1. Rockets, Mice
and Men
eBook Edition
by Brian Lawrenson
@@@
Title: Rockets, Mice and Men
Author: Brian Lawrenson, owns the copyright to the material in
this eBook. © 2010 Brian Lawrenson
Smashwords Edition
ISBN: 978-1-921814-04-4
Published: June 2010
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3. Rockets, Mice and Men
Mickey, a little white mouse, is the central character in this
story. He normally lived in the Physics department of Rhodes
University, where he was in training to become South Africa’s
first astronaut.
Becoming involved with this tiny white mouse was the start of
a dream that was achieved when I went to the John F Kennedy
Space Centre, in Florida in November, 2004. This is the story
of the Kennedy Space Centre and the USA space program but more
importantly the story of how the dream came about.
***
I’ll always remember that morning in 1958. The sun had just
broken the horizon leaving the scene bathed in an incandescent
light. It was chilly, perhaps six degrees above zero. We were
in a bunker at South Africa’s only rocket range. It was
located some 20 miles outside of Port Elizabeth at a disused
aerodrome. Who were we? well, the newspapers called us the
“rocket men”.
A voice over the portable radio transmitter announced: “T
minus one hour and twelve minutes and counting”. We’d been up
all night and were feeling like it. The trickiest part of the
launch was ahead. Four of us dressed in fireproof asbestos
suits had to carry the three parts of the two hundred pound
rocket, 50 meters to the thirty foot high launch tower. There
we had to fit the rocket pieces into the tower’s guide-rails.
One slip and the rocket could have exploded and the whole
process ended up in a disaster. Loading the first stage of an
eighteen foot, three stage, solid fuel rocket into the launch
tower was the most difficult. It was filled with one hundred
and twenty pounds of highly explosive solid rocket fuel. We’d
spent the night carefully mixing and loading the fuel into the
rocket cases. It was a slow, dangerous and stressful process.
As we assembled the rocket parts, Brian Evans, the designer of
the rocket looked on carefully observing every step and
ticking off each procedure as it was completed. After fifteen
minutes, the first stage was locked in place followed by the
remaining stages. These were much easier. The final stage
contained a capsule housing the central character of the story
and about this time Mickey probably was wondering what all the
fuss was about.
As the rocket was now assembled in the tower, the four of us
could go back to the bunker and remove our heavy asbestos
suits. It was just as well because we were already bathed in
perspiration. Towelling off and with fresh T-shirts we took up
our allotted tasks for the launch. It was now T minus twenty
three minutes. We were seven minutes behind schedule. This
added to the tension.

4. The final step in the pre-launch procedures had to be carried
out. This was tricky, meaning dangerous. Brian Evans, would
carry out this task himself. The electrical connections to the
three stages of the rocket had to be switched to “live”. There
was only one way to do this and that was to climb the tower
and flick a switch. This might sound rather crude but in 1958
the electronics that we know today, didn’t exist. Any error or
malfunction of the battery powered electrical circuit at this
stage could have prematurely ignited the solid fuel. Brian
knew that if an explosion occurred, even wearing an asbestos
suit, his chance of survival, were minuscule.
As we watched tensely, the second and third stage circuits,
each including a mercury switch, were activated and Brian
could come down to ground level to connect the first stage’s
firing circuit to the control bunker. The minutes ticked by.
He stepped back from the launch tower. It was done. We could
relax. The loudspeaker boomed, “We were now at T minus six
minutes. We are go for launch. Repeat, go for launch.”
The early morning scene at the St Albans Rocket Range was
unreal. There were some two hundred soldiers in full combat
kit dug into trenches around the disused airport. Officers
were busy giving orders on their walkie-talkies. These members
of the South African Defence Force were using the occasion as
a training exercise. About fifty specially invited guests were
hunkered down in an observation bunker some three hundred
meters from the tower. Nearby a group of reporters and
photographers crouched behind their sandbagged enclosures. A
hundred meters closer was the main control bunker manned by
the members of the Port Elizabeth branch of the Aeronautical
Research and Experimental Group (AREG) of the South African
Interplanetary Society.
The radio crackled again with the Launch Controller
announcing: “T minus sixty seconds. Keep you positions, if the
rocket explodes, shrapnel will fly in all directions at ground
level”. That should keep their heads down, I thought.
A hush descended over the spectators; it was only broken by
the whir of a number of movie cameras that had started to
record the occasion. T minute five seconds, “four, three, two,
one, fire!”
With a flash, a roar and a cloud of dense white smoke, the
three stage rocket roared out of the launching ramp heading
skywards. It left the launch tower covered in a plume of smoke
as it disappeared out of our sight. The rocket was being
tracked by army personnel who later confirmed that it reached
an altitude of over twelve kilometres (seven miles) before the
fuel ran out and it plummeted back to earth. This created a
new South African altitude record for rockets.

