Rockets from Balloons

For several years scientists from the University of Iowa have been launching rockets from high-flying balloons to study cosmic rays at great altitudes. The advantage is that the rocket avoids most of the resistance of the atmosphere. A Deacon rocket, for instance, rises only about 15 miles when fired from the ground. When launched from a balloon twelve miles up, it has reached 60 miles.

In Aviation Age, Kurt R. Stehling of Bell Aircraft Corp. tells how he and R. M. Missert. a physicist from the University of Iowa, are studying this principle as a cheap and easy way of putting a small, artificial satellite into an orbit around the earth. The rocket would have three stages, he says, but the whole thing need weigh only 13,500 lbs., and it could be carried up 15 miles by a plastic-film balloon of 3,000,000-cu.-ft. capacity (180-ft. diameter).

The heavy first stage of the rocket could consist of four clumsy but efficient, solid-propellant boosters. Since air resistance is low at that altitude, their unstream-lined shape would not pay much penalty in drag. The second stage would be a smaller, liquid-fueled rocket (1,300 lbs.), and it would carry in its nose the final rocket (200 lbs.) that would be the satellite.

Stehling believes that the rocket must be launched in exactly the right direction, preferably 45DEG from the vertical. The balloon will carry an azimuth and delination mounting, probably a gyroscope, which will point the rocket eastward by "locking on to" the sun. After it is launched, it would require guidance only in the second stage. There are two possible ground-control methods: beaconed radar or moving intersecting radio beams. The third, satellite stage would be unguided and would carry only a 30-lb. payload of instruments or experimental animals. According to his calculations, it would reach 18,400 m.p.h. on a slightly elliptical orbit around the earth. Its instruments, perhaps supplied with electricity by a Bell Telephone Lab's solar battery, would report air and space conditions, the effect of weightlessness, and the extent of the earth's magnetic field.

There are other ways of putting up a satellite, Stehling admits, but most of them would require very large, elaborate and expensive rocketry. He believes that the balloon method of outwitting atmospheric resistance is the most practical way for man to take his first step toward space flight.

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