Opel sponsored resumption of tests of rocket-boosted gliders near Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. These involved a design by Lippisch, boosted by 16 powder rockets of 23 kgf each. With Opel at the controls, the glider successfully launched itself from a 20-m long rail launcher, and he flew the aircraft for ten minutes. However the landing went badly - the design had a landing speed of 160 kph, and with a total weight of 270 kg, a high wing loading. Opel survived but the glider had to be written off. This was Opel's last involvement with rocketry. General Motors, the majority owner of the Opel company, prohibited further rocketry work after the stock market crash. Fritz von Opel left the country and moved to Switzerland.

Nebel is presented with a water bill of 1600 Marks for 1930-1933. He and the VfR are unable to pay, so the government cancels the lease and takes the property back. Klaus Riedel manages to arrange employment for himself and several of the VfR technicians with Siemens, which also agrees to allow them to store the Raketenflugplatz rockets and technical materials in a company warehouse. After Riedel and the others are recruited by the Army and leave for Peenemuende, Nebel allegedly sells of these materials. In any case they disappear.

Von Brauchtisch obtained the highest priority for development of the A4. This was used in early 1940 to get 4,000 soldiers with the necessary engineering and technical backgrounds released from the Army and sent to Peenemuende's 'Versuchskommando-Nord'. Nevertheless there was a constant fight for priority in obtaining materials.

As with the American XS-1, the rocketplane was launched from a captured B-29 bomber. German pilot Wolfgang Ziese conducted all of the initial flight tests. Initial glider flights with the 346P, 346-1 aircraft were flown in 1948. The first powered flight was successful but Ziese was injured after the landing skid collapsed after a fast landing.

Decree 'On approval of the draft project for Object D' was issued. The decree gave the go-ahead for Tikhonravov's 1.4 tonne ISZ physics satellite to be launched by the new R-7 ICBM during the International Geophysical Year . The ISZ, a miniature physics laboratory,.was to have been the first artificial satellite of the earth. In the event, it was preceded by Sputniks 1 and 2.

This set forth the following objectives: orbiting of satellites of 1.8 to 2.5 tonnes mass by 1958; one week flight of a manned spacecraft by 1964; unmanned reconnaissance satellite by 1970; rocket capable of 12 tonne escape velocity payload by 1970; rocket with 100 tonne low earth orbit payload to be developed, capable of placing 2 to 3 men on the moon (no date set).

The fourth meeting of the Space Exploration Program Council was held at NASA Headquarters. The results of a study on Saturn development and utilization was presented by the Ad Hoc Saturn Study Committee. Objectives of the study were to determine (1) if and when the Saturn C-2 launch vehicle should be developed and (2) if mission and spacecraft planning was consistent with the Saturn vehicle development schedule. No change in the NASA Fiscal Year 1962 budget was contemplated. The Committee recommended that the Saturn C-2 development should proceed on schedule (S-II stage contract in Fiscal Year 1962, first flight in 1965). The C-2 would be essential, the study reported, for Apollo manned circumlunar missions, lunar unmanned exploration, Mars and Venus orbiters and capsule landers, probes to other planets and out-of- ecliptic, and for orbital starting of nuclear upper stages. Additional Details: here....

Air Force Space Systems Division contracted with Aerojet-General for a program to develop a backup for the injectors of the second stage engine of the Gemini launch vehicle. Titan II development flights had shown the stage II engine tended toward incipient combustion instability. The Gemini Stability Improvement Program, begun as a backup, became a program aimed at maximum probability of success on December 24, 1963. The 18-month program produced a completely redesigned stage II engine injector.

Manned Spacecraft Center awarded its first incentive-type contract to Ling-Temco-Vought, Inc., Dallas, Texas for the fabrication of a trainer to be used in the Gemini launch vehicle training program. The fixed-price-incentive-fee contract had a target cost of $90,000, a target profit of $9,000, and a ceiling of $105,000. The incentive was based on cost only and provided for an 80/20 sharing arrangement; that is, the contractor would pay from his profit 20 percent of all savings under the target cost, or, alternatively, would receive 20 percent of all savings under the target cost. This meant that the contractor's profit would be zero after $97,500 was spent, and would be minus if costs exceeded $105,000.

Nasser is dead - a blow to Soviet interests. Kamanin goes to Khrunichev to inspect the DOS-7K space station mock-up. It is to be delivered to the cosmonaut training centre on 20 October. Kamanin believes the planned 5 February launch for DOS#1, and 15 February launch for Soyuz 10, cannot be met.

Corrective measures were being incorporated into the Apollo telescope mount as a result of the prototype thermal/vacuum test being performed in the MSC Space Environmental Simulation Laboratory September-December 1971. A number of anomalies unidentified in previous component system or subsystem tests were identified. Unlocated, the anomalies could have had serious impacts on ATM orbital operations.

Atlas 108F, carrying the Advanced Control Experiment 1 (ACE 1) vehicle, was launched from Vandenberg AFB and impacted in the Kwajalein area. The ACE 1 vehicle was to test the development of a preprototype of maneuvering reentry vehicle (MaRV) as part of the Advanced Ballistic Reentry Systems (ABRES) program.

In order to counter US space shuttle flights made in polar orbits from Vandenberg, deep black Uragan project begun. Scaled-up Spiral to be launched by new Zenit launch vehicle, carrying Nudelmann recoilless gun (same as developed for TKS) for destruction of shuttle after interception and inspection. First flight planned 1983.