5. As the rocket accelerated skywards, the second stage after
ignition, went through the sound barrier with a loud “plop”
and the shock wave tore the tail fins off the rocket casing.
They spiralled down to the ground landing about thirty meters
from where the photographers were sheltering. Shortly after
the launch, the one and a half meter long, 6 inches diameter
metal case of the first stage had plummeted back to earth
about half a kilometre from the launch pad. It imbedding
itself more than one meter into the ground. It had risen to
2,300 meters (7,000 feet). The second and third stages had
fired perfectly. The vertical plume of smoke was visible from
more than ten miles away.
Suddenly the tension of the last two days was lifted from our
shoulders. It was congratulations, hugs and handshakes all
round. We emerged from our bunkers ready to meet the world
grinning from ear to ear. The project director was mobbed by
the assembled press. Questions were everywhere. “Where is the
mouse?” someone wanted to know. A recovery team were sent out
to search for it. “It should have floated down to earth by
parachute,” one of our members stated. Notes were scribbled in
notebooks and we spent the next half hour posing for
photographs.

6. The next day, when reporting the achievement, the local
newspapers stated that when the third stage came down to earth
by parachute, Mickey’s container was missing. Now I have to
tell you something that was highly confidential at the time.
Mickey was clothed in a specially designed space suit, built
by students of Physics department at Rhodes University actual
died from the effect of “G” force shortly after take-off. He

7. had given its life in the advancement of human knowledge and
thereby joins a long list of space travel pioneers who died in
efforts to advance our knowledge. His suit was connected to a
miniature transmitter that sent messages with the mouse’s
vital signs to central control. The container had gone missing
on purpose. This turned out to be a good thing because a few
days later, after a follow up a newspaper article headed
“Where is the Mouse Now?”, the local Royal Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) started an
investigation into the incident. Without a mouse, there wasn’t
much to investigate. Today, Mickey rests in an unmarked grave
at the St Albans aerodrome.
Now you are probably wondering just what my parents thought
about this activity, after all I was still at school. Well,
initially they didn’t know. When I joined the AREG group, I
was seventeen and in my second last year at high school.
However, shortly after that an incident happened that made
them very aware of what I was up to. I had been reading about
some new chemicals that had been written up as making a very
effective solid rocket fuel. Once mixed, they could be heated
into a liquid, poured into the rocket case and then allowed to
cool. Now I might have been well read, but I was very
inexperienced. I knew about flash points, which is the
temperature at which a mixture will ignite. I mixed up this
cocktail of chemicals using an old stainless steel pan and
heated it on my electric mother’s stove, at home. The quantity
was about a heaped teaspoon. I had the heat on low and after a
few minutes it hadn’t melted, so I turned up the heat. I
turned away to the kitchen sink and in less than thirty
seconds, the mixture exploded – WHOOSH. The pan was wrecked. I
rushed outside as the cloud of dense white smoke filled the
kitchen. After I’d cleared the smoke, the kitchen wall and
ceiling were covered with a black/ brown stain. What does one
say in this situation? “Mom, I’ve burned the toast”. We had a
little discussion at dinner that night and I ended up
repainting the kitchen wall and ceiling. There would be no
more experiments at home. I had learned a valuable lesson.

8. The successful launch of the R6 rocket was the culmination of
five years of work in designing and test firing rockets.
Whilst the AREG group were strictly amateurs they had made
some significant contributions to the development of rockets
in South Africa. One member of the group, Alan Bowman, later

