91av

WHEN the 24 October 1968 edition of 91av was published, the space race was in full swing. The US had just completed a successful Apollo 7 mission, sending three astronauts into orbit for 11 days. We reported no details of the mission, however, concentrating instead on the 19th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation in New York. The success of the Apollo mission meant that the US was still aiming to have a man on the moon by the end of 1969, but the conference was apparently dominated by “the increasingly dim outlook for future space efforts”.

Budgets were being slashed as US taxpayers grew weary of funding adventures in space. It seemed that the once ambitious Apollo programme to explore large areas of the moon would be drastically cut back. And we learned that the Soviet Union was encountering problems with its programme, all but admitting that the Americans would beat them to the moon. Delegates were “gloomy”, we said, and the conference itself was “permeated by a general air of depression”.

Marginally more optimism came in reports of satellite developments. We predicted there might be as many as 130 satellites in orbit by 1980, and elsewhere that “there will be about $5 billion worth of spacecraft in orbit” by the same date. This latter figure would in turn justify the development of an “orbital scrap collector that could later be adapted for returning human cargo to Earth”.

In the meantime, a satellite repair vehicle currently under development would ensure that any damaged satellites could be fixed by remote control from Earth, although we added a note of caution for the superpowers. “It is easy to imagine the manipulators being used for sabotaging the other fellow’s spy satellite or diffusing [sic] his orbital bomb,” we warned.

Today we look back on the 1960s as being a golden era for space exploration. It would appear that hindsight can be unduly generous.