Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1965 - NASA's History Office

ASTRONAUTICS AND AERONAUTICS, 1965 23
“Think of our world as it looks from that rocket heading toward
Mars.
“It is like a child‘s globe, hanging in space, the continents stuck to
its side like colored maps. We are all fellow passengers on a dot of
earth. And each of us, in the span of time, has only a moment among
his companions.
“HOW incredible it is that in this fragile existence we should hate
and destroy one another. There are possibilities enough for all who
will abandon mastery over others to pursue mastery over
nature. There is world enough for all to seek their happiness in their
own way.
66
Our own course is clear. We aspire to nothing that belongs to
others. We seek no dominion over our fellow man, but man’s dominion
over tyranny and misery. . . .” (Text)
January 20: Dr. Robert Jastrow, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for
Space Studies, said at the annual meeting of the Franklin Institute in
Philadelphia : “Beyond military and political advantages of getting to
the moon are possibilities we cannot conceive.” The moon, he said
could prove to be “the Rosetta stone of the universe. Its lifeless surface
could give us the clue to the process of life.” (Phil. Eve. Bull.,
1/21/65)
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. conducted successful static firings of
the Agena target vehicle for Project Gemini. The firing tests, which
included simulated maneuvers to be made by Agena during rendezvous
with the Gemini spacecraft, included five separate firings of the main
engine and of the secondary propulsion system. The tests lasted some
12 hrs. and were termed by Lockheed “complete captive flight.” All
systems of the actual flight Agena were tested, including command
from earth ir dris~~iiti.ers, pogl dniiiid coiiiiii~iids withi: &C A ~ x ,
telemetry, and docking simulation. Previous Gemini Agena firings
had tested the vehicle’s engines only. (Huntsville Times, 1/22/65)
Dr. M. P. Lansberg of the National Aeromedical Center, Soesterberg,
The Netherlands, told scientists attending the symposium on the inner
ear at the Naval School of Aviation Medicine at Pensacola Air Station
that one role of space flight would be the exploration of the functioning
of the vestibular organ. “This might well be the most important
and fascinating side of space flight,” said Dr. Lansberg. “Not what it
will reveal to us of distant worlds, but what it will unveil to us about
ourselves.”
Dr. Lansberg also warned against expecting too much from experiments
conducted here on earth in trying to determine how much gravity-producing
spinning man could stand. In recommending rates of
speed to space engineers, he said “we should be conservative.”
(Harris, Pensacolu Journal, 1/21/65)
In an article in The Huntsville Times, Richard Lewis said: “If Project
Apollo continues at its present pace, the United States will be able to
attempt the landing of astronauts on the moon in 1968. . . .
“This impression of the status of Apollo . . . was gained by this
reporter in tours of both industrial and test centers for the mammoth
project. . . .
“The story at these centers is this: no new breakthroughs in electronics,
mechanics, metallurgy, propulsion or guidance and navigation