9. became an rocket scientist at the Farnborough Establishment in
England. Another member of the group Desmond Prout-Jones, with
the help of the AREG members, went on to design and build a
rocket that went up to nearly forty kilometres, that is over
twenty five miles. He is also the author of the book: Cracking
the Sky printed by both Michigan State Library Press and UNISA
Press. The book describes the rocket experiments in South
Africa that were carried out by the group between 1947 and
1963. Over five hundred rockets were launched or static test
fired - all without a major accident.
There is a photograph in the book of nine members of the team
examining the R6’s first stage rocket that was deeply embedded
in the ground at St Albans. It is interesting that the
seventeen year old youngster on my left in the photo is now
Professor Cedric Smith. Cedric is rightly known as one of the
pioneers of rocket science in South Africa.
We might have lacked formal qualifications then, but we were
young, keen and prepared to help each other expand our
knowledge. For two years, I was the Technical Correspondent of
the group. This meant that I typed the letters to mainly USA
rocket supply companies asking for technical assistance with
various rocket related matters. My Dad’s old manual typewriter
was pounded late into the night. The replies, often fat large
envelopes, which arrived at Dad’s post box, would be covered
in USA stamps. Little did the experts from the leading firms
in this field in the USA, know that they were writing to a
nineteen year old who had just left high school. In those
days, rocket science was in its infancy and there wasn’t
nearly as much to know, as now.
Our Project Director checked my writings for technical
correctness and over a number of years the Americans who by
then had founded NASA, found our research of interest. This
was particularly so when we commenced building and testing
liquid fuelled rockets. A sizeable concrete test bed was built
and put into use. Clearly our abilities and capabilities were
growing rapidly. However, we were hampered by the inadequacies
of the St Albans airport site. The officials were concerned
that the remains of our rockets might have landed in populated
areas. Yes, they might have but they never did.
Suddenly in 1963 the Government forced the group to close the
projects down. The capability of the group and an associated
Rocket Research Group in Johannesburg, had grown to the extent
that the scope of the projects was beyond the ability of the
government to control them. However, a number of the members
of the group were offered jobs working on rocket related
projects for the South African Defence forces. The focus of
further research moved to a site near Johannesburg.
I decided that it was time to spread my wings, overseas.

10. ***
In April 2002, a young South African became the first African
to venture into space when he joined a team of cosmonauts on
the Russian Soyuz capsule on a journey to the International
Space Station. Mark Shuttleworth conducted several experiments
during his 10-day space flight. One experiment was the very
first in the world to assess the impact of zero-gravity on the
development of stem cells and embryos; another was to
determine the effect of microgravity on the cardiovascular
system and muscles; and a third was an attempt to crystallise
HIV proteins in weightlessness in the hopes that, when X-
rayed, they will give an accurate view of the virus structure.
Mark has used his adventure as a springboard for an education-
outreach programme, which aims to encourage students to
embrace mathematics and science. He has, since his return from
space, worked to enhance science education in South Africa and
he has worked to fuel an interest of young people in space,
science and astronomy.
I don’t know if Mark knew about the work the AREG did in the
1960s but I’d like to feel that his success is a fitting
ending to the story of those young rocket pioneers who were
“reaching for the stars”.
***
To return to the start of this story in 2004, we had just
spent five wonderful days exploring New York. My wife, Jill,
and I love travelling by train so we purchased a 15 day pass
on Amtrak. Our route was down the coast to Orlando and cross
country to Los Angeles with a stop-over in New Orleans. There
was a slight drizzle falling as we wheeled our suitcases into
Penn Street station. We were to catch the 12.15 en route to
Orlando with a stop-over in Savannah.
Train travel gives you lots of time to walk around and meet
interesting people. Many of them were Americans who enjoy
travelling. We remember meeting a couple who’d sold their
house, bought a motor-home and travelled America from North to
South and from East to West. “We’d decided that we’d try it
out for a year and see if we liked it and here we are seven
years later still enjoying it”. They had been visiting family
in Charleston and where heading back to Florida to pick up
their motor-home. “Where are you going next?”, we asked. “Oh,
we’ll just head over to New Orleans and explore some of the
little towns on the Mississippi”. It sounded an idyllic
lifestyle, if that was your thing.
Another couple told us about having their home in southern
Florida blown down, not once but twice, the last time by the
cyclones that had battered the Florida coast in 2003/2004.
They were returning to see how the re-building was getting on