"Good Morning Vietnam" style - Robin Williams opened with"Gooooooood Morning Discovery!!!"

The original recording produced by Houston area DJ from KKBQ, Mike Cahill, also included original lyrics recorded to the theme music of the TV show"Green Acres". Robin Williams was approached by Cahill about doing the tape. NASA knew nothing of the tape until it was offered as a gift by Cahill. Mike Cahill, writer, producer for KKBQ Radio, Houston and a part-time on-call tour guide at JSC, said he had listened to some wake-up calls a year and a half ago and some of them were,"You know, kind of awful. So what I did was thought gee it would be nice to write, produce and custom design songs for the astronauts. I picked three tunes that were pretty catchy, that were very short and upbeat. Green Acres was the first one. I thought gosh that would be the last thing they'll expect to hear" Pat Mattingly, who works in Mission Control, found out Cahill was doing them and said they were looking for new stuff. She gave a tape to CAPCOM Kathy Sullivan. Mike wrote the lyrics in early 1987. Threw in Discovery because knew it would be next Orbiter to fly. He collaborated with Mark Richardson, the leader of a band named"Eclipse" Mike and Mark worked on putting the music together. Richardson played keyboard, guitars, drum machine. Mike called on Patrick Brennan who used to be with now-defunct group"Popkorn" that played in clubs around Clear Lake to do the vocals. Mike and Mark helped out on the chorus for Green Acres. Green Acres was Mike's favorite."It was as dopey and stupid and corny as I had hoped it would be" He said he wanted to show that NASA people have a sense of humor."It's the closest I'll ever get to going to space"

Stationed at 83 deg E, replacing Raduga-26. Operation of telephone and telegraph radio communications and transmission of television programmes. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 85 deg E in 1993-1999 As of 6 September 2001 located at 86.23 deg E drifting at 0.009 deg W per day. Raduga 30 followed on 30 September 1993 and was transferred to 85 degrees E. As of 2007 Mar 11 located at 74.18E drifting at 0.046E degrees per day.

Carried SIR-C SAR. Landed at Edwards Air Force Base on October 11. Payloads: Space Radar Laboratory (SRL) 2, five Getaway Special payloads, Chromosome and Plant Cell Division in Space (CHROMEX) 5, Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC) 01, Cosmic Radiation Effects and Activation Monitor (CREAM), Military Application of Ship Tracks (MAST), Commercial Protein Crystal Growth (CPCG).

Science operations and daily telemetry ceased when the RTG power level was insufficient to operate any experiments. As of the end of 1995 the spacecraft was located at 44.7 AU from the Sun at a nearly asymptotic latitude of 17.4 degrees above the solar equatorial plane and was heading outward at 2.5 AU/year. Routine tracking and project data processing operations were terminated on March 31, 1997 for budget reasons.

Possibly last Athena flight. Launch delayed from September 1, 18, 22, 23, 25, 28. This was the first orbital launch from Alaska's Kodiak Island launch site (Foul weather and auroral conditions had delayed the launch many times) . The Lockheed Martin Athena-1's Orbit Adjust Module's (OAM) four MR-107 hydrazine engines fired for 12 minutes to put the payloads in a 237 x 815 km transfer orbit. After a coast to apogee above East Africa, a second burn at 0337 GMT circularized the orbit. USAF Space Test Program satellites Picosat, Sapphire and PCSat were deployed into an 790 x 800 km x 67 deg orbit between 0344 and 0352 GMT; the OAM then made a perigee lowering burn to a 470 x 800 km orbit. Another burn half an orbit later put OAM in a 467 x 474 km orbit, from wish Starshine 3 was deployed. Finally, the OAM made a perigee-lowering depletion burn which left in a 215 x 403 km x 67.2 deg orbit from which would reenter in a few months.

Starshine-3 was a 90 kg, 0.9 m geodetic sphere that was to be observed by students. The NASA satellite was basically a passive light-reflecting sphere, consisting of 1,500 student-built mirrors (polished by kindergarten and grade school students from many countries) and 31 laser "retroreflectors". A few solar cells provide enough power to send a beacon at 145.825 MHz every minute. Ham operators around the world were expected to obtain signal strengths from which the decay (due to magnetic torque) of its spin rate could be determined. The project was managed by NASA GSFC and Starshine was built by the Naval Research Laboratory.

STP P97-1 Picosat was built by Surrey Satellite for the USAF using a Uosat-type bus. The 68 kg satellite was to test electronic components/systems in space conditions. It carried four test payloads: Polymer Battery Experiment (PBEX), Ionospheric Occultation Experiment (IOX), Coherent Electromagnetic Radio Tomagraphy (CERTO) and an ultra-quiet platform (OPPEX). Called Picosat 9 by some Agencies although not related to other satellites in that series.

PCSat (Prototype Communications SATellite) was to act as a relay for UHF/VHF amateur radio transmissions. It was built by the midshipmen at the US Naval Academy. It was to augment the existing worldwide Amateur Radio Automatic Position Reporting System; mass was around 10 kg.

NBN 1 communications satellite, with a Ka-band payload for the Australian NBN Corporation, a government-owned company running the national broadband network. Purpose was to provide access to high speed broadband to every household and business in the country.