U.K. SPACE RESEARCH

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29799, 16 April 1962, Page 8

U.K. SPACE RESEARCH

‘Manned Flight Programme’ (N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, April 13. Britain has started preliminary work for a manned space flight programme, the “Daily Mail" reported. The Air Ministry had ordered a research and experimental programme to develop a piloted "aero-space” machine capable of high speeds in space, the newspaper said. It said the Secretary of State for Air. Mr Julian Amery, and the air staff now had positive evidence that such a machine could be built in Britain and was within the nation's financial resources. The “Daily Mail" said Britain’s "way into space” had been charted in secret over the last 18 months by a special “space cell” of experts in the Air Ministry. They had recommended the task should be tackled in two stages: (1) An aircraft capable of flying five times the speed .of sound to explore the working of controls and other flight problems in the outer fringes of the atmosphere. (2) A true aero-space machine which could fly at nine times the speed of sound in the outer atmosphere and then shoot on under rocket power into space. The “Daily Mail” said basic research and design studies now ordered were well within the spending power of the Air Ministry and research establishments. The next step would be to convince the Treasury that a full programme should be started.