11. and seemed to be coping better than I think that we would
have. We wished them well.
After a stay-over at a Holiday Inn in Orlando, we picked up
our hire car. “Do you have a map, I enquired?” No they didn’t
but the route to the Kennedy Space Centre was easy to follow.
We soon adjusted to driving on right hand side of the road.
After parking the car, we headed for the Ticket Plaza where we
bought Maximum Access Tickets. I was about to realise a dream
that I’d had for forty five years.
***
The Kennedy Space Centre
I‘d like you to come with me on a conducted tour of the
visitor facilities at the Kennedy Space Centre. But to set the
scene, first I’d like to give you a little history. Most
people believe that Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space
Centre is the same facility. They aren’t. Cape Canaveral,
which is an Air Force Base, lies to the east of the Kennedy
Space Centre. The first rocket to be launched from there was
the Bumper 8 in July 1950. Rockets are still fired from Cape
Canaveral and the Air Force team there provides weather
information and logistics support for Shuttle launches.
The Kennedy Space Centre is the location where the National
Space Administration (NASA) launches and lands the Space
Shuttle. The facility had its name changed to the John F
Kennedy Space Centre seven days after the assassination of
President Kennedy in 1963. President Kennedy’s role in
extending the boundaries of space exploration was enormous.
NASA was formed in 1958 with the challenge by the President in
1961 to land men on the moon and return them safely to Earth
before the end of the 1960s. The Centre opened in 1962 - the
facility was then known as the NASA Launch Operations Centre.
In July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 lifted off from Pad 39A, and four
days later Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.
The idea for a Visitor Centre first started in the 1960s and
gradually the facilities were expanded and bus tours were
introduced in 1967. The following year over 800,000 people
visited the centre. The attendance grew each year until it
welcomed over two million visitors per annum. The current
facility was built between 1995 and 2000, at a cost of more
than $130 million dollars, all paid for by sponsorship and
donations. It is open every day apart from Christmas Day from
9 am. Tours start at 10 am and run every 15 minutes.
For information and tickets visit their website:
wwww.kennedyspacecentre.com.

12. Our tour starts at the Rocket Garden. This is a collection of
tall reminders of the rockets used in early space exploration.
These include Mercury and Gemini rockets. The giant
Apollo/Saturn rocket is displayed horizontally. This was the
first rocket to be totally developed by NASA and it
significantly moved the space exploration project into top
gear. One of the exhibits in this area is the gantry used by
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins before the
launch of Apollo 11. We stopped to have our photograph taken
on the gantry. As we stood on the metal plates that they’d
walked across to the capsule waiting atop the huge Saturn V
rocket, we paused to wonder how these three brave men felt on
that July morning. They were thirty stories above the ground
and their next stop was the Moon.

13. At the opposite side of the Visitor Complex stands a full size
replica of the Space Shuttle. A gantry with steps up helps you
to get up real close and you can peer into the flight deck and
the area where the astronauts eat, sleep and carried out
experiments. You wonder just how you’d adjust to living in a

14. “shoebox”. Getting dressed involved a three hour process of
carefully putting on protective clothing so they could go out
for a “space walk”. To float about in weightless space inside
the Shuttle was one thing but to float about outside the craft
must have been an adrenalin pumping moment. To prevent them
drifting off into space, astronauts used a tether to keep
them attached. The views of the earth from space must have
been awesome but to see views of the earth with your spaceship
in the foreground must have been the ultimate experience.
The Cargo Bay housed the Spacelab, satellites and is where the
new Space Station modules hitched a ride into orbit. The fifty
foot long robot arm that helps the astronauts to lift things
in space is the one used to rescue the Intelsat communications
satellite in 1992 when it was stranded in the wrong orbit.
Just standing next to the Shuttle towering over you, gives you
goose bumps. Somehow the black and white tiles that provide
the insulation against the searing heat of re-entry seemed
very thin and inadequate.
Nearby is a huge space mirror dedicated to the twenty four
astronauts that have lost their lives in NASA’s quest to get
into space. The names include the seven astronauts who lost
their lives when the Shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry in
February 2003. The poem that Col. Aldrin read at the service
for the seven astronauts who died during the Challenger
disaster was an updated version of a song about space that was
first written many years ago. The lyrics are:
Fire in the Sky
Prometheus, they say, brought God's fire down to man
And we've caught it, tamed it, trained it since our history
began.
Now we're goin' back to Heaven, just to look him in the eye:
There's a thunder 'cross the land
And a fire in the sky!
Gagarin was the first, back in 1961
When, like Icarus undaunted, he climbed to reach the Sun,
And he knew he might not make it, for it's never hard to die:
But he lifted off the pad
And rode a fire in the sky!
Yet a higher goal was calling and we vowed to reach it soon
And we gave ourselves a decade to put fire on the Moon
And Apollo told the world we can do it if we try:
There was "One small step..."
And a fire in the sky!
I dreamed last night
Of a little boy's first space flight,

