Volume 18, Number 4 2011 OUEST the HISTORY of SPACEFLIGHT QUARTERLY
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Volume 18, Number 4 2011 OUEST THE HISTORY OF SPACEFLIGHT QUARTERLY From the Shavit-22 to Ofeq-11: A History of the Israeli Space Effort Reconstructing Ilan Ramon’s Diary An Interview with Ilan Ramon John Bull: The Stellar Journey of a Test Pilot and Ex-Astronaut Language Protocols in International Human Spaceflight Old Satellites, New Revelations: Remaining Film-Era Intelligence Satellites Declassified Space Effects in Operation Iraqi Freedom Contents Volume 18 • Number 4 2011 3 Letter from the Editor Book Review/Essay 55 Logsdon to Logsdon: JFK and the Race Israeli Space Activities to Define a Career 4 From the Shavit-22 to Ofeq-11 John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon A History of the Israeli Space Effort Book by John M. Logsdon By Deganit Paikowsky Review by David Christopher Arnold 13 Reconstructing Ilan Ramon’s Diary Book Reviews By David Brinn, updated by Sharon Brown 57 The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team 15 An Interview with Ilan Ramon Their Lives, Legacy, and Historical Impact By Gil Mann Book by Colin Burgess and Rex Hall Review by Asif Siddiqi U.S. Military Space Activities 59 Fifty Years on the Space Frontier: Halo 18 Old Satellites, New Revelations: Orbits, Comets, Asteroids, and More Remaining Film-EEra Intelligence Satellites Book by Robert W. Farquhar Declassified Review by Tom Jones By Jeffery Charlston 60 Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet 25 Space Effects in Operation Iraqi Freedom Book by K. Maria D. Lane By Rick Sturdevant and Haithe Anderson Review by Roger D. Launius Human Spaceflight 62 Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin John Bull: 40 Book by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony The Stellar Journey of a Test Pilot and Ex-AAstronaut Review by Cathleen S. Lewis By Colin Burgess 64 Foothold in the Heavens: The Seventies Language Protocols in International 47 Book by Ben Evans Human Spaceflight Review by James A. Vedda By Megan Ansdell Cover Photo Credit Errata Left. The HEXAGON KH-9 system qualification vehicle. On page 29, in Volume 18 #3, Haithe Anderson was the Credit: NRO primary author of the paper, “Organizing Space for the Right. Col. Ilan Ramon. Credit: NASA Warfighter,” and should have been listed first. Q U E S T 18:4 2011 1 REVIEW FIFTY YEARS ON THE SPACE FRONTIER (CONTINUED) the high profile hand-wringing of NASA Administrator Dan “There is a high probability that I’ll still be around in 2015,” Goldin, is a delicious mixture of “rocket science” and fun. he writes, “because a number of my former secretaries at NEAR-Shoemaker was the first U.S. spacecraft to land NASA and APL have told me that ‘only the good die young.’” first on any celestial body. But success was followed by a cold In this irreverent memoir, Farquhar reminds aerospace plunge into failure—the loss of the CONTOUR comet probe professionals and space historians of how, even in 21st centu- in August 2002. Farquhar, as mission director, was in the con- ry-NASA, one independent thinker can still make a differ- trol center when the craft, about to leave Earth orbit, suffered ence. Farquhar’s aggressiveness and mercurial end-runs cer- a catastrophic solid rocket motor failure. But he rebounded tainly caused considerable heartburn for his supervisors, but with innovative trajectory designs that were the basis for the many later admitted he was right. If we agree with his senti- Stardust sample return mission to comet Wild-2; the probe ment that “it’s time for humans to venture beyond the Moon,” returned pristine comet dust to Earth in 2006. Farquhar was we’re going to need a few more like Bob Farquhar. also responsible for funding early NASA studies for a Mercury orbital mission, and as MESSENGER mission direc- *** tor he watched with satisfaction as that spacecraft dropped Tom Jones is a planetary scientist, former NASA astronaut, into orbit around the innermost planet just last March. and co-author (with Ellen Stofan) of Planetology: Unlocking Farquhar’s fast-paced account concludes with his plans the Secrets of the Solar System (2008). for using the Sun-Earth L2 point as a basing location for a crewed, interplanetary transfer vehicle. Serviced by a reusable deep space shuttle, the “ITV” would pick up its crew just before its Earth departure burn, heading for near-Earth aster- oids (NASA’s current human exploration focus), and ultimate- ly, the Mars system. Farquhar admits that nothing would satisfy him more than guiding the ICE comet probe, due back in our celestial neighborhood just four years from now, back into Earth orbit. REVIEW GEOGRAPHIES OF MARS: SEEING AND KNOWING THE RED PLANET by K. Maria D. Lane translated into English as “canal” and began the speculation that Mars held life that were changing the planet’s features University of Chicago Press, 2010 for their