Ups & Downs Sir: In the past few weeks this country has accustomed itself to the fact that we are technologically backward. I assume this will be properly investigated by the usual brass-bottom parties. But we are now faced with the fact that we are so inept and so ineffectual in the matter of public relations that we have advertised ourselves as dolts to the entire world.

JOHN G. STEELE Houston

Sir:

If freedom of the press in these parlous times means handing out information to Russia and the rest of the world on what our military is going to do before it has done it, then to hell with the press.

CHARLES J. COLLINS Detroit

Sir:

Wouldn't "Rearguard" have been a more appropriate title for our satellite project? JOHN JAXON-DEELMAN Los Angeles

Sir:

Why don't we send up a satellite on Christmas Eve and call it the Saintnik?

BILLY C. MCPHERSON Evans City, Pa.

Sir:

Not all projects are successful at first. By working harder and calmly, the launching of America's next satellite will make the world look skyward with admiration.

ARTHUR MURRAY AIBINDER New York City

Sir:

We can learn something about good manners from those Russians. They did not get at all peeved because we produced the original "Spoutnic"--John Faultster Dullest. CLIFFORD G. MILLER Cannes, France

The Power for Now

Sir:

Loud applause for your exposing the weakness of Khrushchev's loud and bumbling propaganda attempt to convince the rest of the world that the power of the American long-range flying bomber is over. This is an insidious lie, made more tragic by the fact that some Americans have come to believe it. One of the best things that could happen to the world right now would be for Khrushchev to launch one of his ICBMs. He could undoubtedly kill a lot of Americans (maybe), but for the next five years he could probably not hit a single significant target. In the meantime SAC could and would pulverize, not Khrushchev, but his military capacities and his industrial strength. The world would be better off. Of course, if we go to sleep during that five-year grace period, we will have lost the war and the world.

JAMES A. MICHENER Kuala Lumpur, Malaya

Sir:

Thank you for your Nov. 25 article on the U.S. Air Force. No matter what the Russians say about Sputniks, stick to your aviation program, and you'll be ten years ahead of the Commies.

SALVADOR RAMOS IGLESIAS

Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Should Ike Resign?

Sir:

Ike should be allowed to resign. He is not Superman.

, TOM KENDALL Walnut Creek, Calif.

Sir:

I'm a damned Democrat. And I'll be damned again if I don't think Eisenhower deserves a better break than he is getting.

RUBEN ARREOLA Albany, Ore.

The Young Senator

Sir:

Congratulations on your fine Jack Kennedy story. It is his "independent voting record" which sells me on the fact that he is the only American who can fill the shoes of Dwight Eisenhower. Who gives a damn whether he's a Democrat or Republican, Catholic or Presbyterian.

JOHN R. DEHNER

Indianapolis

Sir:

A President of the United States who is Roman Catholic and whose grandfather was a saloonkeeper? And who comes from Boston, the home of Mayor Curley! Heaven deliver us.

JOHN R. STEVENSON Yoder Presbyterian Church Yoder, Wyo.

Sir:

Mr. Kennedy is attractive. I have met the young man, and I'd love to have him for a younger brother or a kissing cousin, and I'd like to have his money. But I observed one thing about Mr. Kennedy that frightens me as far as voting for him is concerned. Mr. Kennedy is a snob. A nice snob. A born snob. But he is a snob.

GLORIA C. GROUSE

Lansing, Va.

Sir:

Nowhere in your article is it clear whether he is called Jack or John.

CHARLES F. MCCADDEN

Tuskegee, Ala. P:Both.--ED.

Sir:

Henry Koerner's cover portrait strikes me as an excellent piece of art, bold, expressive, and imaginative, worthy of our best American tradition. Let us see more of that kind of art.

FRANCIS J. LORSCHEID

Lakota, N. Dak.