15. Burned into me,
Watching the black and white TV:
There was a fire in the sky!
I'll remember 'til I die:
A fire in the sky--
A fire in the sky!
Then two decades from Gagarin, twenty years to the day
Came a shuttle named "Columbia", to open up the way
And they said "She's just a truck," but she's a truck that's
aimin' high!
See her big jets burnin',
See her fire in the sky!
Yet the gods do not give lightly of the powers they have made,
And with Challenger and seven, once again the price is paid
Though a nation watched her falling, yet a world could only
cry,
As they passed from us to glory,
Riding fire in the sky!
Now the rest is up to us, and there's a future to be won:
We must turn our faces outward, we will do what must be done:
For no cradle lasts forever; every bird must learn to fly:
And we're goin' to the stars--
See our fire in the sky!
(Reprise)
Yes, we're goin' to the stars--
See our fire in the sky!
I'll remember 'til I die:
A fire in the sky--
A fire in the sky!
Music and lyrics by Jordin Kare
Bridge by Kristoph Klover
Fewer than five hundred men and women have flown in space but
every day one of the members of the NASA astronauts team
provides a daily briefing for visitors. This is particularly
targeted at school children and after the briefing they are
encouraged to ask questions. On the day that we were there,
the questions were: “How do you sleep in space?” – apparently
it takes quite some time to train the body to sleep in the
weightlessness of space, “What do you eat?” - it seemed a lot
of prepared food with a lot of artificial flavouring. “How do
you go to the toilet?” – on a specially designed toilet. I
found the exchange informative and process inspirational.
There was heaps of information, stories, illustrations and
displays. The children sitting in the audience, were inspired

16. too, and that perhaps now dream that they too may travel in
space.
Next, we were on time to visit the IMAX theatre. There are now
two huge IMAX theatres each with a 5 storey high screen with
surround sound. 3-D glasses give a totally realistic effect as
you feel that you are floating alongside the astronauts as
they float in space. The astronauts themselves have said that
watching the IMAX film is the next best thing to actually
being in space. They should know because they shot the
footage. In the giant IMAX theatre the dream of spaceflight
comes alive on huge five storey high screen. The film that we
were seeing, “Space Station”, showed the life of the
astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS). It was
dramatic and compelling. You felt that you were right there
with the astronauts as they drifted weightless towards you,
hands outstretched, you felt that all you had to do was reach
out and you could touch fingers. I did this a number of times
and it added to the experience. The film provided tons of
information about the work being done at the ISS and how work
in space is designed to make life on Earth better for
everyone. I don’t remember how long the film lasted, perhaps
half an hour, as I was totally absorbed in watching it. The
experience left me feeling that I’d been in space - the IMAX
experience to me was the highlight of the visit the Kennedy
Space Centre.
The 2010 IMAX screening program contains footage from one of
the moon walks and a unique look into the Hubble Space
Telescope and how we view the Universe and ourselves. It
lasted for 43 minutes.
Still feeing slightly weightless, we left the theatre to visit
one of the huge exhibition halls. We lunched in the giant
Apollo/Saturn centre with sections of the huge Saturn V rocket
suspended from the ceiling. The complexity of the five huge
motors was mind blowing. The Saturn had millions of parts.
This amazing launch vehicle was the cornerstone of the lunar
landing program. If any single component failed, it could have
jeopardised the whole mission. As I looked up, I reflected
upon the contrast with the simplicity of those rockets that
we’d built back in 1958.
After lunch, we’d booked on the restricted area tour, which
took us by coach out to the Vehicle Assembly Building, the
Launch Complex 39, the Shuttle Landing Facility and the
International Space Station Centre.
The Vehicle Assembly building is giant –the largest building
in America, we were told. It is 525 feet tall and covers an
area of eight acres. It is here that the Space Shuttle is
assembled on a Mobile Launcher Platform and its connections
tested before being moved to the Launch Pad. The two external
boosters are then added and then the attachment of the orange

