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One such project, long in the planning stage, is the construction of Dyna-Soar, a controllable, maneuverable space vehicle capable of skimming the atmosphere on hot, stubby wings and of landing on a chosen spot, not merely drifting down by parachute like the Vostok or Freedom 7. Now veteran rocketmen are talking of beating Dyna-Soar off the pad. They are suggesting a solid-fuel rocket with upper-stage rockets powerful enough to put the present X-15 into orbit. Long before the Russians get a true plane into space, the U.S. might have the X-15 circling the world. Once in orbit, the swift little rocketship could maneuver freely, change direction and altitude, cross and recross the same cities, and glide down to land on conventional airports.
The plans proliferate, and there is small doubt that astronauts of the near future will be making dangerous penetrations far into space, where no earthlings have ventured before. With each success, the universe will grow smaller, but man's life will grow larger, expanding with infinite promise. And as long as the U.S. produces such explorers as Commander Alan Shepard, the architects of man's expansion may well be Americans.
* The short hoist from sea to helicopter was not without its danger. Earlier in the week, two Navy free balloonists, Commander Malcolm Ross and Lieut. Commander Victor Prather Jr., made a record flight (21.5 mi.) off the U.S.S. Antietam in the Gulf of Mexico, were picked up by a helicopter shortly after their gondola landed in the water. Commander Ross rode a horsecollar sling to safety. Commander Prather, a Navy medical officer on his third balloon ascent, fell from the sling as he was rising to ward the hovering chopper. Dragged under by the weight of his pressure suit, he died soon after a frogman hauled him to the surface.
* Lieut. Commander M. Scott Carpenter, U.S.N., Captain L. Gordon Cooper Jr., U.S.A.F., Lieut. Colonel John H. Glenn Jr., U.S.M.C., Captain Virgil I. Grissom, U.S.A.F., Lieut. Commander Walter M. Schirra Jr., U.S.N., Captain Donald K. Slayton, U.S.A.F.
* The U.S. is doing reasonably well in military space craft. The solid-fuel Minuteman proved long ago that it can take off handily from an underground silo; last week a two-stage, 110-ton liquid-fuel Titan also took off from a silo. Pre ceded by a burst of flame, it roared out of a 146-ft. concrete-lined hole at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Since it carried a dummy second stage, it flew for only 140 seconds before it was deliberately "destructed" by radio command. But it proved that even comparatively tender liquid-fuel rockets, which are heavy weight lifters, can take off from a "hard" base that promises resistance to enemy attacks.