Astronaut May Die In Space, Scientists Say

Press, Volume C, Issue 29643, 13 October 1961, Page 7

Astronaut May Die In Space, Scientists Say

(NJ!. Press Assn.—Copyright) NEW YORK, October 11. An American astronaut would die in space sooner or later, two United States scientists said yesterday. The entire United States space programme could die with him, in a wave of public feeling, the scientists warned.

Mr M. W. Hunter and Mr Eugene Konecci, of the Douglas Aircraft Company, broached the subject of death in space yesterday to 15.000 fellow scientists and engineers at the American Rocket Society’s convention in New York, United Press Internationa]'said. The public would have to learn to accept the fact that men had been killed in every scientific advance, Mr Hunter and Mr Konecci said. “If we of the United States permit ourselves to be slowed by the first casualty, it might cause our first real

case of panic,” Mr Hunter aaid. “It will then be obvious that we have completely lost the pioneering spirit of ancient America, and it will be time to stand aside and let other people take over the leadership of the space adventure.” Space canalities in the first century of apace flight would not be as numerous as traffic deaths in the United States in a single year /about 35.000 Americans died in traffic accidents in 1860), predicted the two experts. Reasonable safety precautions were being taken in space programmes that had sent the Mercury astronauts, Shepard and Grissom, on sub-orbital rocket rides, and

several men on safe flights to high altitudes in the Xl5 rocket plane, they said, “The pioneer spacemen deserve as much protection as the average tert pilot, but no more” they said. This was about the “safely rating" of the Mercury programme. Dr. James van Allen, of lowa State University, told the convention that solar flares would present astronauts with one real threat of death in space. Radioed information from the United States Explorer VII satellite showed that within one 50-day period, an astronaut would have been in “serious danger” from solar radiation for four days, and would have been “fried” on one of those days.