17. coloured external fuel tank. Once the assembly and testing is
completed, the Mobile Launcher Platform is hauled by two huge
Crawler Transports to the Launch Pad. The top speed is about
two miles per hour but normally it travels at half that speed.
The distance to be travelled is about three and a half miles.
It has an amazing hydraulic system that ensures that the
launch platform is always perfectly level, even up the slope
as it approaches the launch pad. There are two launch pads,
essentially identical. The huge tower of the pads is the Fixed
Service Structure and it connects the upright Shuttle to the
tower via a service gantry. This is where the seven crew
members have to walk out to take their seats in the Shuttle.
Nearby is a huge storage facility for the liquid oxygen and
hydrogen that is used to power the Shuttle. It’s not quite
like calling into a gas station and say “Fill her up, please”.
Our next stop was the Shuttle Landing facility which is a huge
runway – so wide and long that it can be seen from space. Like
everything else at Kennedy Space Centre, the dimensions are
mind blowing, for example, the concrete runway is sixteen
inches thick. There is a concrete path to enable the Shuttle
to be returned to the Obiter Processing Facility – to be
prepared for its next journey.
We detoured to see a few of the estimated five thousand
alligators that live in the Wildlife Refuge that co-exists
with the Kennedy Space Centre. They double as unpaid security
staff, too.

18. After this, we moved on to the International Space Station
building. The ISS program is the largest and most ambitious
space program since the Apollo moon landings. The ISS tour
included seeing replicas of a habitation unit, a laboratory
module and a multi-purpose logistics module. What I found

19. interesting was how all the interfaces between components and
modules have been standardised so that various nations can
build separate units and when all the components were fitted
together, everything is compatible. Joining NASA in the
construction and operation of the new station are Russia,
Brazil, Canada, Japan and fourteen member nations of the
European Space Agency. Eventually the living space aboard the
station will be the equivalent of the space inside two 747 jet
airliners. Through glass viewing platforms we were able to
watch technicians putting final touches to two modules that
were due for launch in early 2005. These are now in orbit. The
video and the presentation about the future of the ISS was
especially interesting. If only I was forty years younger!!!!
As we viewed the various displays, I was reminded of the
somewhat minuscule role that Mickey had played in this great
game. But he was a pioneer. He was one of the hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of mice that have taken part in hundreds of
experiments that have been carried out in space. Each of
these, in some small way, has helped to expand our knowledge.
It was getting dark as we made our way out of the Kennedy
Space Centre. Despite the navigation challenge getting back to
our Holiday Inn in Orlando, it didn’t take the edge of the
day. Jill and I agreed that it had been a fantastic
experience. Although I’d had to wait forty years, my dream of
visiting Cape Canaveral had come true.
***
The facilities have been upgraded at the Kennedy Space Centre
since our visit in 2004. There are now even more opportunities
to meet the astronauts including lunches, half-day and two-day
astronaut training experiences and functions at the
Astronaut’s Hall of Fame. There are also week-long Summer
camps in June and July where young people can experience,
imagine and be involved in space shuttle missions using
motion-based simulators. There is a brochure that describes
this at the Kennedy Space Centre website.
The 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission will be
celebrated. This is known as “the successful failure” that was
to have been the third manned moon landing. An explosion
aboard the spacecraft changed the course of the mission and it
threatened the lives of the three astronauts aboard the
Shuttle: Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. This created
what must be the most infamous words in space travel history:
“Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” After a dramatic and
daring rescue attempt by the astronauts and mission control on
Earth they were able to return the crew safely back home after
having spent four days in the Lunar Module Aquarius which
acted as a lifeboat until a repair program was worked out.
They rounded the far side of the Moon before the repair could

