Projects sometimes failed

Research using the new tools in such a demanding environment was sometimes less than successful. Flight preparations were always accompanied by the nagging ques­tion, will it work? New techniques were being developed, and meaningful progress involved an ever-present element of risk taking. As has already been described, the balloon, rocket, and rockoon field exercises had their share of failed flights due to unexpected wind conditions, rocket ignition failures, instrument failures, and other woes. On most expeditions involving multiple launches, at least some of the experi­ments failed.

That fact of life became painfully evident a little later when the first U. S. attempts were made (under intense public scrutiny) to launch Earth satellites. Throughout the first several years of spacecraft launchings, the success rate hovered around 50 percent. It was only as the technology became better established, and espe­cially with the demand for extremely high reliability accompanying the manned flights, that substantial gains were made in the success rates of scientific experi­ments.

During the 1950s, several field expeditions were mounted at Iowa that produced no usable scientific data. The following three cases are illuminating.

CHAPTER 4 • THE IGY PROGRAM AT IOWA 95

Frank McDonald and John Naugle developed a new set of instruments for flight on a Nike-Asp two-stage rocket at the White Sands Proving Ground.9 John was by that time working at the Convair Division of the General Dynamics Corporation, and the project was a collaborative effort between the two of them, their organizations, and the Cooper Development Company. Initial proof tests were to be made from the White Sands Proving Ground near El Paso, Texas.

The principal instrument was a unique form of recoverable camera that contained about 15 feet of nuclear emulsion on a flexible backing strip. The camera was triggered to begin operating at nose cone separation, which was programmed for about 220,000 feet (42 miles) altitude. The emulsion was to be moved past an aperture at a rate of about one inch per second.

The primary mission objective for the White Sands launch (in addition to proof of hardware) was the detection of micrometeorites. They were expected to produce a blackening of the film where each particle hit, and perhaps to leave some physical residue. It was planned that the instruments would be flown later in the auroral zone at Fort Churchill, where the primary objective would be to detect and help characterize the auroral radiation.

An array of additional instruments was included. A Friedman-type ionization chamber was designed to detect the solar Lyman-alpha intensity. A specially treated platinum photoelectric surface was intended to measure solar radiation at a wavelength of about 1800 angstroms. An X-ray spectrometer was developed to detect individual photons having energies greater than about 6 keV A photocell provided information about the orientation of the package with respect to the horizon and Sun. Tracking, telemetry, and a parachute recovery package were also included.

The firing at White Sands in January 1958 failed. The Nike booster burned errati­cally, causing the second-stage Asp to separate prematurely. The booster then started burning again and accelerated into the Asp “like a sledge hammer,” destroying it and the payload in the process.

A second attempt was made to launch that payload on 22 October. That attempt, also at White Sands, appears also to have been highly problematic. The data transmission was reported as poor, and no peak altitude was recorded for the rocket.

As far as can be determined, the originally envisioned Fort Churchill flights of that instrument complement were never made.

Larry Cahill’s work with his proton-precession magnetometer is recounted later in this chapter. After returning from his Antarctic expedition in late 1957, he turned to the preparation of his Ph. D. dissertation, using the data from those flights.

During that time, he continued with paying employment in the laboratory as a research assistant. As a part of that work, following a suggestion by Van Allen, he prepared several of his magnetometers for flight on two-stage Nike-Cajun rockets. He

OPENING SPACE RESEARCH

made a series of three flight attempts from the Wallops Island test facility on 21 and 23 May and on 27 June 1959. Unfortunately, none of those flights reached an altitude high enough to meet the primary scientific objectives.1011

Don Goedeke had assisted Van Allen in building the Loki II instruments that Van took on the fall 1957 expeditions, also described later in this chapter. In 1958, Don prepared a fleet of similar instruments for a pair of rocket-launching expeditions at Fort Churchill, Canada.

Searches of the available records failed to produce much information about this project—two references have been found. The Iowa City Press Citizen carried an article on 15 August 1958 that stated that Don, accompanied by engineering student Pete Chinburg, left on that day for the Hudson Bay region to launch a series of Loki rockets.12 The Annals of the International Geophysical Year list two series of University of Iowa flights of Loki II rockets at Fort Churchill, all of which contained cosmic ray and auroral particle detectors.13 The first series consisted of six flights during the period 3-8 September 1958. A summit altitude was reported for only one of those flights—the only one for which usable telemetry was received. A second series of seven flights was made two months later (4 October-8 November). Only one of those flights produced readable data, and it appears not to have reached a useful altitude.

It must be concluded that all of those flights had either instrument or rocket problems and that no scientifically useful data were obtained.