Space Flights By- Scientists Urged

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29901, 15 August 1962, Page 15

Space Flights ByScientists Urged

(A.Z Press Association—Copyright) BLACKSBURG (Vermont), August 14. American manned satellite flights had so far yielded little scientific information because astronauts were not scientists, Dr. Harold Urey said last night.

The 1943 Nobel Prize-win-ner for chemistry said he had been urging the space agency to includ? at least one scientist in each th r ee-man Apoilo crew sent to the moon. Sufficient information to justify the extreme cost of lunar missions could be provided only by the observations of trained scientistastronauts. Dr. Urey said. He is in Blacksburg for a conference on lunar exploration at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

Dr. Urey said that many scientists were now convinced the moon had been “accumulated” independently of the earth. Detailed studies of the moon and mathematical calculations had led to this conclusion He said latest thinking tended to ’ discredit Sir George Darwin’s theory that the moon had broken away from the earth in a tidal action and the hypothesis that both bodies bad originated as a double planet in one gaseous cloud. He said it was now thougn; the earth “captured" the n-oon early m the history of the solar system, some time after both satellites were basicallv completely formed end had their present sizes and masses

Dr Uey said much mattei the size of the moon and smaller was “captured” tc form the planets and asteroids. and the moon “by very special chance was captured by a close approach to the earth.”

He offered the following theories about the moon: That its composition was more akin to that ot the sun than that of the earth That shortly after its capture by the earth, it was bombarded intensively tor a short period of time by terrestrial satellites that fell with moderate velocity Taat thenceforth only a limited number of objects had fallen on to the moon, and these were from m'erplanetary space travelling at high velocities

That it was logical to conclude the moon had "accumulated” at low temperatures. involving only localised or temporary melting. That the interior of the moon was not plastic, as shown

by the high mountains on the surface of the moon and that it had not been plastic since the mountains were formed. That the surface features of the moon were. caused mostly by collisions with interplanetary matter or by matter falling on to it' from space. That the great plains of the moon were probably at least partially composed of lava flows, either from the heart of the moon or created by great collisions. That in all probability Jbe lava deposits were generally the result of highenergy collisions with the moon’s surface rather than the result of eruption of melted matter from below the surface as was the case on earth