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Desert Rocket Range. Holloman is a dreary post in an alkali-dusted desert, but some of the Air Force scientists' most spectacular achievements have been accomplished there. From a tall steel tower Aerobee rockets scream into the sky, carrying instruments to explore the boundaries of space. Sixty Aerobees have been fired, carrying 150-lb. payloads to 70 miles. The new Aerobee-Hi (two have been fired) carries the same load to 150 miles. The Aerobees are research rockets, not weapons, but Holloman also tests moderate-range guided missiles.
Besides these hard-shelled projects. Holloman also works with all-too-soft human flesh. The famed Space Surgeon John Paul Stapp (TIME, Sept. 12) speeds across the desert on his rocket sled to see how much strain the human body can stand. Another Holloman specialty is radio-controlled drone aircraft, which are used as targets and as a means of improving missile guidance systems. Perhaps the most picturesque program is "space biology," which includes sending living organisms (bacteria to monkeys) up to the edge of space in rockets. The condition in which they return to earth gives some idea of what humans will have to prepare for when they fly through space.
Long-Ranged Patrick. Some modern missiles are too long-ranged for Holloman, big and remote as it is. To test these fearsome "birds," most of which are highly secret, the Air Force maintains Patrick Air Force Base on the east coast of central Florida. From Cape Canaveral, a scrub-covered island a few miles offshore, a long, highly instrumented range slants southeast across the Bahamas, skirts the Dominican Republic and crosses a corner of Puerto Rico. This distance, more than 1,000 miles, is enough for the present, but the range is being extended to Ascension Island between Brazil and Africa, making its total length more than 5,000 miles.
Most of the activities at Patrick are not for publication. Except for the Matador, an "aerodynamic" (wing-supported) missile that is operational and obsolete, the public gets only glimpses of the birds that it puts on the wing. Some of them rise out of the atmosphere, but not all. One of them, the Snark, has had so many mishaps that the sea near the start of the range has been ruefully called the "Snark-infested waters of Cape Canaveral."
Hypersonic Tunnels. Present-day aircraft and missiles grew out of wind tunnels that are comparatively small or slow. To design the missiles of the future, whose speed will be respectable on the astronomical scale, requires wind tunnels of a new order of size and speed. A group of these monsters, whose jointed shells look a little like primitive mollusks, is nearing completion at Arnold Engineering Development Center, at Tullahoma,
Tenn. Only one of the smaller tunnels is in use, but air races through it at up to 4,000 m.p.h.