Evening star., 1955-07-31
In the Future

Such information as size and
shape of the earth, intensity of
cosmic rays, nature Of ultraviolet
radiation and frequency of meteors
will be turned over to world science
without censorship.
But there are certain to be many
lessons of a technical nature which
the United States will not feel OBJ
ligated to give away. These are les
sons which may, at some later date.
enable the military authorities to
put UP q permanent, manned sta
ton in space.
That this has been high on the
military priority list for years is no
secret. The late James v. Forrestal,
first Secretary of Defense, spoke Of
earth satellite studies in 194S The
Army has had DR.. Wernher Won
Braun, a leading developer Of the
German W. rocket, on its Red
stone (Ala.) arsenal staff for al
most 10 years, and has given DR..
Won Braun an almost completely
free hand for lobbying for his
hobby, a platform in space.
Another tip-off of the military'S
space -mindedness came earlier this
year in the military pay bill. In the
hazardous-duty section of the bill,
the military added three new types
of activity. Though the significance
of these additions was generally
overlooked, The Sunday Star COM
mented on January %:
"All of these types of duty have
application to flight at extremely
high attitudes. AS an interesting
sidelight to the pay bill, their adj
dition to the hazardous duty list
logically raised the question whether
space flight is so far off after all"
Won Broun's Platform
DR.. Won Braun has postulated
manned space platform shaped like
q wheel, about $50 feet in diameter.
Chesley Bonestell's conception of
the Won Braun platform, repro
duced from Across the Space
Frontier" Viking, 1852, $3.95), is
shown in the large illustration at
the top Of the page.
Unlike the flying basketball,
which would stay temporarily in
the tenuous air $50 miles up, the
Won Braun platform would be 10
Gated in the high vacuum of outer
space, LOTS miles from the earth's
surface. Circling around the earth
IL times a day, it would stay up
there forever.
DR.. Won Braun's selected orbit is
roughly north-south, like that Of
the first satellite. There is nothing
unnatural about such an orbit;
the planet Uranus. third biggest in
the solar system, revolves on its axis
in similar direction, and its five
moons travel in north-south orbits,
too.
Obviously, a huge platform Of
; the Won Braun type could not be
shot UP in one piece, as the "fly-
ing basketball will be. DR.. Won
Brauns solution is to take the sta
ton up piece by piece and assemble
1t aloft-a kind Of interplanetary
do-it-yourself kit. How it would
be assembled is an interesting but
complicated story that has been
told in many published works.
Men in the rocket would be
shielded from the vacuum Of Space
by walls which theoretically also
would protect them from meteors'
But what about the httle-under-
stood cosmic rays. which our
atmosphere quite effectively pro-
tects us from? No man really
knows the answer to this question
yet, but perhaps partial answer
will be gained from the messages
sent down by the unnamed satel-
lites now planned.
The German-born rocket scien'
tist has gone into the subject witt
Teutonic thoroughness, and makes
q strong case for such space plat
form. In Across the Space From
tier" DR.. Won Braun says:
"Technicians in this space sta
ton, using specially designed. pow
erful telescopes attached to larg'