THE CITY SPRING CREPT warily over the U.S. last week, bringing the first familiar signs of nature's rebirth. For many, it was a time to be in the country, where the streams quickened and the air was soft and inviting. But it was in the great cities, where nature is often no more than a slit of sky above the concrete canyons or a bouquet on a secretary's desk, that the rites of spring were most warmly celebrated. In Manhattan, the centre stripe down Fifth Avenue turned leprechaun green (as it always does in spring), and 120,000 people marched in honour of an ancient Irish saint.! In German Bierstuben, Milwaukee toasted spring with the first malty bock of the season. Philadelphians filled the benches 1
On St. Patrick's Day, March 17th.
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of Rittenhouse Square, turning their pale faces upward to greet the warming sun. And Washington was in an April mood as the first boisterous busloads of visiting students arrived on spring vacation. The cities stirred-but it was more than the zephyrs of spring that stirred them. For thousands of years, since ancient Ur rose on the banks of the Euphrates, man has sought out the city as a place of wonder and opportunity, a citadel of art and learning, the home of kings and gods. In the U.S., in the spring of 1962, he did not have to look far in any direction to find its towers near at hand. Never in history has a society been so urbanized: seven out of every ten Americans, 125 million strong, live in cities and towns, and each year another million acres of rural
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of Many Currents
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HE CUBIST influence dominated the first wave of abstract painting in America. But American cubists joined a dynamic futurist element to the analytical studio approach of the European proponents of cubism. The result was a style peculiarly adapted to catch the speed and vitality of American life. American artists moving out of the studio, applied the cubist technique to bridges, ships, industrial structures, city scenes, jazz-the artifacts of a mechanical age.
The canvases of this leading expressionist are bleak even when the colour is strong.
A Stream of Many Currents
AMERICAN SCENE was the name given to the movement that gathered headway in the 1920'S, portraying commonplace subjects with deep feeling and forthright realism. Its practitioners were not limited to a single area or genre; they included painters of New England fishermen, Midwest farmers and lonely city people. Repudiating avant-garde styles, these artists expressed a sometimes nostalgic, sometimes satiric affection for the look of everyday America.
THOMAS HART BENTON: July Hay. 1943. Metropolitan
Museum of Art
A Stream
of Many Currents
"My wish is to moke something permonent out of the tronsitory, by means at once dramatic and colloquial."
CHARLES BURCHFIELD: An April Mood, 1955.
This veteran painter in his latest phase celebrates the cycles of the seasons and the miracle of growth.
Freedom of Outer SINCE THE beginning of the Space Age, we have been hearing about the need for "freedom" of outer space. The universal appeal of the idea was demonstrated forcefully when the United Nations General Assembly adopted its resolution on outer space in December of 1961 without a dissenting vote. The resolution commended the principle that "outer space and celestial bodies are free for exploration and use by all states in conformity with international law and are not subject to national appropriation." If we are to achieve the goal so clearly enunciated in the United Nations, international law mlfst recognize the need for a realistic ceiling on the "closed" space which is under the exclusive unilateral control of each underlying state. If we are serious about the freedom of space exploration, we must not underestimate the area of "free" space which is required for that activity. extends National territory is three-dimensional-it vertically as well as laterally, to include the "air space" above land and territorial waters. The vertical extent of territorial sovereignty has not been precisely delimited; that is, there is no agreed legal definition of the exact upward extent of the territorial air space. International law recognizes the right of each nation to exclude from its territory, including its air space, any object or activity whatsoever, regardless of its use or purpose. I t is on the foundation of this unqualified power of exclusion residing in the territorial sovereign that nations have erected the present structure of bilateral and, multilateral aviation agreements which determine the conditions on which entry into and the use ofa nation's air space are permitted. The higher we go, the less significant from the viewpoint of the underlying state is mere "overness." The disturbing or threatening nature of an activity in outer space does not depend upon its being directly over the territory of the nation affected. The security of the underlying states would not be adequately served by the vertical extension of territorial sovereignty to very high altitudes. Rather, what is required is some form of international control directed towards specific space activities, regardless of their location. Since the first Sputnik in October of 1957, numerous earth-orbiting satellites launched by both the United States and the U.S.S.R. have repeatedly passed over the land and territorial waters of every nation. 0 permission was sought in advance by the launching states, none was expressly given by any other state, and not a single protest has been registered by any state. The only conclusion that may reasonably be drawn is that the nations have not regarded territorial sovereignty as extending as high as the orbits of these satellites. The U.N. resolution did not, however, attempt to define the realm of "outer space." Before the adoption of the resolution, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson remarked: "The members of the committee will note that we have not attempted to define where outer space begins. In our judgment, it is premature to do this now. The attempt to draw a boundary between air space and outer space must await further experience and a consensus among nations.
