Journey into Space

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Specialized Difficulties. At White Sands Proving Ground, where most U.S. rockets are put to the test, Von Braun's theories are received with a mixture of fascination and alarm. Most rocket engineers, even the hard-handed practical ones, are deeply moved by the idea of space flight. But when they look closely at Von Braun's proposal, each man sees the worst difficulties in the specialty he knows best. Propulsion experts, for example, know that they must baby even a single rocket motor. They hate to think of making 51 of them fire properly and at the same instant. The failure of a single motor would make the whole rocket fail, perhaps in a flaming crash.

The most pessimistic men at White Sands are those who try to get instruments back to earth undamaged from the comparatively modest heights (100 miles or so) reached by present-day rockets. All they have managed to recover are a few extra-tough items, such as rolls of film in thick-walled steel cylinders. Parachutes, even if made of steel, do not open until the rocket is falling so fast that the first brush of air resistance burns them up. The highest-flying rocket so far (the two-stage "Bumper WAC Corporal," which rose 250 miles) came back to earth with its steel fins partially fused. The recovery men shudder at the thought of what would happen to Von Braun's returning crews. Their red-hot spiral around the earth may be theoretically possible, but even a slight mischance would be fatal.

The Fragile Crew. Other pessimists are to be found at the Air Force School of Space Medicine at San Antonio, Texas. How will human bodies and brains function in space? The medical experts are willing to believe that rockets can be built to navigate space, but they are not so sure that the human crews can take it. At 50,000 ft., where a jet plane can fly, the air is no use to the pilot. If his cabin should lose its pressurizing, he would die just as quickly (about 15 seconds) as if he were in the vacuum of space. At a slightly higher altitude (63,000 ft.), his warm blood would boil, making his flesh swell up with bubbles like cookies baking in an oven.

To avert such misadventures, the Air Force uses a "partial pressure suit" made like a skintight union suit of strong, greenish material, with an airtight helmet. When the cabin air pressure falls too low, an automatic valve shoots oxygen into the helmet at about ten Ibs. pressure per square inch. It also inflates rubber bladders along the wearer's limbs and body, making the suit even tighter. This enables the man to breathe and keeps gas bubbles from forming in his blood. He stays conscious longer and has a chance to bring his damaged plane down to inhabitable air.

But the pressure suit, says the Air Force, is nothing like those brief, becoming space suits worn in the comics. It will keep a man alive in a virtual vacuum for about ten minutes, but he breathes with difficulty. His hands, not fully pressurized, swell up with blue venous blood. His throat is another trouble spot: the medicos have not learned how to pressurize a throat without strangling its owner.