GRAA NEWSLETTER
P.O. Box 1184, Greenbelt, MD 20768-1184

IMPORTANT DATES

COMMENTS FROM TONY COMBERIATE AND ARLIN KRUEGER:

Our November luncheon speaker was Dr. David DeVorkin, a Senior Curator, History of Astronomy and the Space Sciences, at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. His talk, “Science with a Vengeance: How the Military Created the US Space Sciences after World War II” is also the title of his 1992 book published by Springer - Verlag, New York. The talk covered the “V-2 era” from 1946 into the 1950s when the United States military invited a wide range of scientists, from both military and civilian organizations, to develop scientific payloads to be shot into near space from captured German V-2 missiles.

In the 1930s scientists had theorized that UV sunlight could produce the ionosphere and ozone layer but the solar spectrum was unknown. A German physicist, Erich Regener, led a balloon program to measure the UV spectrum but the shorter wavelengths, including the strong 1216 Å Lyman Alpha hydrogen line thought to be responsible for ionospheric layer formation, were absorbed above the 30 km altitude limit of balloons. To reach ionosphere altitudes required rockets. Privately developed rockets, like Robert Goddard’s, never achieved operational status. A far larger effort by the German Army solved the propulsion, guidance, and aerodynamics problems for a V-2 ballistic missile. The first, launched on October 3, 1942 from Peenemünde on Germany's Baltic Sea coast, became the first man-made object to reach near-space (85 km), traveling 118 miles (192 km). During the war, over 3,000 V-2s were launched at Allied targets, including London and Antwerp. However, targeting was scattered without high altitude atmospheric data. Regener was asked to adapt the balloon instruments for vertical V-2 soundings. A successful flight would also obtain the first UV solar spectra and ozone distributions. Problems in the design of a parachute system slowed delivery until January 1945, too late for launch before Peenemünde was evacuated as the war was lost.

As the German government collapsed, the US Army moved rapidly to collect parts for 100 V-2 rockets, together with documents and personnel for transfer to America. Regener’s “Tonne”, or warhead of instruments, was also captured and brought back to, and subsequently lost, at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. The Army established a missile range at White Sands, New Mexico to fly the V-2s in a training exercise. A V-2 Rocket Panel was formed to co-opt these rocket launches for scientific data. Physicists at NRL, Princeton, and APL hurried to design rocket instruments to resolve the old science questions. Collecting solar spectra from a spinning rocket nosecone was a challenge. Richard Tousey of NRL designed a LiF bead lens with a wide field of view to capture spectra on film. Another challenge was recovering the recordings, which had to survive the V-2 crash landing. Only fragments of filmstrips were recovered from the 20-foot crater from the ballistic impact of the first launch. NRL then moved the spectrograph to a rocket fin which should flutter to the ground after the missile was blown apart during descent. This was successful and the first middle UV solar spectrum was obtained on October 10, 1946. Two weeks later the first photographs of the Earth’s curved limb and the first comprehensive views of a tropical storm were taken on a V-2 flight at altitudes up to 104 km. James Van Allen had gained flight experience developing a proximity fuse for aircraft interception. He saw V-2s as a means to study cosmic rays, in the foundation of his later satellite experiments on Earth’s radiation belts.

The V-2 rocket, designed as a ballistic missile, was overkill for scientific soundings, so APL developed Aerobee sounding rockets for high altitude research. NRL obtained the first successful ozone distribution in an Aerobee flight. A new pointing and control system for solar and stellar measurements was developed by a University of Colorado Physics Department team which eventually became Ball Aerospace, specializing in spacecraft stabilized platforms.

Several V2 rockets are now on display throughout the country, but the one at the National Air & Space Museum was labeled as our “First Step into Space”, but was relabeled by DeVorkin to “World’s First Ballistic Missile System,” to keep the history correct because the V2 was capable of science but it was not built for that. The exhibit at Air and Space Museum will be open until April 2022, before a six month closure for renovations.

David DeVorkin’s talk was recorded and is accessible from the GRAA website, GoddardRetirees.org. DeVorkin, who started working at the Air & Space Museum in 1981, has curated many of the exhibitions at NASM. He is author/editor of 18 books and over 100 papers and articles.

