Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum, dated 1954, reports on a meeting of the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel held in September at the Naval Research Laboratory, Anacostia. The panel, chaired by James A. Van Allen, discussed high altitude and satellite vehicles and the International Geophysical Year. It covers rockets such as the Viking and Aerobee, a phased plan for artificial satellites, and funding from the National Science Foundation. The author also records a conversation with Van Allen about the instrumentation needed for high altitude rockets. The memo contains no UFO material.
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the unmanned instrumented vehicle (Phase 2), be said that the main problems will be development of a well rollible power plant; television, the technical design of which is already well along orientation of the vehicle itself and of the instrumentation carried; and constant reduction of weight of the equipment to be carried. It is stated that the altitude at which the vehicle should orbit will depend upon the purpose envisaged. Theoretically, an altitude of 1,000 miles at a speed of 5 miles per second would be ideal. This would provide a 2-hour orbit. 7. 14. 07. George Hoover of the Mr. French, COT, made the next presentation, concentrating with altitude vehicle projects with which this is concerned. It has three main projects in this field, the first of which is the development of a modern conventional aircraft to operate at a medium altitude of 300 miles. Two designs are present under consideration - the Douglas 553 and the Douglas 555. The former is designed to have an altitude of 700,000 feet. (Note this field of study is covered in Report H-077-1266(30), "With Altitude and High Speed Study" by Douglas Aircraft Corporation. (CORP. 2017 L.L.). The second GIL project is developed of a named high altitude balloon to operate at 100 to 200,000 feet. The system would be based on the "skybook" polyethylene balloon carrying a console equipped to sustain one or two men. The third GIL project is for named space flight and the study of this is being conducted at the Aero Jet laboratory. The first phase of this latter project is called 1123, the purpose of which is to place on 37 in orbit at an altitude of 250 miles in order to measure meteorological and atmospheric data at that level as the first step toward higher altitude work. Project 1123 has been tentatively corroved by the Navy and GIL is going ahead with it in conjunction with the Army. It is now also being coordinated with the Air Force at a very high level. The project calls for the use of the Army Radiatone missile (see para. 8 below) as the first share with the Toki cluster (see para. 9 below) providing the second and third shares. Under Aero Jet leadership, four subsidiary studies are planned to be undertaken as follows: (1) A Visibility Study to determine the size and weight of the vehicle required at an altitude of 700 miles. It is hoped that it. Fred whipple will be the leader of this. (2) In orbital study to determine the power required, the guidance system, etc. It is hoped that Ir. S. Fred Singer of the University of Maryland will lead this. (3) A trajectory Study to determine the final design and the claging requirements.
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 6 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.