20. be affected and after travelling for more than 250,000 miles
they safely returned to Earth on April 17th, 1970.
The Apollo program rockets and hardware are the central focus
of the exhibits at the Kennedy Space Centre, so it is perhaps
appropriate to review the history of the epoch making rocket
program.
Following President Kennedy's famous speech on May 25, 1961,
NASA announced that the program to fly astronauts around the
moon would be redesigned to support a lunar landing before
the end of the decade.
It is believed that the Apollo program stands as mankind's
greatest technological achievement. In all, six missions
landed on the surface of the moon, and three others orbited
the moon without landing, including the ill-fated Apollo 13.
The Apollo spacecraft comprises three parts: The conical
Command Module where the crew ate and slept on its way to the
moon and home; the Service Module, supplying electricity,
manoeuvring power and thrust to get home from lunar orbit, and
water to the spacecraft; and the Lunar Module, or LM, a two-
part, totally self-contained spacecraft that used its own
rockets to land on and take off from the surface of the moon,
and even served as its own launch pad. There are examples of
all of these on display at the Kennedy Space Centre .
The Apollo program started in tragedy, when a fire in the
Command Module on the launch pad during the pre-flight testing
claimed the lives of: the second man to fly in space, Virgil
"Gus" Grissom, our first man to walk in space, Edward White,
and rookie astronaut Roger Chaffee. The date was January 27,
1967. The result was a huge delay in the program and major
safety upgrading.
After an unoccupied test flight (named Apollo 4), using the
new launch vehicle Saturn V, the flight of Apollo 8 with
astronauts aboard circumnavigated the moon in December 1968,
and by the following July, Apollo 11 placed men on the Moon
and brought them home again.
On July 20, 1969, man set foot on another celestial body for
the first time. On that day we evolved from homo sapiens to
homo universalis, Man of the Universe.
They landed at 4:17 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (USA) with less
than 30 seconds of fuel remaining. Neil Armstrong in taking
the "Small Step for Man" wrote his name into history books. He
was shortly joined by "Buzz" Aldrin, and the two astronauts
spent twenty one hours on the moon collected 46 pounds of
lunar rocks. Their lift-off from the surface of the moon was
in part captured on a TV camera they had left behind. They
were reunited with Michael Collins who had been patiently
orbiting the moon in the Command Module "Columbia."

21. The astronauts left behind a plaque on the lunar surface that
reads:
"Here Men From Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon The Moon. July
1969 A.D. We Came In Peace For All Mankind."
The whole Earth grew that that day back in 1969 and all of us
who watched it on TV will always remember the images.
In all, twelve men were to walk on the moon before the Apollo
program was ended. The last three missions featured the Lunar
Rover, which permitted the astronauts to drive about and
explore various terrains too rough for the LM to attempt to
land upon. On the last Apollo mission to the moon, the
astronauts spent 22 hours in moon walks and camped out on the
moon for a total of three days.
Were these the first Moon tourists?
Sadly, the last three Apollo launches (18-20) suffered budget
cuts and were cancelled. We have not returned to the moon
since then. But the Apollo spacecraft was used for four later
missions, the three long-duration Skylab missions and the
final Apollo flight, the Apollo-Soyuz linkup with the Soviet
Soyuz 19.
This, the final flight of the Apollo spacecraft, was the first
time that spacecraft built by different nations had docked. It
started era of cooperation between the Russians and the
Americans that is now an essential part of our efforts to
build a permanently occupied space station.
The American crew included three-flight veteran Thomas
Stafford, rookie Vance Brand, and the last of the original
seven Mercury astronauts to make it into orbit, Donald K.
"Deke" Slayton. The Soviet crew included the first space
walker, Alexei Leonov, and rookie Valeri Kubasov. The
astronauts and cosmonauts met in the doorway of the docked
modules, shook hands, exchanged flags and gifts and conversed
briefly using a prepared script as neither group were bi-
lingual. The potted trees that they exchanged, were later
planted in each others' countries.
It would be six long years before another American astronaut
would go into space, this time aboard the reusable Space
Shuttle. The Apollo era, an era of the greatest achievements
in mankind's history, had ended.
Early 2010 saw the last flight of the Space Shuttle series. As
these workhorses have aged, the risks of these flights has
risen and now more modern forms are being designed ad built.
***
I’d like to end this story with another small part of the AREG
history that I believe deserves to be told. Not long after the
news of the Russian launching of “Sputnik”, the members of the

