Paper: Times Recorder City: Zanesville, Ohio Date: Tuesday, March 23, 1954 Page: 13
First Nation Building Space Station Rules, Says Scientist
ALBUQUERQUE, March 23 - The United States "better get on the ball quickly" if it is not already working on a "station in space." says Dr. Lincoln La Paz. La Paz, director of the University of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics, published a mathematical discussion on nearby earth satellites natural and artificial in the January - February, 1954, issue of The Publications Of The Astronomical Society of The Pacific. He wrote on employing such satellites to test Einstein's theory of relativity.
Military Use
But La Paz is concerned with military use of such bodies. In dead earnestness, he declares: "The nation first establishing a station in space will win absolute control of the earth. "If the Russians do it first, we and the rest of the world will become just as tractable as they want us to be." La Paz called "Mr. Fireball of Albuquerque," is an expert on meteors and meteorites. He has spent his scientific life searching for and studying the cosmic masses which survive flight through the atmosphere and crash into the earth. La Paz brought Clyde Tombaugh who discovered Pluto, the ninth major planet, in 1930, to the University of New Mexico in 1946 but soon lost him to White Sands proving Ground.
Search For Moons
At White Sands Tombaugh has since organized a search for small near-by moons which may be orbiting undetected about the earth. If Timbaugh's search for a small near-by satellite - say 1,000 miles up - is successful. La Paz, believes it can be manned as a station i space." "Using such natural stations would save many billions of dollars of taxpayer's money which would otherwise have to be spent building an artificial satellite vehicle.
"An Ideal Site"
"Hauling materials a thousand miles up in rocket-powered missiles would cost more than boondoggling," How would a space station achieve absolute military domination of the earth? "First," La Paz answers, "by providing an ideal site from which to keep hostile areas under telescopic and radar scrutiny. Such a station would speed around the earth every two hours. "Second, if retaliation becomes necessary, by employing the station in space as a site from which to lauch missiles armed with atomic or hydrogen warheads." La Paz takes issue with those who regard as premature considering making military bases out of any moons that may be found in Tombaught's hunt for natural satellites. Dr. Ervin Bramball, Army Ordnance research chief, in comment on Tombaugh's satellite search, said. "It's a little premature to be talking about space stations...although maybe we'd be thinking of such things in about five years."
Stations In Space
La Paz says: "As long ago as the 1920's Hermann Oberth in Germany clearly pointed out the military potential of stations in space. Other nations have been thinking of occupying such states for 25 years." The United States, he said, got Wernher von Braun, under whom the V-2 rocket was developed at the Nazis' Peenemunde center. But the Russians captured the great majority of the Peenemunde rocket experts and have long had control of the German rocket bases along the Baltic. "We simply cannot safely discount the progress that German rocket and space scientists may have made." says La Paz. "Also," he declares, "Russia study of meteoritics is much better systematized and far better finances than here. Co Operation "Essential"
"The Meteorite Committee of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. has the backing of the Russian Goverment. The Russians, profiting from the greatest meteorite fall in recent times - that of 1947, near Viadivostok - have been extraordinarily successful in getting wholehearted co-operation in its publications. "Such co-operation is essential to the meteoriticist, for he must find the meteorites he studies wherever they may happen to fall." At White Sands, which missile research makes the spot on earth closest to space, the acknowledged rocket altitude record is only 250 miles. This was achieved by a two-stage rocket - a V-2 from which a smaller rocket was launched near the peak of the V-2's straight up flight. La Paz concedes there are many separate problems to solve before real space flight is possible.
Cites Hazards
Such hazards as space dust, meteorite impact, and cosmic ray bombardment must be overcome. These and the problems of mere existence in zero gravity are not to taken lightly, he says. Fuels producing necessary power and metals able to resist almost incredible temperatures much be produced. No one man or group of men should attempt to solve the many obstacles blocking the road to space. But La Paz contends that organzied direction, as in the Manhattan Project which produced the atom bomb, will achieve the step-by-step progress required. "We should be working in the same carefully organized way to establish the first station in space. "Such a station - providing us excelled observation and armed with atomic or hydrogen missiles - could be a modern sword of Damocles, forever threatening but forever insuring peace on earth." Please visit, www.MeteoriteArticles.com, a free on-line archive of meteor and meteorite articles. |
