276 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1961 



or could be tracked by optical or other means. The idea had to await 

 the invention of suitable telemetry and tracking techniques. 



In the decade following World War II a number of suggestions 

 for artificial earth satellites were made. At the Rand Corporation, 

 a nonprofit research group sponsored by Douglas Aircraft Co., 

 one project in 1946 investigated a number of the problems that 

 would be encountered in the development of a scientific space pro- 

 gi^am- As one aspect of his work on that project, Dr. Fred L. Whip- 

 ple of the Harvard College Observatory wrote the now famous paper 

 "Possible Hazards to a Satellite Vehicle from Meteorites," 1946, in 

 which he proposed a "meteor bumper" of thin metal surrounding 

 the skin of the space vessel. 



Meanwhile, at White Sands, N. Mex., the U.S. Army was modify- 

 ing and using the V-2 rocket, developed by Germany in World War 

 II, to explore the upper atmosphere. Later flights of Wliite Sands 

 rockets were photographed with a camera-telescope developed by 

 the Harvard Meteor Project, and from Dr. Wliipple's study of those 

 films evolved the technique of photographing earth satellites in orbit. 



By 1951 the number of scientists involved in various space re- 

 searches was such that they felt the need of an opportunity to ex- 

 change ideas. In the fall of that year a symposium on the physics 

 and medicine of the upper atmosphere was held in San Antonio, 

 Tex., under the sponsorship of the Air University School of Aviation 

 Medicine of Randolph Field. Dr. James Van Allen, chairman of 

 the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel, speculated on the na- 

 ture and intensity of the cosmic radiation. Dr. Joseph Kaplan, chair- 

 man of an Air Force panel on geophysical research, discussed the 

 physics of tlie upper atmosphere. Dr. Wernher von Braun, technical 

 director of the guided missile development group at the Redstone 

 Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., considered means of returning a winged 

 rocket vehicle from a satellite orbit to the earth. Dr. Wliipple 

 spoke on meteoritic phenomena and meteorites. Their papers and 

 more than 30 others were published in 1952 under the title "Physics 

 and Medicine of the Upper Atmosphere: A Study of the 

 Aeropause." 



At the second International Congress of Astronautics, held in Lon- 

 don, England, during September 1951, three British scientists, K. 

 W. Gatland, A. M. Kunesch, and A. E. Dixon, presented a paper on 

 "Minimum Satellite Vehicles," At the next meeting of the Congress 

 in Zurich, Switzerland, the following year, there were more extensive 

 discussions and proposals, including "MOUSE," or a Minimum Or- 

 bital Unmanned Satellite of the Earth, a 100-pound object to orbit 

 over both geographic poles. 



One expression of this early work appeared as a series of articles 

 in Collier's magazine in 1952 and as "Across the Space Frontier" 



