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

May 10: House Science and Astronautics Committee authorized record
$3.7 billion for NASA in FY 1963, cutting $116 million from
NASA’s
request.
0 Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, at Wilton, Conn.,
stated that peaceful uses of outer space was still the National
goal but that the U.S. would be “ill-advised if we did not hedge
our bets.” He said that a satellite interception system would get
serious attention if another nation was developing such a capa-
bility. “We ought to be ready,” he said in a press conference,
‘‘to anticipate the ability of the Soviets at some time to use space
offensively . ”
0 Premier Nikita Iihrushchev said in speech to transport workers
that despite the claims of American scientists no U.S. rocket has
hit the moon: “The Americans have tried several times to hit the
moon with their rockets. They have proclaimed for all the world
to hear that they had launched rockets to the moon, but they
missed every time. The Soviet pennant on the moon has been
awaiting an American one for a long time but in vain and is
becoming lonesome. ”
In answering Premier Khrushchev, Dr. William Pickering, Director
of JPL, stated: “On April 26, at 4:47.50 AM, Pacific standard
time, RANGER IV was tracked by the Goldstone receiver as it
passed the leading edge of the moon. At 4:49.53 it crashed on
the moon at a lunar longitude of 229.5 degrees East and lunar
latitude of 15.5 degrees South.” After 64 hours of tracking, the
trajectory of RANGER IV was precisely known and it was only 110
miles from the surface when it vanished behind the moon.
0 NASA X-15 pilot, Joseph Walker, said that film taken during recent
record altitude flight of 246,700 feet showed five or six mysterious
objects. Other space pilots on the panel at the National Con-
ference on the Peaceful Uses of Space at Seattle, all of whom have
flown above 100,000 feet, were Cdr. Malcolm Ross (USNR) Capt.
Joseph Kittinger (USAF), Col. David Sirnons (USAF), Neii Arm-
strong (NASA), Cdr. Forrest Petersen (USN), Maj. Robert White
(USAF), and Lt. Col. John H. Glenn (USMC).
In session on the impact of space exploration on society at the Second
Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Space, President Lee Du-
Bridge of the California Institute of Technology said that man is
limited as a butterfly: “Man is out of his cocoon [in space] . . .
his life span is too short to get very far from home.” DuBridge
pointed out that a flight to the nearest star would take at least
40,000 years and that a trip to Mars at present speeds would
take six months, “but months would run into years even reaching
other planets of the earth’s system. We are not going to accom-
plish space travel except to nearby planets for many generations
to come.”
0 In talk at National Conference on Peaceful Uses of Space, William
E. Meckling, RAND Corp. economist, stated that space-age
economic payoffs are being exaggerated: “The exploration of
space is a very exciting affar, indeed. . . . If glamour displaces
science in guiding national policy, however, the results may be
disa pointing. . . .
communications satellite system that charges prices not
very much different from present prices and that must be con-
stantly subsidized and protected from competition, is not much
of an accomplishment. . . .