wmartin%brl-bmd@sri-unix.UUCP (11/29/83)
From: Will Martin (DRXAL-FD) <wmartin@brl-bmd> Reading the news item about the return of the Soviet cosmonauts which mentioned the medals awarded to them caused me to wonder whether the US military astronauts get any special decorations or awards for flights. I believe that some of the earlier groups got medals at White House ceremonies, but I don't recall any specifics. What about the current group? The military have things like "campaign ribbons", awarded for serving in a certain location during a certain time period, and "hash marks" -- uniform enhancements that denote periods of service, such as one for each six months overseas or the like. Do the astronauts get any ribbons or decorations for each flight, or one with an oak-leaf cluster or other add-on for each successive mission or n days in space? As more and more people spend more time in space, it will eventually become a normal tour of duty for certain military occupational specialities, and I think that most specialists in hazardous duties (diving, explosive ordinance disposal, etc.) get some sort of award or decoration denoting longevity in the field, and another every so often (the time period varying with the field, I believe). Anyway, I would expect some sort of "Space Service" badge, with embellishments for each subsequent mission or number of missions, to be awarded to military serving in space. Does such an award already exist? Will Martin (WMartin@Office-3)
notes@ucbcad.UUCP (12/02/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-1412400:ucbesvax:8700009:000:1431 ucbesvax!turner Dec 2 02:57:00 1983 Re: medals for cosmonauts, what for astronauts This is conjecture, but I think the reason that U.S. astronauts aren't routinely decorated the way cosmonauts are has to do with attitudes toward militarization. May Day parades in Red Square are ominously symmetrical: military honchos on one side of the podium, politburo flacks on the other. You don't see much of that here--I think there's even a law that says that the President shall not appear in uniform, even as commander in chief. In the USSR, nuclear fuel and waste shipments travel under guard by Red Army convoys. In the U.S., even the nuclear *weapons* industry has always (ostensibly) been a civilian outfit. (Back when Reagan still dreamed of axing DoE, it was thought that the nuclear weapons programs could be transferred to the Department of Commerce.) Perhaps the inception of the Soviet space program was marked by cooperation among the (less divided?) branches of their military. Here, NASA was formed, in part, out of exasperation with the infighting, secretiveness, and competition between branches of the armed forces who were trying to outdo each other's space programs. Perhaps our more civilian administration was loathe to decide which 4-star general would do the pinning of the medal, and simply discouraged the practice, even though the astronauts were themselves military men. Conjecture, as I say. --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)
eich@uiuccsb.UUCP (12/13/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-1412400:uiuccsb:15700008:000:1176 uiuccsb!eich Dec 12 19:30:00 1983 But the Mercury astronauts did get Distinguished Service Medals from the Commander-in-chief. See Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. Which of our armed forces were engaging in infighting, secretiveness, etc. against one another in their pre-NASA space programs? The Manned Rocket program was run by the Air Force (formerly Army Air Corps). Starting with the X-1 in the late 40's through the X-15 all military space research and testing was done at Edwards under Air Force auspices. The Navy and Marines contributed pilots, but nothing else as far as I know. What secretiveness there was aimed not at other military branches, but at the Soviets. Moreover, the successor to the X-15, the X-20 Dyna-Soar, was moving along nicely until the wave of Sputnik hysteria, which really crested when the Soviets orbited a man before John Glenn, rendered the winged rocket approach political unfeasible, and gave NASA carte blanch to (literally, as it turned out) go for the moon. McNamara canned the X-20 just as Chuck Yeager was taking off in his final NF104 test flight. No convincing technical reason was given that I know of; politics dominated. Brendan Eich uiucdcs!uiuccsb!eich
lmc@denelcor.UUCP (Lyle McElhaney) (12/16/83)
The Army/Navy/AF infighting over space started when the V2 rockets captured in Germany wer moved to White Sands for testing. The Army did that, bacause they were the one's who found them (and the scientists, too.) The Navy retaliated by getting the Viking (rocket, not lander) program which also flew at White Sands (12 launchings, I believe, from 1948 through 52). Both services messed around with air-breathers for a while (Snark and some others I can't remember.) The Army scientists were sequestered (more or less - see "Space" by Mitchener for a fictionalized account) in Alabama and there developed the Redstone, aka Jupiter C, and eventually the Atlas. The Army claimed that they could have launched a satellite any time during 1957, but congress awarded that to the Navy and their Vanguard program. After Sputnik, extreme pressure forced the Navy to attempt a satellite launching in one of the test-object Vanguards. As might have been expected, the Vanguard fired and reached an altitude of 3 feet before returning to earth. Embarrassed, the go ahead was given for the Army to go for orbit with their Jupiter. The Vanguard later made several successful flights with the then-proven rocket. When the Air Force was created, they managed to get the ICBM franchise away from the Army, and the Atlas program with it, and then began developing Titan (apparently to prove that they, too, could develop a real rocket all by themselves). At this point, the Army, Navy, and some of the Air Force programs were sucked up by NASA's creation, leaving the Army and Navy with simple tactical missile programs, and the Air Force with all the military space applications. This is all stricly from memory, so I may have slipped somewhere, but that's the general outline. -- Lyle McElhaney ...(hao,nbires,brl-bmd,csu-cs)!denelcor!lmc (303) 337-7900 x261
eich@uiuccsb.UUCP (12/18/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-1412400:uiuccsb:15700009:000:342 uiuccsb!eich Dec 17 10:12:00 1983 >>/***** uiuccsb:net.space / denelcor!lmc / 8:25 pm Dec 16, 1983 */ >>The Army claimed that they could have launched a satellite any time during >>1957, but congress awarded that to the Navy and their Vanguard program. Was that Army project called MOUSE? Can anyone recommend references on the details? Brendan Eich uiucdcs!uiuccsb!eich
REM%MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP (01/05/84)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC>
>From what I heard, the story may be essentially true. Our government
underestimated the USSR space program, and took a glamorous course
instead of a crash effort. Sputnik jarred them into a crash effort and
they eventually switched from what they had been working on to the
other one (I forget which is which; Vanguard or Redstone?) which
worked nicely although the payload was tiny.
(Pardon tardy reply, I've been without terminal for 1.5 weeks until today.)