[meteorite-list] NPA 09-21-1952 La Paz on going to the moon

From: MARK BOSTICK <thebigcollector_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Nov 7 15:45:03 2004
Message-ID: <BAY4-F13wWpSWerOc0N000245fe_at_hotmail.com>

Paper: Mansfield News Journal
City: Mansfield, Ohio
Date: September 21, 1952
Page: 8-C

Better Patch Space Suit
You'll Be Buying Ticket To Moon

     ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - Better make sure your space suit is not full of
holes and your rocket ship has a pressurized cabin before you take off for
the moon.
     Otherwise, the chances are pretty slim that you'll live to tell the
boys:

     "THERE I was. 52,000 feet up, when the cabin seems split and my oxygen
supply quit."
     The scientists say that about that time, your blood will start boiling
and you'll drown in your own vaporized breath.
     What the best - informed brains of the nation figure are the odds that
you'll really be buying a ticket on the moon express are contained in a book
from the University of New Mexico Press. The 650-page volume is called
"Physics and Medicine of the Upper Atmosphere."
     "The conquest of the atmosphere is a revolutionary event comparable to
the transition of aquatic animals to land animals" to land animals in
geological time." writes one of the scientists. "That took 100 million
years." But most of the advances in space research have been in the past
decade, many of them at White Sands proving ground in southern New Mexico.

     THE book is the result of a roundtable of rocketship travel in San
Antonio, Tex., last November, and incorporates the findings of 35 military,
scientific and medical minds. They conclude, in effect, that a trip to the
moon certainly isn't impossible.
     Dr. Lincoln La Paz, associate editor of the book and head of the UNM
meteoritics department, goes even farther.
     "The next step probably will be sending men up in the rocket." La Paz
said. "It may well have happened already - although that's only an educated
guess."
     But he says meteroticists - metal fireball experts - have been asked to
check into the possibilities of a rocket traveler's (1) running head-on into
a meteorite in a lunar traffic jam and (2) his being cooking alive in
radiation from Cosmic rays.

     FURTHER, he says, the picture in front of the book - taken nearly a
year ago - is an early model of the Navy's skyrocket jet plane which
recently flew more than 1,200 miles an hour - twice the speed of sound - at
an altitude of more than 70,000 feet.
     This is nearly four miles higher than the space studies contained in
the book, and La Paz says current space charts he has seen indicate that
rockets have gone as high as 500 miles - although not with a pilot aboard.
     If this is the case - and any confirmation still is in the drawer
marked super - duper top secret - it tops the previous record altitude mark
set two years ago by a two-stage rocket launched at White Sands. That WAC
Corporal, shot from the nose of a V-2, went only 200 miles up.
     But before you head for the moon, half - cooked, take a look at what
you'll need besides that space suit:

     AN EJECTOR pod to catapult you from the rocket shop in case anything
goes wrong, automatically opening a parachute to let you safely to earth.
     A parachute made of something that won't melt when you generate a heat
of 540 degrees Fahrenheit - more than twice the boiling point - by falling
500,000 feet at 100 feet a second. Nylon melts at 480 degrees. The Air Force
is working on something that won't.
     Intestinal Fortitude.

(end)

Lincoln La Paz was born in my hometown of Wichita, Kansas.

Mark Bostick
www.meteoritearticles.com
Received on Sun 07 Nov 2004 03:44:50 PM PST