on which he dwells.” Soviet nuclear scientist, Dr. Peter Kapitza,
had made the proposal in the April issue of the Bulletin of the
Atomic SckntiSts.