own purposes. ISBN: 978-0-226-47078-8 American astronomer Percival Lowell became interest- Pages: 280 ed in Mars during the latter part of the 19th century, and built Price: $45.00 Hardcover what became the Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, Arizona, to study the Red Planet. His research advanced the argument that Mars had once been a watery planet and that the topo- graphical features known as canals had been built by intelli- gent beings. Over the course of the first 40 years of the 20th century others used Lowell’s observations of Mars as a foun- Mars has long held a special fascination for humans dation for their arguments. The idea of intelligent life on who pondered the planets of the solar system—partly Mars stayed in the popular imagination for a long time, and because of the possibility that life might either presently exist it was only with the scientific data returned from probes to or at some time in the past might have existed there. Italian the planet since the beginning of the space age that this began astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli published a work in 1877 to change. that laid the foundation for the belief in canals on Mars. His Begun as a dissertation written at the University of map of Mars showed a system of what he called canali, in Chicago, Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Italian this meant “channel” and carried no connotation of Planet offers a fascinating analysis of the phenomenon of being an artificial feature. Even so, the word was commonly canals on Mars and the personality of Lowell and his detrac- Q U E S T 18:4 2011 60 GEOGRAPHIES OF MARS (CONTINUED) tors in arguing about these astronomical observations. K. remote, the more rugged, and the more sublime, the better” Maria D. Lane, now on the faculty of the University of New (95). Mexico, provides six succinct chapters that explore the Likewise, the astronomer as hero, not unlike the intrep- Percival Lowell arguments about an inhabited Mars and his id explorers of the poles during the same era, lent a certain speculations on the nature of its society. Lane comments that credibility to their hypotheses not possible previously. in part because of the efforts of astronomers like Lowell the Lowell’s mountaintop sitting at his observatory above people living between about 1880 and 1910 had a “function- Flagstaff, and the heroic nature of his observations, lent cre- ally dominant (if not universal) understanding of Martian dence to his arguments about the possibility of canals and geography as arid, inhabited, and irrigated” (13). In Lane’s therefore sophisticated life on the Red Planet. And he played estimation this perception came because of the emphasis on it for all it was worth. geographical knowledge, especially cartography, in shaping Finally, Lane offers interesting and quite appropriate public perceptions in the United States. findings concerning the speculations about the life on Mars The author makes several important points about this that Lowell offered. Lowell insisted that Mars was a planet process. First, she lays out a very compelling case for a de- on the verge of extinction because of the scarcity of water. He emphasis of the “canali” to “canal” misinterpretation that has rationalized that the only way it could hold on was through dominated explanations of how the story of artificial canals the creation of a hydraulic society in which the best minds of perceived on the Martian surface might have originated. that society ran everything for the benefit of all. The organi- Instead, she finds that the authority of both Schiaparelli’s and zation and structure of every institution associated with Lowell’s maps proved the deciding point. Both emphasized Mars, Lowell reasoned, reflected this need to control the long straight, dark lines on the planet’s surface that seemed environment. In such a situation, he continued, society’s to delineate some type of artificiality. Even without the trans- greatest minds conspired to create a hydraulic civilization lation issue, the power of the image burned the idea of canals under their suzerainty. In order to flourish on Mars they had into viewers’ brains. Lowell’s persistent beating of the drum to create a society that was dependent on large-scale water- for intelligent beings having built those canals proved deci- works—productive (for irrigation) and protective (for flood sive in shaping ideas about life on the Red Planet over the control). This not only made the planet habitable, it brought decades. The scientific community squared off over this urbanization and wealth there as well. There were other debate, with most of the academic astronomers questioning examples of this in world history and Lowell applied the Lowell’s conclusions, especially when their own observa- example of ancient Egypt as the first of this type of civiliza- tions did not match his own for clarity in depicting the lines tion.