22. AREG were asked to set up a special observation unit in South
Africa that would be used to monitor the orbits of “Sputnik”.
Much to the world’s surprise the Russians launched Sputnik 1
on October 4th, 1957. It orbited the earth over 1,400 times
until its batteries failed and the then familiar beep, beep,
beep disappeared and eventually on January, 4th, 1958 it
burned up after re-entering the earths atmosphere. I wasn’t a
particularly impressive device being only 23 inches in
diameter and weighing only 184 pounds (83.6 kg) but it was the
first artificial satellite launched into space. Sputnik 2 was
launched a month later. It contained the dog Laika who
eventually gave its life to science, not unlike our little
white mouse. These satellites surprised and alarmed the West
and shortly after their launch there was a mad scramble to get
some order into understanding the orbit of these objects. This
is how we became involved.
On one Friday morning before the end of October, a wooden
crate arrived from the USA. We were to collect it at the
airport. “Priority” and “Fragile, Scientific Equipment” was
stamped all over it. Using a borrowed trailer, we carefully
transported it to the Scout Hall that we used for our
meetings. The lid was lifted and inside the bundles of
packaging there were 6 or 8 pieces of apparatus that looked
like shortened telescopes with a mirror attached. I can’t
recall exactly, but I think that the material said that they
came from Project Moonwatch.
“Read this First” stated the instructions. The envelope
included a list of instructions and a diagram of how we were
to construct a viewing platform. Essentially this was a
“bench” with seating for, I think, six or eight people. Each
piece of the apparatus had to be attached and calibrated. A
timber beam was procured the next morning and the apparatus
were attached to the bench beam at carefully measured
distances. This meant that when the members sat astride the
bench, each of us could view a segment of the night sky. Each
eye piece/telescope had a slightly different setting covering
4 degrees of the sky and making an arc of the sky north to
south. By mid-afternoon the construction was completed and we
were given our briefing of what was expected as the sun went
down.
There was an air of great excitement. We’d lived on coffee and
sandwiches all day. Now these were forgotten. Our members
scanned the night sky. We knew that the satellite was visible
with the naked eye but at this point, we did know when it
would turn up. “There it is”, someone yelled. We crouched
lower over our strange little telescopes. There was silence as
the seconds ticked by. We held our breaths not daring to
breath. We had our synchronised stop watches at the ready. As
the satellite passed through the visual field of one of our

23. members, he clicked his stop watch and yelled out “contact”.
Everybody cheered and we all stood up and embraced feeling the
excitement of this momentous occasion. We were so excited to
be a part of the quest to reach the stars. A small part.
Probably in 2010 terms an insignificant part but that was not
how it was, then. In 1957, this was the only “technology” that
could provide the needed answers and we like many other
amateur observation groups around the world played a small but
vital role.
Soon this observation and recording became a nightly event and
a roster was set up. Some nights, we recorded two circuits.
The circuit time was 96 minutes. Some nights the view was
blocked by a cloud cover. But night after night we recorded
the information. It was telexed to somewhere in the USA.
Sputnik 2 followed and we kept up our observations for about
four or five months after which I think more a sophisticated
system of observation was put in place. I don’t know what
happened to the apparatus but in 2005 I was surprised to see
one of these same units on display at the National Science
Museum in Canberra, Australia. Clearly we were not alone in
our endeavours.
I tell this story because it illustrates just how primitive
things were in those early days. It’s almost unbelievable but
yes it did happen and in some very small way helped to get us
to where we are today – still “reaching for the stars”.
@@The End@@
For more information:
Marco Polo Press
Sydney, Australia and
San Mateo, California, USA
www.marcopolopress.com
By the same author:
Paperback: Following Marco Polo’s Silk Road
Second Edition Published February 2010
Paperback: 344 pages
ISBN: 978-1-43924-942-0
Also available as an eBook
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24. Straw Hats and Bicycles Travels in Vietnam and Cambodia
Cruising the Inside Passage Alaska
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About the Author
Brian Lawrenson was born in Yorkshire, brought up in Port
Elizabeth, South Africa. After hitch-hiking round UK and
Europe in the 1960s he met and married his New Zealand born
wife, Jill, in London and migrated to Australia in 1968. Since
then they have travelled to more than 70 countries.
Apart from travels in the Australia, including the Red Centre;
they have explored New Zealand; visited the Islands of the
Pacific; journeyed through the Middle East, across Central
Asia and China; criss-crossed Canada and stayed in the remote
Resolute Bay; discovered the beauty of over 20 states of the

25. USA; exploring the Inca trails of South America and cruised
round Cape Horn; and visited many of the countries of the Far
East including Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. And lots more.
Brian and Jill live in their favourite city, Sydney.
Brian Lawrenson is a traveller, writer, speaker and the author
of Following Marco Polo’s Silk Road. He is also runs the
small independent publishing house Marco Polo Press. Marco
Polo Press is a member of the Independent Book Publisher
Association (IBPA). Brian Lawrenson is a member of the
Australian Society of Authors and a number of Travel Writers
Associations. He has been featured on TV, Radio, in magazines
and local newspapers.
## The End of the eBook ##