Rockets, Mice

and Men

eBook Edition

by Brian Lawrenson

@@@

Title: Rockets, Mice and Men

Author: Brian Lawrenson, owns the copyright to the material in this eBook. © 2010 Brian Lawrenson

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 978-1-921814-04-4

Published: June 2010

Published and distributed by Smashwords

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Rockets, Mice and Men

Mickey, a little white mouse, is the central character in this story. He normally lived in the Physics department of Rhodes University, where he was in training to become South Africa’s first astronaut.

Becoming involved with this tiny white mouse was the start of a dream that was achieved when I went to the John F Kennedy Space Centre, in Florida in November, 2004. This is the story of the Kennedy Space Centre and the USA space program but more importantly the story of how the dream came about.

***

I’ll always remember that morning in 1958. The sun had just broken the horizon leaving the scene bathed in an incandescent light. It was chilly, perhaps six degrees above zero. We were in a bunker at South Africa’s only rocket range. It was located some 20 miles outside of Port Elizabeth at a disused aerodrome. Who were we? well, the newspapers called us the “rocket men”.

A voice over the portable radio transmitter announced: “T minus one hour and twelve minutes and counting”. We’d been up all night and were feeling like it. The trickiest part of the launch was ahead. Four of us dressed in fireproof asbestos suits had to carry the three parts of the two hundred pound rocket, 50 meters to the thirty foot high launch tower. There we had to fit the rocket pieces into the tower’s guide-rails. One slip and the rocket could have exploded and the whole process ended up in a disaster. Loading the first stage of an eighteen foot, three stage, solid fuel rocket into the launch tower was the most difficult. It was filled with one hundred and twenty pounds of highly explosive solid rocket fuel. We’d spent the night carefully mixing and loading the fuel into the rocket cases. It was a slow, dangerous and stressful process.

As we assembled the rocket parts, Brian Evans, the designer of the rocket looked on carefully observing every step and ticking off each procedure as it was completed. After fifteen minutes, the first stage was locked in place followed by the remaining stages. These were much easier. The final stage contained a capsule housing the central character of the story and about this time Mickey probably was wondering what all the fuss was about.

As the rocket was now assembled in the tower, the four of us could go back to the bunker and remove our heavy asbestos suits. It was just as well because we were already bathed in perspiration. Towelling off and with fresh T-shirts we took up our allotted tasks for the launch. It was now T minus twenty three minutes. We were seven minutes behind schedule. This added to the tension.

The final step in the pre-launch procedures had to be carried out. This was tricky, meaning dangerous. Brian Evans, would carry out this task himself. The electrical connections to the three stages of the rocket had to be switched to “live”. There was only one way to do this and that was to climb the tower and flick a switch. This might sound rather crude but in 1958 the electronics that we know today, didn’t exist. Any error or malfunction of the battery powered electrical circuit at this stage could have prematurely ignited the solid fuel. Brian knew that if an explosion occurred, even wearing an asbestos suit, his chance of survival, were minuscule.

As we watched tensely, the second and third stage circuits, each including a mercury switch, were activated and Brian could come down to ground level to connect the first stage’s firing circuit to the control bunker. The minutes ticked by. He stepped back from the launch tower. It was done. We could relax. The loudspeaker boomed, “We were now at T minus six minutes. We are go for launch. Repeat, go for launch.”

The early morning scene at the St Albans Rocket Range was unreal. There were some two hundred soldiers in full combat kit dug into trenches around the disused airport. Officers were busy giving orders on their walkie-talkies. These members of the South African Defence Force were using the occasion as a training exercise. About fifty specially invited guests were hunkered down in an observation bunker some three hundred meters from the tower. Nearby a group of reporters and photographers crouched behind their sandbagged enclosures. A hundred meters closer was the main control bunker manned by the members of the Port Elizabeth branch of the Aeronautical Research and Experimental Group (AREG) of the South African Interplanetary Society.

The radio crackled again with the Launch Controller announcing: “T minus sixty seconds. Keep you positions, if the rocket explodes, shrapnel will fly in all directions at ground level”. That should keep their heads down, I thought.

