In an interview with this correspondent, T. Keith Glennan, the first administrator of the National Acronautics and Space Administration, made these points:
A sound programme of space exploration and exploitation for non-military purposes for the benefit of all mankind has been planned and is being implemented in the short span of 29 months.
What NASAVis finding out about radiation in space makes it “probable that a great deal more information must be had before you can talk with confidence about manned flight in space beyond the immediate earth orbit we are planning” for some time later this year, some 125 miles high.
“We have had to use rockets which, while quite satisfactory for the military purposes for which they were originally de-signed, lacked something in terms of their use in a space research programme.”
NASA has laid on a programme for development of new launching vehicles which “ought to permit us rather complete flexibility in our choice of space experiments in the next few years.”
As a result of the failures in the Atlas-Able moon shots, “we are working with the designers of the Atlas on experiments which will assure the success of Atlas-based systems when this rocket is used with upper stages, or with payloads which may use the Atlas alone as a booster. There is no indication that we cannot use it satisfactorily.”
Additional money might be used for ground testing and for advanced technological development of components for both the spacecraft and for the rockets themselves.
The enthusiasm for the nuclear rocket should not be allowed to obscure the fact that much basic research on materials and much development on system components must be accomplished before a full-blown “hardware” programme can be undertaken.
“But we should avoid, at all costs, the repetition of the nuclear-propelled aircraft pro-gramme in which the urge fo develop a flying article has been permitted to compromise a sensible research and development programme.
“Scientists are right in their concern over the possibility that we would commit excessive funds to a determined man-in-space programme beyond Mercury (the man-in-space programme expected to be attempted this year). We know and they know that we don’t presently possess the basic information on which to develop such a programme with complete assurance.
“I am also concerned that the non-military space programme should not be so greatly blown up that it ultimately must fall of its own weight.”
The side results of the space programme – “industrial tech-niques, processes, instrumentation, devices of all kinds”-will be tremendously important to the total national economy.
Dr. Glennan, who has been on leave as president of the Case Institute of Technology, Cleve-land, Ohio, is about to return to Cleveland