"Fortunately the value of the principles of freedom of space and celestial bodies does not depend on the drawing of a boundary line. "If I may cite the analogy of the high seas, we have been able to confirm the principle of freedom of the seas 'even in the absence of complete agreement as to where the seas begin." The primary question is not where outer space begins but where the upward reach of the exclusive power of the underlying state ends. To sum up, it appears that the existing state of the law is that we have an area of space extending upward from the surface of the earth for an indefinite distance which is exclusively controlled by the underlying state. Above that, beginning at some undefined point, lies the "free" realm of outer space. If we were concerned solely with the actual orbiting of spacecraft about the earth, the problem I have posed might be dismissed as a purely academic one. I t becomes of practical significance, however, because all spacecraft, before injection into orbit, must first be launched through the air space. Likewise, all space missions involving re-entry and landing-and here is where manned space flight dominates the scene-require that the spacecraft move back through the air space on their return to earth. Both the initial phase of launching and injection into orbit, and the terminal phase of manned space-flight missions involving re-entry and landing, are compelled to travel considerable horizontal distances, at altitudes less than that at which orbital flight occurs. Typically, the terminal phase follows a "flatter" flight path, covering a greater horizontal distance, than does the initial phase of manned space flight. Although the orbital flights of Astronauts John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, and Walter Schirra involved descent entirely over U.S. territory and the high seas, this may not always be the case. The possibilities of using different orbital paths as space flight progresses are obvious. With the future U.S. Gemini and Apollo manned spacecraft, more extended and "flatter" re-entry flight paths are clearly foreseeable. Spacecraft with certain lifting body characteristics are contemplated, providing the pilot with limited manoeuvrability and choice of landing area. I t now appears that the manned vehicles which will be developed over the next five to ten years will enter the atmosphere rather steeply, level out, and glide at altitudes ranging from about twenty-five to sixty miles for distances perhaps as great as 7,000 to IO,OOO miles before landing. Inevitably, it will become necessary to know in advance whether any portion of the re-entry phase of a manned space flight violates the territorial air space of another state because of the altitude at which its land or territorial waters may be overflown. I t is a problem of an essentially political nature. It is not a problem which will be solved on the basis of the physical characteristics of the aerospace environment or the performance capabilities of the various vehicles which aerospace technology produces. The future progress of this technology promises to blur the differences which presently exist 'between aircraft and spacecraft.
N second phase of space exploration
MAN's EFFORT to explore the mysteries of space will soon enter into its second phase. The series of successful one-man flights in earth's orbit is to be followed by two-man flights under the U.S. Project Gemini which is described as "a flexible test-bed for new techniques and systems for space flights." Project Gemini fittingly takes its name from the mythological twins, Castor and Pollux, who, according to legend, became the stars Gemini in the Milky Way galaxy. Its two-man capsule is designed to carry men in company for the first time into space. Gemini has been designed as the first truly operational U.S. manned space vehicle. While bearing an external family resemblance to the Mercury craft in which astronauts Alan Shepard, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter made their epoch-making flights, it is fundamentally different in design and by no means a mere adaptation of its simpler prototype. Weighing about twice as much as Mercury and with about fifty per cent more cabin space, the two-man Gemini spacecraft is designed according to the modular concept. It is made up of two major units-the re-entry module and the adapter module. The crew compartment, where the two astronauts will sit side by side, is part of the re-entry module. It incorporates ejection seats for the crew as a means of emergency escape from the spaceship. Gemini's adapter module has two sections. The equipment section contains the main oxygen supply, the electrical power system and a propulsion system for orbital attitude control and manoeuvres. The other section contains the retrograde system which will come into use after the orbital phase of the mission is completed. Explosive charges will be fired to jettison the equipment section, and application of retrothrust rockets will initiate the descent from orbit by slowing the re-entry module for re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. The primary purpose of Project Gemini is to test the feasibility of rendezvous and docking with a target vehicle in earth orbit. If these operations can be carried out successfully and quickly, it is estimated that the schedule oflanding men on the moon will be advanced by at least two years. Development of the rendezvous technique would enable large space stations to be set up to serve as staging bases for distant journeys into space. Equipped to remain in orbit for a week or longer, Gemini will thoroughly test the reactions of astronauts to a prolonged state of weightlessness. Finally, Gemini will develop techniques of controlled re-entry into the earth's atmosphere and descent on land-as opposed to sea in the case of the Mercury craft-at a pre-selected point. The first stage of the project will begin with unmanned ballistic tests. These will be followed by manned orbital flights which will gradually be extended to a duration of two weeks. The project will be climaxed by orbital rendezvous missions. The launching and return-to-earth sequence of Gemini in the rendezvous and docking flights will be as follows. First, the target vehicle, an unmanned Agena-B rocket, will be lifted by an Atlas booster and
GEMINI
placed in a circular orbit about 300 miles above the earth. Ground tracking stations will carefully determine the orbit and the optimum launch time for the two-man Gemini craft, the second vehicle in the experiment. Gemini will be lifted from the launching pad by a Titan II booster, which has a thrust of over a million pounds, and launched into the same plane but at a lower height. Being nearer the earth, Gemini will move at a faster speed than Agena-B and gradually catch up with it. The astronauts in Gemini will then make radar contact with the other vehicle and manoeuvre their spacecraft to bring the two paths together. In the absence of radar data, rendezvous may be accomplished by instructions and commands from the g-round tracking and computing stations. When the vehicles are within a short distance, say twenty miles, of each other, final manoeuvres would in any case be controlled by the astronauts using visual obst>rvations. When the two vehicles have been latched together, the Gemini-Agena combination may be controlled and manoeuvred as a single unit and the pilot may use the fuel in the target or propulsion vehicle. After trial and evaluation of this important phase of the project, the vehicles would be unlatched and separated by the crew firing manoeuvring thrust rockets. Re-entry and landing of the re-entry module will be achieved by operating the retrograde system already described. When the spacecraft is at an altitude of about 60,000 feet, a paraglider arrangement will be deployed and the spacecraft steered to a pre-selected landing site. The instrumentation, recording and communications systems installed in Gemini have the dual purpose of providing guidance to the crew from the ground and of recording and transmitting to ground stations all data relating to scientific observations and rendezvous and docking operations. A normal atmosphere for the astronauts will be ensured by regulating pressure, temperature and composition of air in the spacecraft. Crewmen will wear pressurized suits designed to protect against heat and allow for circulation of air to