A hush descended over the spectators; it was only broken by the whir of a number of movie cameras that had started to record the occasion. T minute five seconds, “four, three, two, one, fire!”

With a flash, a roar and a cloud of dense white smoke, the three stage rocket roared out of the launching ramp heading skywards. It left the launch tower covered in a plume of smoke as it disappeared out of our sight. The rocket was being tracked by army personnel who later confirmed that it reached an altitude of over twelve kilometres (seven miles) before the fuel ran out and it plummeted back to earth. This created a new South African altitude record for rockets.

As the rocket accelerated skywards, the second stage after ignition, went through the sound barrier with a loud “plop” and the shock wave tore the tail fins off the rocket casing. They spiralled down to the ground landing about thirty meters from where the photographers were sheltering. Shortly after the launch, the one and a half meter long, 6 inches diameter metal case of the first stage had plummeted back to earth about half a kilometre from the launch pad. It imbedding itself more than one meter into the ground. It had risen to 2,300 meters (7,000 feet). The second and third stages had fired perfectly. The vertical plume of smoke was visible from more than ten miles away.

Suddenly the tension of the last two days was lifted from our shoulders. It was congratulations, hugs and handshakes all round. We emerged from our bunkers ready to meet the world grinning from ear to ear. The project director was mobbed by the assembled press. Questions were everywhere. “Where is the mouse?” someone wanted to know. A recovery team were sent out to search for it. “It should have floated down to earth by parachute,” one of our members stated. Notes were scribbled in notebooks and we spent the next half hour posing for photographs.

The next day, when reporting the achievement, the local newspapers stated that when the third stage came down to earth by parachute, Mickey’s container was missing. Now I have to tell you something that was highly confidential at the time. Mickey was clothed in a specially designed space suit, built by students of Physics department at Rhodes University actual died from the effect of “G” force shortly after take-off. He

had given its life in the advancement of human knowledge and thereby joins a long list of space travel pioneers who died in efforts to advance our knowledge. His suit was connected to a miniature transmitter that sent messages with the mouse’s vital signs to central control. The container had gone missing on purpose. This turned out to be a good thing because a few days later, after a follow up a newspaper article headed “Where is the Mouse Now?”, the local Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) started an investigation into the incident. Without a mouse, there wasn’t much to investigate. Today, Mickey rests in an unmarked grave at the St Albans aerodrome.

Now you are probably wondering just what my parents thought about this activity, after all I was still at school. Well, initially they didn’t know. When I joined the AREG group, I was seventeen and in my second last year at high school.

However, shortly after that an incident happened that made them very aware of what I was up to. I had been reading about some new chemicals that had been written up as making a very effective solid rocket fuel. Once mixed, they could be heated into a liquid, poured into the rocket case and then allowed to cool. Now I might have been well read, but I was very inexperienced. I knew about flash points, which is the temperature at which a mixture will ignite. I mixed up this cocktail of chemicals using an old stainless steel pan and heated it on my electric mother’s stove, at home. The quantity was about a heaped teaspoon. I had the heat on low and after a few minutes it hadn’t melted, so I turned up the heat. I turned away to the kitchen sink and in less than thirty seconds, the mixture exploded – WHOOSH. The pan was wrecked. I rushed outside as the cloud of dense white smoke filled the kitchen. After I’d cleared the smoke, the kitchen wall and ceiling were covered with a black/ brown stain. What does one say in this situation? “Mom, I’ve burned the toast”. We had a little discussion at dinner that night and I ended up repainting the kitchen wall and ceiling. There would be no more experiments at home. I had learned a valuable lesson.

The successful launch of the R6 rocket was the culmination of five years of work in designing and test firing rockets. Whilst the AREG group were strictly amateurs they had made some significant contributions to the development of rockets in South Africa. One member of the group, Alan Bowman, later

became an rocket scientist at the Farnborough Establishment in England. Another member of the group Desmond Prout-Jones, with the help of the AREG members, went on to design and build a rocket that went up to nearly forty kilometres, that is over twenty five miles. He is also the author of the book: Cracking the Sky printed by both Michigan State Library Press and UNISA Press. The book describes the rocket experiments in South Africa that were carried out by the group between 1947 and 1963. Over five hundred rockets were launched or static test fired - all without a major accident.

