Man-Guided Missile

Science fiction teems with spaceships, but in real life they do not exist. No man-carrying craft has even approached space--yet. Now, after a two-year study, the Office of Naval Research and Douglas Aircraft Co. (builder of the supersonic Skyrocket) have decided that an "inhabited" rocket airplane can be built that will soar to 750,000 ft. (140 miles) and land on the earth safely. It will not be a spaceship in the strictest sense, but the air that it will traverse at the top of its flight will be as thin as a laboratory vacuum.

ONR figures that the space plane can use an existing rocket motor to push it with an acceleration that the pilot can stand. Best take-off procedure will probably be to launch it into the air from the belly of a high-flying bomber. According to ONR's plans, the pilot will retain complete control of his craft, steering it with control surfaces while still in the atmosphere. When the air thins out too much" to be used for steering, he will control the plane's altitude by firing small rockets set at an angle to the fuselage.

The space plane's top speed will be about Mach 5 (3,500 m.p.h.), and the whole flight will take, at most, 20 minutes, covering a horizontal distance of some 500 miles. The pilot will have to be provided with air, presumably by pressurizing his cabin, but this will not be much of a problem for so short a time. Solar heating and cosmic rays will be no problem either.

The great problem: how to get the space plane back to earth. Its speed, as it falls through the vanishing thin air, will rise enough to generate dangerous frictional heat, especially when the air thickens at 50,000 ft. The leading edges of the stubby wings will glow cherry red, and part of their substance will be washed away, even if they are made of heat-resistant metal. But the heating will continue for only a short time, and ONR believes that wings can be made to survive it.

Once in the lower atmosphere, the space plane will slow down by circling, and head for some landing field with a very long runway. It will touch at 250 m.p.h., and may use a drag parachute to check its speed on the ground. When the pilot steps out and walks away, he will have passed the longest 20 minutes in the history of manned flight.

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