To Outer Space

Sir:

The following facts should be added to your Dec. 2 account, "Defending Meteors." Three charges were fired simultaneously from an Aerobee rocket at the Holloman Air Force Base, N. Mex. on Oct. 16. They were prepared by Dr. Thomas C. Poulter of the Stanford Research Institute, Dr. John S. Rinehart of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, my collaborator, Joseph F. Cuneo, and myself. The meteors were fired at a speed of at least nine miles per second and at a height of 55 miles, above which the atmosphere remaining was quite insufficient to slow them to below seven miles per second, which is the escape velocity from the earth. Our artificial meteors are therefore the first macroscopic pieces of matter launched by man into interplanetary space never to return.

Project "Artificial Meteor" was originally proposed by me eleven years ago. After a first unsuccessful attempt, from a V-2 rocket at White Sands, N. Mex. on Dec. 17, 1946, it received no further support until Dr. Maurice Dubin of the Geophysical Research Directorate, U.S.A.F., invited the mentioned groups to collaborate, and through his superb coordination brought about the successful launching of the meteors into orbits around the sun.

F. ZWICKY Professor of Astrophysics California Institute of Technology Pasadena, Calif.

Sir:

The speculations in your article made interesting reading. The experiment was undertaken in the hope that shaped charges would help answer some important questions in meteor physics, e.g., controlled experiments concerning the luminous efficiency of meteors and other hypervelocity effects. The results of this experiment have led to some conjecture on my part, too.

MAURICE DUBIN

Boston

Plane Facts

Sir:

Knowing your flair for accurate reporting, I am writing to correct your Nov. 25 article concerning President Aramburu going supersonic in Argentina in "an F-102 fighter." This was accomplished in the F-100F, a North American two-place fighter. It is bad enough that we, in the fighter business, have to compete against electronic brains to hold our cockpit positions; please don't make it worse by confusing one of our last first-line fighters with an all-weather trainer. Let's not call a spade a Spad.

DONALD J. FERRIS Major, U.S.A.F. NelKs Air Force Base, Nellis, Nev.

Sir:

A Nov. 25 picture caption says the RC-121 Super Constellation "heads across Cape Cod, Mass, to offshore picket-line station over the Atlantic." Actually the plane is headed west. Astern lies surf-lined Nauset Beach.

DAVID A. KENNEDY Simsbury, Conn.

P:Actually, the pilot was circling for altitude.--ED.

Man of the Year

Sir:

To avoid naming Khrushchev--nominate Jules Verne.

G. R. DEWART

Providence

Sir:

I fail to see how you are going to keep that Russian scientist off your Jan. 6 cover. Khrushchev owes it all to Russia's scientists. (M/Scx) RAYMOND O. MUNN U.S.A.F. Washington, D.C.

Sir:

Stuart Symington--who warned us of the Soviet military threat long before Sputnik I.

WALTER W. APPLE University City, Mo.

Sir:

Because of Sputnik the Americans have developed an inferiority complex. Why, when we have a human guinea pig for space medicine? My nomination goes to Balloonist Major David G. Simons.

JOHN TAGGART

Canton, Ohio

Sir:

Who other than the anonymous scientist, educator, teacher in the U.S., where "the American Way of Life" pays him worse and considers him less than a garbage collector. WALTER CARL REIS Vienna, Austria

Sir:

General Douglas MacArthur--America's most needed but forgotten man.

PAUL B. SMITH

Columbus Junction, Iowa

Sir:

By all standards--moral or scientific--the man is Jonas Salk.

RAYMOND K. STIVERS Three Rivers, Calif.

Sir:

Bert and Harry Piel.

RAYMOND LOEWY

New York City

Sir:

Jim Turner.

JIM TURNER Baton Rouge The Blue Bell Wrangler

Sir:

I sure appreciate the story you ran about rodeo and me in the Nov. 18 issue. I thought the story was well written and accurate, except for one thing. You stated that I was wearing Levi's. I wasn't. I have worn and endorsed Blue Bell Wrangler jeans since 1949.

JIM SHOULDERS Henryetta, Okla.

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