There is a photograph in the book of nine members of the team examining the R6’s first stage rocket that was deeply embedded in the ground at St Albans. It is interesting that the seventeen year old youngster on my left in the photo is now Professor Cedric Smith. Cedric is rightly known as one of the pioneers of rocket science in South Africa.

We might have lacked formal qualifications then, but we were young, keen and prepared to help each other expand our knowledge. For two years, I was the Technical Correspondent of the group. This meant that I typed the letters to mainly USA rocket supply companies asking for technical assistance with various rocket related matters. My Dad’s old manual typewriter was pounded late into the night. The replies, often fat large envelopes, which arrived at Dad’s post box, would be covered in USA stamps. Little did the experts from the leading firms in this field in the USA, know that they were writing to a nineteen year old who had just left high school. In those days, rocket science was in its infancy and there wasn’t nearly as much to know, as now.

Our Project Director checked my writings for technical correctness and over a number of years the Americans who by then had founded NASA, found our research of interest. This was particularly so when we commenced building and testing liquid fuelled rockets. A sizeable concrete test bed was built and put into use. Clearly our abilities and capabilities were growing rapidly. However, we were hampered by the inadequacies of the St Albans airport site. The officials were concerned that the remains of our rockets might have landed in populated areas. Yes, they might have but they never did.

Suddenly in 1963 the Government forced the group to close the projects down. The capability of the group and an associated Rocket Research Group in Johannesburg, had grown to the extent that the scope of the projects was beyond the ability of the government to control them. However, a number of the members of the group were offered jobs working on rocket related projects for the South African Defence forces. The focus of further research moved to a site near Johannesburg.

I decided that it was time to spread my wings, overseas.

***

In April 2002, a young South African became the first African to venture into space when he joined a team of cosmonauts on the Russian Soyuz capsule on a journey to the International Space Station. Mark Shuttleworth conducted several experiments during his 10-day space flight. One experiment was the very first in the world to assess the impact of zero-gravity on the development of stem cells and embryos; another was to determine the effect of microgravity on the cardiovascular system and muscles; and a third was an attempt to crystallise HIV proteins in weightlessness in the hopes that, when X-rayed, they will give an accurate view of the virus structure. Mark has used his adventure as a springboard for an education-outreach programme, which aims to encourage students to embrace mathematics and science. He has, since his return from space, worked to enhance science education in South Africa and he has worked to fuel an interest of young people in space, science and astronomy.

I don’t know if Mark knew about the work the AREG did in the 1960s but I’d like to feel that his success is a fitting ending to the story of those young rocket pioneers who were “reaching for the stars”.

***

To return to the start of this story in 2004, we had just spent five wonderful days exploring New York. My wife, Jill, and I love travelling by train so we purchased a 15 day pass on Amtrak. Our route was down the coast to Orlando and cross country to Los Angeles with a stop-over in New Orleans. There was a slight drizzle falling as we wheeled our suitcases into Penn Street station. We were to catch the 12.15 en route to Orlando with a stop-over in Savannah.

Train travel gives you lots of time to walk around and meet interesting people. Many of them were Americans who enjoy travelling. We remember meeting a couple who’d sold their house, bought a motor-home and travelled America from North to South and from East to West. “We’d decided that we’d try it out for a year and see if we liked it and here we are seven years later still enjoying it”. They had been visiting family in Charleston and where heading back to Florida to pick up their motor-home. “Where are you going next?”, we asked. “Oh, we’ll just head over to New Orleans and explore some of the little towns on the Mississippi”. It sounded an idyllic lifestyle, if that was your thing.

Another couple told us about having their home in southern Florida blown down, not once but twice, the last time by the cyclones that had battered the Florida coast in 2003/2004. They were returning to see how the re-building was getting on

and seemed to be coping better than I think that we would have. We wished them well.

After a stay-over at a Holiday Inn in Orlando, we picked up our hire car. “Do you have a map, I enquired?” No they didn’t but the route to the Kennedy Space Centre was easy to follow.

