Classroom clipper, Vol. XIX, No. 3, February - March 1963

              Feb. 1 963 — March 1963
Published by Pan American Airways
Voi. X/\X, No. 3
CAPE CANAVERAL — SPACEPORT, U.S.A.
Cape Canaveral, Florida — America has always had a frontier. Until the 20th century, this frontier was a physical one: of the constantly westward-moving boundary of American civilization. Only a few decades ago, the frontier was the air and the challenge of air transportation. Today, the frontier is Space —the greatest adventure and challenge in the history of man.
Students across the country—from Azusa, Calif., to Yonkers, N.Y., from Winthrop, Maine, to Key West, Fla.—have been swept by what the Cape Canaveral Council of Technical Societies terms “the challenging pace of the race to space.”
It’s interesting to look behind the daily headlines that chronicle the “race to space” and visit backstage at Cape Canaveral.
The space age was dawning in 1953 when Pan American Airways’ Guided Missiles Range Division was awarded a contract by the United States Air Force to operate and maintain the new missile test range which included the launching site at Cape Canaveral and a few missile tracking stations “down range,” on islands and ships southeast of the Cape.
MISSILES MODIFIED FOR SPACE
During the years after 1953, the range was extended as new missile programs were developed: missiles and rockets went higher, faster and farther. In the late ’50s, work continued on weapon systems and new work began on space programs. It should be pointed out that all missiles tested at Cape Canaveral today are basically weapon systems, with the exception of Saturn and Centaur, and have been modified to handle space vehicles. The old reliable Thor, for example, is an operational missile for NATO troops and is used frequently at Cape Canaveral as a booster for such satellites as Telstar and Tiros.
Thus, Pan American’s scientists and engineers have responsibility of operating the missile range of the present and planning the “space range” of the future. Pan Am’s advance planners are mapping support for such present programs as Saturn and Ranger and for future programs which include Dyna Soar (X-20), Nova and Apollo.
25,000 ON DUTY
The range today consists of the Cape Canaveral launching sites with the accompanying laboratory buildings, complex instruments and support facilities. The Cape, together with nearby Patrick Air Force Base, presently includes a working population of about 25,000 military and civil service personnel,
range users and contractors. There are now eight active down-range stations with three on standby or in process of deactivation.
The ocean-range vessel fleet comprises seven ships with two more now in process of being refitted and equipped by the Sperry Rand Company in New York. These ships record data on missile and space operations in ocean areas from the Cape to the Indian Ocean. The total investment in range facilities is now reported to be $1,132,000,000.
Of the work done by Pan American and its subcontractor, RCA, for the Air Force on the Atlantic Missile Range, the primary mission is that of gathering data on the performance of missiles and space vehicles. This data is gathered for two “customers”: The range user needs the data, for engineering and scientific analysis, to confirm the performance of the vehicles, to provide the basis of
further development, for correction of malfunctions, and improvement of accuracy. And the data is needed by the Air Force Range Safety officer, the man responsible for the protection of life and property along the range.
Data is gathered by pulse radar, various continuous-wave tracking systems, fixed cameras, tracking cameras, and long focal-length tracking telescopes; on-board events are recorded via telemetry.
COMPLEXITY AND ACCURACY
When we speak of these systems in this general fashion, we tend to overlook the fact that most are extremely complex. For example when the range is fired up for a major test there are more than a million vacuum tubes at work, even though much of the equipment has been transistorized. The main-Continued on page C-2
Tracking Tower . . . This automatic tracking telemetry antenna at Cape Canaveral reaches higher than a seven-story building.