Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1965 - NASA's History Office

ASTRONAUTICS AND AERONAUTICS, 1%5 39
January 28: MARINER IV, launched two months ago, was 11,873,789 mi.
from earth and moving toward Mars at a speed of 12,291 mph relative
to the earth at 9 a.m. EST. Velocity relative to the sun was 67,086
mph. (NASA Release 65-21)
The first major Saturn V flight component, a 33-ft.-dia., 60,000-lb. corrugated
tail section which would support the booster’s five 1.5-million-1b.thrust
engines, arrived at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center from
NASA Michoud Operations, near New Orleans. The section was one of
five major structural units comprising Saturn V’s first stage. (Marshall
Star, 1/27/65, l)
USAF announced a four-stage Blue Scout Jr. rocket combination with
a scientific payload had failed after launch from Cape Kennedy. The
second stage developed trouble about 100 sec. after launching, causing
the range safety officer to send destruct signal. The stage broke apart
on its own. The third stage, meanwhile, separated from the second
stage, ignited, and followed approximately its preplanned path. The
fourth stage failed to ignite; it and the payload plummeted harmlessly
into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Ascension Island. The probe
was to have sent its instrumented payload 24,500 mi. into space to
study earth’s magnetic field. (NYT, 1/29/65; US. Aeron. & Space
Act., 1965, 132)
Construction work at Cape Kennedy halted as 3,700 building trade
workers stayed off the job in a two-year-old contract dispute with
NASA. The present dispute was between building trades unions and
the Marion Power Shovel Co., a NASA contractor, over pay scales.
Work on 44 projects involving contracts totaling $192 million had
been brought to a standstill. The biggest project affected was the
52-story Saturn V moon rocket assembly building that was to be ready
for the first of these rcclets with? ti?% -‘--T= , --1 U. (UPI, NYT, 1/2?/65,
6; AP, Houston Post, 1/29/65)
President Johnson, on the advice of Defense Secretary McNamara, and
contrary to the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had decided to
postpone the production order for the Nike-X missile defense system,
Neal Stanford of the Christian Science Monitor asserted. $2 billion
had already been spent on the R&D phase of the Nike-X and an additional
$20 billion would be required to produce and deploy it. The
FY 1966 budget provided approximately $400 million for continued
research and development on the Nike-X system pending the decision
on whether to put Nike-X into production. (Stanford, CSM,
1 /28/65)
Army XV-9A experimental pressure jet helicopter, which was first flown
on November 5, 1964, gave its first public demonstration in Culver
City, Calif. It was designed and developed under a U.S. Army Transportation
Research Command contract with the Hughes Tool Company
to evaluate the hot-cycle pressure jet system which would eliminate the
requirement for heavy gear boxes, complex mechanical drive components,
and an antitorque tail rotor. Aircraft based on this concept
could carry payloads greater than the empty weight of the aircraft
itself. (DOD Release 55-65) . .
January 29: AEC said in its Annual Report to Congress that the United
States now had four Vela satellites in distant orbits to detect nuclear