We soon adjusted to driving on right hand side of the road. After parking the car, we headed for the Ticket Plaza where we bought Maximum Access Tickets. I was about to realise a dream that I’d had for forty five years.

***

The Kennedy Space Centre

I‘d like you to come with me on a conducted tour of the visitor facilities at the Kennedy Space Centre. But to set the scene, first I’d like to give you a little history. Most people believe that Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Centre is the same facility. They aren’t. Cape Canaveral, which is an Air Force Base, lies to the east of the Kennedy Space Centre. The first rocket to be launched from there was the Bumper 8 in July 1950. Rockets are still fired from Cape Canaveral and the Air Force team there provides weather information and logistics support for Shuttle launches.

The Kennedy Space Centre is the location where the National Space Administration (NASA) launches and lands the Space Shuttle. The facility had its name changed to the John F Kennedy Space Centre seven days after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. President Kennedy’s role in extending the boundaries of space exploration was enormous. NASA was formed in 1958 with the challenge by the President in 1961 to land men on the moon and return them safely to Earth before the end of the 1960s. The Centre opened in 1962 - the facility was then known as the NASA Launch Operations Centre. In July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 lifted off from Pad 39A, and four days later Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.

The idea for a Visitor Centre first started in the 1960s and gradually the facilities were expanded and bus tours were introduced in 1967. The following year over 800,000 people visited the centre. The attendance grew each year until it welcomed over two million visitors per annum. The current facility was built between 1995 and 2000, at a cost of more than $130 million dollars, all paid for by sponsorship and donations. It is open every day apart from Christmas Day from 9 am. Tours start at 10 am and run every 15 minutes.

For information and tickets visit their website: wwww.kennedyspacecentre.com.

Our tour starts at the Rocket Garden. This is a collection of tall reminders of the rockets used in early space exploration. These include Mercury and Gemini rockets. The giant Apollo/Saturn rocket is displayed horizontally. This was the first rocket to be totally developed by NASA and it significantly moved the space exploration project into top gear. One of the exhibits in this area is the gantry used by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins before the launch of Apollo 11. We stopped to have our photograph taken on the gantry. As we stood on the metal plates that they’d walked across to the capsule waiting atop the huge Saturn V rocket, we paused to wonder how these three brave men felt on that July morning. They were thirty stories above the ground and their next stop was the Moon.

At the opposite side of the Visitor Complex stands a full size replica of the Space Shuttle. A gantry with steps up helps you to get up real close and you can peer into the flight deck and the area where the astronauts eat, sleep and carried out experiments. You wonder just how you’d adjust to living in a

“shoebox”. Getting dressed involved a three hour process of carefully putting on protective clothing so they could go out for a “space walk”. To float about in weightless space inside the Shuttle was one thing but to float about outside the craft must have been an adrenalin pumping moment. To prevent them drifting off into space, astronauts used a tether to keep them attached. The views of the earth from space must have been awesome but to see views of the earth with your spaceship in the foreground must have been the ultimate experience.

The Cargo Bay housed the Spacelab, satellites and is where the new Space Station modules hitched a ride into orbit. The fifty foot long robot arm that helps the astronauts to lift things in space is the one used to rescue the Intelsat communications satellite in 1992 when it was stranded in the wrong orbit. Just standing next to the Shuttle towering over you, gives you goose bumps. Somehow the black and white tiles that provide the insulation against the searing heat of re-entry seemed very thin and inadequate.

Nearby is a huge space mirror dedicated to the twenty four astronauts that have lost their lives in NASA’s quest to get into space. The names include the seven astronauts who lost their lives when the Shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry in February 2003. The poem that Col. Aldrin read at the service for the seven astronauts who died during the Challenger disaster was an updated version of a song about space that was first written many years ago. The lyrics are:

Fire in the Sky

Prometheus, they say, brought God's fire down to manAnd we've caught it, tamed it, trained it since our history began.Now we're goin' back to Heaven, just to look him in the eye:There's a thunder 'cross the landAnd a fire in the sky!

