Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum, dated 16 September 1954, reports on a September meeting of the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel at the Naval Research Laboratory, Anacostia, chaired by James A. Van Allen. It summarizes briefings on the capabilities of research rockets such as the Viking and Aerobee and on a three-phase earth satellite program. It also covers Project Orbiter planning and funding for the International Geophysical Year. The author concludes that a satellite could likely be orbited by that year given high government priority.
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altitude and in its forthcoming modification will carry 500 pounds to 125 miles altitude. The second rocket is the Aerobee which can carry 150 pounds payload to 65 miles altitude. In addition to these two, there is also the B-111 which is a system of launching a rocket from a "bayonet" balloon. The launch is made at a balloon altitude of approximately 120,000 feet and the rocket carries 30 pounds of instrumentation to an altitude of 60 miles. Dr. Van Allen concluded his presentation by stating that, from here on, civilian upper atmosphere rocket research will probably be developed, due to lack of civilian funds, upon the military rockets being developed now by the Department of Defense. In then introduced Dr. Fried, simple of the Harvard observatory for a discussion of earth satellite vehicles (EV). 5. Dr. Wilhelm stated that the interests of civilian research and of the Department of Defense in 187 are synonymous. He pointed out the main scientific mine which could be made through the 187 which laid foundation both to civilian science and to defense. These include meteorology, astronomy, solar-torrestrial relations, for altruism and foray research, etc. He described the 187 sequence so being in three phases as follows: (1) The placing in orbit of an observable object (uninstructured) which could be seen either optically or by radar. (2) The placing in orbit of an instrumented vehicle, an unmanned physical laboratory. This place will be a progressive development starting with a very small vehicle similar to the miner which will carry telescoring equipment. A larger capacity will be achieved as bigger and more reliable solar plants are developed. These latter will probably be made or solar energy plants. Instrumentation starts with simple telescoring will progress through more complicated stages until television and finally a telescope is included. The last stage in this phase will be a remote controlled vehicle. (3) The final phase of ISV will be the putting in orbit of a named satellite vehicle. 6. Ir. Whible organized that the placing of a slur in orbit was in Iowa. Ivo first step in the process. We stated that such a vehicle even without instrumentation could produce useful scientific results such as the velocity data and relative positions on the earth. The main problem in connection with a slur (phase 1) is one of observation from the earth, which will require much effort. This problem will be simplified if the ISV is on either an equatorial or a polar orbit in regard to
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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. 5 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.