Foxhole in the Sky

One guarded paragraph, worded in the Stiffest gobbledygook, set off a loud crackle of scientific and near-scientific speculation last week. In his report on unification of the services, Secretary of Defense Forrestal said:

"The earth satellite vehicle program, which was being carried out independently by each military service, was assigned to the Committee on Guided Missiles for coordination . . . The committee recommended that current efforts in this field be limited to studies and component designs; well-defined areas of such research have been allocated to each of the three military departments."

The military refused to say more. Thus, the public was left to its own wild guessing whether the "satellite vehicles" were to be "inhabited" or "uninhabited," and whether they were to serve as rocket-launching platforms or observation posts.

Forever Falling. Artificial satellites have been studied by space-navigation enthusiasts, both scientists and crackpots, for generations. Their basic theory is fairly simple. If a projectile is fired horizontally from a high mountain, it falls toward the earth in a curve. The greater the projectile's speed, the flatter the-curve of its fall. When the curve gets flat enough, it is a circle matching the curve of the earth's surface. Thus (but for air friction), the projectile might continue forever, round & round the earth. It would still be falling, but the surface of the earth would recede exactly as fast as the fall of the projectile.

In practice, air friction cannot be ignored. No sizable projectile has ever approached the necessary speed (about five miles a second) which would whirl it around the earth in about 100 minutes. Even the latest rockets do not carry enough fuel to get well above the atmosphere (some 500 miles) and settle into orbits. But atomic-powered rockets might theoretically do it. An atomic rocket motor might be one of the "components" that Forrestal's men are working on .

Down from the Orbit. They will have to work on a lot more components too, for satellites are still a post-Buck Rogerish shot toward the future. Though bristling with difficulties, they are theoretically feasible enough to merit serious investigation. If they ever do carry U.S. colors into space, they would have their military uses. Even an uninhabited satellite could serve as an observation post. While orbiting over enemy territory, it might watch behind the lines with telescopes and report its observations by television.

Dropping bombs from a satellite would present problems. Ordinary bombs released from the bomb bay would merely follow along the orbit like smaller satellites. They would have to be shot downward to increase their falling rate and allow them to catch up with the curving surface of the earth. Shooting them backward would have a similar effect. If they were shot backward at a speed equal to the satellite's forward speed on its orbit, they would stand still in space for an instant. Then they would fall vertically toward the earth. The whole satellite could be brought down on a target in either of these ways by giving it a powerful push from its nuclear rocket motor. But unless the operation were done with wondrous precision, the bomb could as well fall on Moscow, Idaho, as on Moscow, Russia.

Weightless World. An inhabited satellite would be a strange place for the crew. Their cabin would have to be pressurized and protected against the sun's heat, cosmic rays and meteors. Since it would be "falling" freely, the crew would not feel the earth's gravitation any more than do the passengers of a freely falling elevator. Their bodies, tools-and food would have no weight except that caused by the feeble gravitation of the satellite itself. No one knows whether human bodies would function under such conditions. One proposed solution: making the satellite spin. This would produce centrifugal force that would act like gravitation. Then the satellite's crew, walking around on the inside of the shell, would feel more or less at home.

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