Gagarin was the first, back in 1961When, like Icarus undaunted, he climbed to reach the Sun,And he knew he might not make it, for it's never hard to die:But he lifted off the padAnd rode a fire in the sky!

Yet a higher goal was calling and we vowed to reach it soonAnd we gave ourselves a decade to put fire on the MoonAnd Apollo told the world we can do it if we try:There was "One small step..."And a fire in the sky!

I dreamed last nightOf a little boy's first space flight,

Burned into me,Watching the black and white TV:There was a fire in the sky!I'll remember 'til I die:A fire in the sky--A fire in the sky!

Then two decades from Gagarin, twenty years to the dayCame a shuttle named "Columbia", to open up the wayAnd they said "She's just a truck," but she's a truck that's aimin' high!See her big jets burnin',See her fire in the sky!

Yet the gods do not give lightly of the powers they have made,And with Challenger and seven, once again the price is paidThough a nation watched her falling, yet a world could only cry,As they passed from us to glory,Riding fire in the sky!

Now the rest is up to us, and there's a future to be won:We must turn our faces outward, we will do what must be done:For no cradle lasts forever; every bird must learn to fly:And we're goin' to the stars--See our fire in the sky!

(Reprise)Yes, we're goin' to the stars--See our fire in the sky!I'll remember 'til I die:A fire in the sky--A fire in the sky!Music and lyrics by Jordin Kare

Bridge by Kristoph Klover

Fewer than five hundred men and women have flown in space but every day one of the members of the NASA astronauts team provides a daily briefing for visitors. This is particularly targeted at school children and after the briefing they are encouraged to ask questions. On the day that we were there, the questions were: “How do you sleep in space?” – apparently it takes quite some time to train the body to sleep in the weightlessness of space, “What do you eat?” - it seemed a lot of prepared food with a lot of artificial flavouring. “How do you go to the toilet?” – on a specially designed toilet. I found the exchange informative and process inspirational. There was heaps of information, stories, illustrations and displays. The children sitting in the audience, were inspired

too, and that perhaps now dream that they too may travel in space.

Next, we were on time to visit the IMAX theatre. There are now two huge IMAX theatres each with a 5 storey high screen with surround sound. 3-D glasses give a totally realistic effect as you feel that you are floating alongside the astronauts as they float in space. The astronauts themselves have said that watching the IMAX film is the next best thing to actually being in space. They should know because they shot the footage. In the giant IMAX theatre the dream of spaceflight comes alive on huge five storey high screen. The film that we were seeing, “Space Station”, showed the life of the astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS). It was dramatic and compelling. You felt that you were right there with the astronauts as they drifted weightless towards you, hands outstretched, you felt that all you had to do was reach out and you could touch fingers. I did this a number of times and it added to the experience. The film provided tons of information about the work being done at the ISS and how work in space is designed to make life on Earth better for everyone. I don’t remember how long the film lasted, perhaps half an hour, as I was totally absorbed in watching it. The experience left me feeling that I’d been in space - the IMAX experience to me was the highlight of the visit the Kennedy Space Centre.

The 2010 IMAX screening program contains footage from one of the moon walks and a unique look into the Hubble Space Telescope and how we view the Universe and ourselves. It lasted for 43 minutes.

Still feeing slightly weightless, we left the theatre to visit one of the huge exhibition halls. We lunched in the giant Apollo/Saturn centre with sections of the huge Saturn V rocket suspended from the ceiling. The complexity of the five huge motors was mind blowing. The Saturn had millions of parts. This amazing launch vehicle was the cornerstone of the lunar landing program. If any single component failed, it could have jeopardised the whole mission. As I looked up, I reflected upon the contrast with the simplicity of those rockets that we’d built back in 1958.

After lunch, we’d booked on the restricted area tour, which took us by coach out to the Vehicle Assembly Building, the Launch Complex 39, the Shuttle Landing Facility and the International Space Station Centre.

