The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

52 Belyayev, Pavel Ivanovich
with the Navy until 1954. He currently works as a consultant
from his offices in Bethesda, Maryland.
Belyayev, Pavel Ivanovich (1925–1970)
A Soviet cosmonaut and air force and naval pilot who
flew aboard Voskhod2 in March 1965. He succumbed to
a long stomach illness on January 10, 1970, becoming the
first spaceman to die of natural causes.
Bepi Colombo
A planned ESA (European Space Agency) mission to
orbit and to observe Mercury. It is named after the late
Giuseppe Colombo, of the University of Padua, who
first suggested how Mariner 10 could be placed in an
orbit that would bring it back repeatedly to Mercury.
Bepi Colombo is in an early design stage but may consist
of three elements: a planetary orbiter (about 450 kg), a
magnetospheric orbiter (about 60 kg), and a lander
(about 30 kg). No date has yet been set for its launch.
BeppoSAX (Satellite per Astronomia a raggi X)
A major project of ASI (the Italian Space Agency) with
participation of the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace
Programs. It is the first X-ray mission with a scientific
payload spanning more than three orders of magnitude
in energy—0.1–300 keV—and has a relatively large effective
area and medium-energy resolution and imaging
capabilities in the range of 0.1 to 10 keV. It is named for
the Italian physicist Giuseppe “Beppo” Occhialini
(1907–1993).
Launch
Date: April 30, 1996
Vehicle: Atlas I
Site: Cape Canaveral
Orbit: 584 × 601 km × 4.0°
Berezovoi, Anatoly Nikolayevich (1942–)
A Soviet cosmonaut who, in 1982 along with Valentin
Lebedev, spent a then-record 211 days aboard Salyut 7.
Berkner, Lloyd V. (1905–1967)
An influential figure in shaping American space policy in
the 1950s and 1960s. Berkner received a B.S. in electrical
engineering from the University of Minnesota and later
attended George Washington University. Although initially
he carried out research on the atmospheric propagation
of radio waves, he rose to prominence as a scientific
administrator following World War II. Berkner played a
central role in the exchange of scientific information dur-
ing the International Geophysical Year and subsequently
helped formulate America’s response to the
launch of Sputnik 1. From 1951 to 1960, he served as
the head of Associated Universities, charged with running
the Brookhaven Laboratories for the Atomic Energy Commission.
In 1961, he became president of the Graduate
Research Center of the Southwest and four years later was
named its director. He died less than a year after receiving
the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal for his pioneering
work in the advancement of space science. 214
Bernal, J(ames) D(esmond) (1901–1971)
An Irish physicist who was among the first to discuss the
possibility of space colonies (see Bernal sphere). Bernal
graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and
began his research career in crystallography under
William Bragg at the Davy-Faraday Laboratory in London
before returning to Cambridge. In 1937, he was
appointed to the chair of physics at Birkbeck College,
London, where his studies eventually led him to consider
the processes leading to the origin of life. In his remarkably
perceptive book The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, 25
Bernal discussed the possible future evolution of
mankind and its spread into the universe.
Bernal sphere
A spherical space colony of the type first described in
the 1920s by J. D. Bernal. As the material and energy
needs of the human race grew, Bernal surmised, it would
be natural that some day orbiting colonies would be built
to harness the Sun’s energy and to provide extra living
space for a burgeoning population. He conceived of selfsufficient
globes, 16 km in diameter, that would each be
home to 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants. Almost half a century
later, Gerard K. O’Neill based the scheme for his
Island One space colony on a smaller Bernal sphere,
some 500 m in diameter. Rotating twice a minute, this
sphere would generate an Earth-normal artificial gravity
at its equator. An advantage of the sphere is that it has the
smallest surface area for a given internal volume, which
minimizes the amount of radiation shielding required.
See Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich.
BI-1 (Bereznyak-Isayev 1)
The Soviet Union’s first high-speed rocket plane. Developed
during World War II, it used a liquid-fueled engine
built by Isayev with a thrust of 1.5 tons. Its maiden flight,
following accidents in ground runs of the rocket engine,
came on May 15, 1942, lasted three minutes and reached
a speed of 400 km/hr. Problems with corrosion by the
acid fuels slowed testing. On its seventh flight, in March