The Vehicle Assembly building is giant –the largest building in America, we were told. It is 525 feet tall and covers an area of eight acres. It is here that the Space Shuttle is assembled on a Mobile Launcher Platform and its connections tested before being moved to the Launch Pad. The two external boosters are then added and then the attachment of the orange

coloured external fuel tank. Once the assembly and testing is completed, the Mobile Launcher Platform is hauled by two huge Crawler Transports to the Launch Pad. The top speed is about two miles per hour but normally it travels at half that speed. The distance to be travelled is about three and a half miles. It has an amazing hydraulic system that ensures that the launch platform is always perfectly level, even up the slope as it approaches the launch pad. There are two launch pads, essentially identical. The huge tower of the pads is the Fixed Service Structure and it connects the upright Shuttle to the tower via a service gantry. This is where the seven crew members have to walk out to take their seats in the Shuttle. Nearby is a huge storage facility for the liquid oxygen and hydrogen that is used to power the Shuttle. It’s not quite like calling into a gas station and say “Fill her up, please”.

Our next stop was the Shuttle Landing facility which is a huge runway – so wide and long that it can be seen from space. Like everything else at Kennedy Space Centre, the dimensions are mind blowing, for example, the concrete runway is sixteen inches thick. There is a concrete path to enable the Shuttle to be returned to the Obiter Processing Facility – to be prepared for its next journey.

We detoured to see a few of the estimated five thousand alligators that live in the Wildlife Refuge that co-exists with the Kennedy Space Centre. They double as unpaid security staff, too.

After this, we moved on to the International Space Station building. The ISS program is the largest and most ambitious space program since the Apollo moon landings. The ISS tour included seeing replicas of a habitation unit, a laboratory module and a multi-purpose logistics module. What I found

interesting was how all the interfaces between components and modules have been standardised so that various nations can build separate units and when all the components were fitted together, everything is compatible. Joining NASA in the construction and operation of the new station are Russia, Brazil, Canada, Japan and fourteen member nations of the European Space Agency. Eventually the living space aboard the station will be the equivalent of the space inside two 747 jet airliners. Through glass viewing platforms we were able to watch technicians putting final touches to two modules that were due for launch in early 2005. These are now in orbit. The video and the presentation about the future of the ISS was especially interesting. If only I was forty years younger!!!!

As we viewed the various displays, I was reminded of the somewhat minuscule role that Mickey had played in this great game. But he was a pioneer. He was one of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mice that have taken part in hundreds of experiments that have been carried out in space. Each of these, in some small way, has helped to expand our knowledge.

It was getting dark as we made our way out of the Kennedy Space Centre. Despite the navigation challenge getting back to our Holiday Inn in Orlando, it didn’t take the edge of the day. Jill and I agreed that it had been a fantastic experience. Although I’d had to wait forty years, my dream of visiting Cape Canaveral had come true.

***

The facilities have been upgraded at the Kennedy Space Centre since our visit in 2004. There are now even more opportunities to meet the astronauts including lunches, half-day and two-day astronaut training experiences and functions at the Astronaut’s Hall of Fame. There are also week-long Summer camps in June and July where young people can experience, imagine and be involved in space shuttle missions using motion-based simulators. There is a brochure that describes this at the Kennedy Space Centre website.

The 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission will be celebrated. This is known as “the successful failure” that was to have been the third manned moon landing. An explosion aboard the spacecraft changed the course of the mission and it threatened the lives of the three astronauts aboard the Shuttle: Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. This created what must be the most infamous words in space travel history: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” After a dramatic and daring rescue attempt by the astronauts and mission control on Earth they were able to return the crew safely back home after having spent four days in the Lunar Module Aquarius which acted as a lifeboat until a repair program was worked out. They rounded the far side of the Moon before the repair could

be affected and after travelling for more than 250,000 miles they safely returned to Earth on April 17th, 1970.

The Apollo program rockets and hardware are the central focus of the exhibits at the Kennedy Space Centre, so it is perhaps appropriate to review the history of the epoch making rocket program.

Following President Kennedy's famous speech on May 25, 1961, NASA announced that the program to fly astronauts around the moon would be redesigned to support a lunar landing before the end of the decade.

It is believed that the Apollo program stands as mankind's greatest technological achievement. In all, six missions landed on the surface of the moon, and three others orbited the moon without landing, including the ill-fated Apollo 13.

The Apollo spacecraft comprises three parts: The conical Command Module where the crew ate and slept on its way to the moon and home; the Service Module, supplying electricity, manoeuvring power and thrust to get home from lunar orbit, and water to the spacecraft; and the Lunar Module, or LM, a two-part, totally self-contained spacecraft that used its own rockets to land on and take off from the surface of the moon, and even served as its own launch pad. There are examples of all of these on display at the Kennedy Space Centre .

The Apollo program started in tragedy, when a fire in the Command Module on the launch pad during the pre-flight testing claimed the lives of: the second man to fly in space, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, our first man to walk in space, Edward White, and rookie astronaut Roger Chaffee. The date was January 27, 1967. The result was a huge delay in the program and major safety upgrading.

After an unoccupied test flight (named Apollo 4), using the new launch vehicle Saturn V, the flight of Apollo 8 with astronauts aboard circumnavigated the moon in December 1968, and by the following July, Apollo 11 placed men on the Moon and brought them home again.

On July 20, 1969, man set foot on another celestial body for the first time. On that day we evolved from homo sapiens to homo universalis, Man of the Universe.

They landed at 4:17 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (USA) with less than 30 seconds of fuel remaining. Neil Armstrong in taking the "Small Step for Man" wrote his name into history books. He was shortly joined by "Buzz" Aldrin, and the two astronauts spent twenty one hours on the moon collected 46 pounds of lunar rocks. Their lift-off from the surface of the moon was in part captured on a TV camera they had left behind. They were reunited with Michael Collins who had been patiently orbiting the moon in the Command Module "Columbia."

The astronauts left behind a plaque on the lunar surface that reads:

"Here Men From Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon The Moon. July 1969 A.D. We Came In Peace For All Mankind."

The whole Earth grew that that day back in 1969 and all of us who watched it on TV will always remember the images.

In all, twelve men were to walk on the moon before the Apollo program was ended. The last three missions featured the Lunar Rover, which permitted the astronauts to drive about and explore various terrains too rough for the LM to attempt to land upon. On the last Apollo mission to the moon, the astronauts spent 22 hours in moon walks and camped out on the moon for a total of three days.

Were these the first Moon tourists?

Sadly, the last three Apollo launches (18-20) suffered budget cuts and were cancelled. We have not returned to the moon since then. But the Apollo spacecraft was used for four later missions, the three long-duration Skylab missions and the final Apollo flight, the Apollo-Soyuz linkup with the Soviet Soyuz 19.

This, the final flight of the Apollo spacecraft, was the first time that spacecraft built by different nations had docked. It started era of cooperation between the Russians and the Americans that is now an essential part of our efforts to build a permanently occupied space station.

The American crew included three-flight veteran Thomas Stafford, rookie Vance Brand, and the last of the original seven Mercury astronauts to make it into orbit, Donald K. "Deke" Slayton. The Soviet crew included the first space walker, Alexei Leonov, and rookie Valeri Kubasov. The astronauts and cosmonauts met in the doorway of the docked modules, shook hands, exchanged flags and gifts and conversed briefly using a prepared script as neither group were bi-lingual. The potted trees that they exchanged, were later planted in each others' countries.

It would be six long years before another American astronaut would go into space, this time aboard the reusable Space Shuttle. The Apollo era, an era of the greatest achievements in mankind's history, had ended.

Early 2010 saw the last flight of the Space Shuttle series. As these workhorses have aged, the risks of these flights has risen and now more modern forms are being designed ad built.

***

I’d like to end this story with another small part of the AREG history that I believe deserves to be told. Not long after the news of the Russian launching of “Sputnik”, the members of the

AREG were asked to set up a special observation unit in South Africa that would be used to monitor the orbits of “Sputnik”.

Much to the world’s surprise the Russians launched Sputnik 1 on October 4th, 1957. It orbited the earth over 1,400 times until its batteries failed and the then familiar beep, beep, beep disappeared and eventually on January, 4th, 1958 it burned up after re-entering the earths atmosphere. I wasn’t a particularly impressive device being only 23 inches in diameter and weighing only 184 pounds (83.6 kg) but it was the first artificial satellite launched into space. Sputnik 2 was launched a month later. It contained the dog Laika who eventually gave its life to science, not unlike our little white mouse. These satellites surprised and alarmed the West and shortly after their launch there was a mad scramble to get some order into understanding the orbit of these objects. This is how we became involved.

On one Friday morning before the end of October, a wooden crate arrived from the USA. We were to collect it at the airport. “Priority” and “Fragile, Scientific Equipment” was stamped all over it. Using a borrowed trailer, we carefully transported it to the Scout Hall that we used for our meetings. The lid was lifted and inside the bundles of packaging there were 6 or 8 pieces of apparatus that looked like shortened telescopes with a mirror attached. I can’t recall exactly, but I think that the material said that they came from Project Moonwatch.

“Read this First” stated the instructions. The envelope included a list of instructions and a diagram of how we were to construct a viewing platform. Essentially this was a “bench” with seating for, I think, six or eight people. Each piece of the apparatus had to be attached and calibrated. A timber beam was procured the next morning and the apparatus were attached to the bench beam at carefully measured distances. This meant that when the members sat astride the bench, each of us could view a segment of the night sky. Each eye piece/telescope had a slightly different setting covering 4 degrees of the sky and making an arc of the sky north to south. By mid-afternoon the construction was completed and we were given our briefing of what was expected as the sun went down.

There was an air of great excitement. We’d lived on coffee and sandwiches all day. Now these were forgotten. Our members scanned the night sky. We knew that the satellite was visible with the naked eye but at this point, we did know when it would turn up. “There it is”, someone yelled. We crouched lower over our strange little telescopes. There was silence as the seconds ticked by. We held our breaths not daring to breath. We had our synchronised stop watches at the ready. As the satellite passed through the visual field of one of our

members, he clicked his stop watch and yelled out “contact”. Everybody cheered and we all stood up and embraced feeling the excitement of this momentous occasion. We were so excited to be a part of the quest to reach the stars. A small part. Probably in 2010 terms an insignificant part but that was not how it was, then. In 1957, this was the only “technology” that could provide the needed answers and we like many other amateur observation groups around the world played a small but vital role.

Soon this observation and recording became a nightly event and a roster was set up. Some nights, we recorded two circuits. The circuit time was 96 minutes. Some nights the view was blocked by a cloud cover. But night after night we recorded the information. It was telexed to somewhere in the USA.

Sputnik 2 followed and we kept up our observations for about four or five months after which I think more a sophisticated system of observation was put in place. I don’t know what happened to the apparatus but in 2005 I was surprised to see one of these same units on display at the National Science Museum in Canberra, Australia. Clearly we were not alone in our endeavours.

I tell this story because it illustrates just how primitive things were in those early days. It’s almost unbelievable but yes it did happen and in some very small way helped to get us to where we are today – still “reaching for the stars”.

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By the same author:Paperback: Following Marco Polo’s Silk Road

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About the Author

Brian Lawrenson was born in Yorkshire, brought up in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. After hitch-hiking round UK and Europe in the 1960s he met and married his New Zealand born wife, Jill, in London and migrated to Australia in 1968. Since then they have travelled to more than 70 countries.

Apart from travels in the Australia, including the Red Centre; they have explored New Zealand; visited the Islands of the Pacific; journeyed through the Middle East, across Central Asia and China; criss-crossed Canada and stayed in the remote Resolute Bay; discovered the beauty of over 20 states of the

USA; exploring the Inca trails of South America and cruised round Cape Horn; and visited many of the countries of the Far East including Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. And lots more.

Brian and Jill live in their favourite city, Sydney.

Brian Lawrenson is a traveller, writer, speaker and the author of Following Marco Polo’s Silk Road. He is also runs the small independent publishing house Marco Polo Press. Marco Polo Press is a member of the Independent Book Publisher Association (IBPA). Brian Lawrenson is a member of the Australian Society of Authors and a number of Travel Writers Associations. He has been featured on TV, Radio, in magazines and local newspapers.

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