REMEMBERING OUR FORMER COLLEAGUES:

• Dr. John S. Nisbet, 93, of State College, died on Tuesday, June 22, 2021. Born on December 10, 1927, in Darval, Scotland, he is survived by his wife J. Valerie Payne. Dr. Nisbet and his family lived in London during the Blitz, the German bombing campaign against Great Britain in World War II. At that time, he was an apprentice in the research laboratories of Nash and Thompson, working on airborne radars. He received his B.S. from London University. After the war, he joined Decca Radar and became the head of the S band waveguide section. John and Valerie emigrated first to Ontario, Canada, where he worked for Canadian Westinghouse. In 1955, they emigrated to the United States, where he earned a M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. In 1960, he was appointed as a Professor at Pennsylvania State University in the Electrical Engineering Department and was one of the first scientists to conduct ionospheric research using the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico. Dr. Nisbet served as the Director of the Ionosphere Research Lab from 1971 to 1984 and later as Director of the Communication and Space Sciences Laboratory from 1984 to 1986. He was appointed as a Distinguished Alumni Professor in 1985 and retired as an Alumni Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering in 1990. He was a National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellow in Brussels, 1965; a Fullbright Hays Lecturer, Council of International Exchange Scholars in Kharkiv, Ukraine, 1979; and a Nation Research Centre - National Academy of Science Fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland, 1980. He was also a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
• Guido Porreca, 93, died on September 14, 2021 in Silver Spring, Maryland. Guido was born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. He attended California State Teachers College prior to being drafted into the Army. He married his high school sweetheart, Betty Jane Gibbons, in 1951 and completed his military service in Germany. He continued his education at Penn State, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and moved his family to Maryland where they eventually settled in Highland in 1966. He worked initially at the Naval Ordinance Lab and then for 26 years at the Goddard Space Flight Center. He was responsible for the design, development and test of the spectrometer electronics system for the ISEE-3 Germanium Gamma-Ray Burst Spectrometer, an instrument designed specifically to perform high resolution measurements of the energy spectra of gamma-ray bursts that was part of the Max Planck Institute-University of Maryland Charge Distribution Experiment system on the International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE)-3 spacecraft, which was renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) after its launch. He also helped create the highly successful Helios 2 gamma-ray burst instrument. He made possible several space-exploration "firsts" and was honored many times for his outstanding service. During his career with NASA he also mentored young engineering students and worked on international project teams fostering collaborations around the globe.
• Charles A. Richey died Sept. 27, a few weeks short of his 102nd birthday in New Hampshire. A member of the "greatest generation," he was born Nov. 15, 1919, in Gainesville, Texas. He was only 16 when his mother died, leaving him to help care for his sister and brother. Forgoing college where he could have played basketball, he worked instead alongside his father as a farm laborer. He then signed up for the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, enabling him to send home part of his pay to his father. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942 during World War II. After basic training, he learned how to operate and repair flight radios and instruct other radio operators. From March 1945 to January 1946, he flew "the hump" aboard C-87, C-54 and C-46 cargo aircraft between India and China or as many pilots called it, "the aluminum trail," due to the many planes that crashed. After the war, the family was stationed in Texas and Spokane, Washington. In 1952, he was assigned to the U.S. Embassy's Air Attache aircraft as the radio operator in Tripoli, Libya. From there he was stationed in Kansas City, Dallas, Okinawa and then Virginia. He was reassigned to the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia, where he retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1964. He then worked at the Goddard Space Center, the U.S. State Department and the DCA in the civil service. After retirement, he and his wife moved to Littleton, N.H.
• John H. Overton, 83, died October 25, 2021 in Durham, NC. He was born January 15, 1937, in Winston-Salem, NC. John earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of South Carolina in June 1960 and then served two years in the Navy. He was interested in the space program since boyhood when he built model rockets and pursued that passion through work at the Goddard Space Flight Center, designing optical devices, mirrors, and lenses. In 1964, John moved to Chapel Hill to pursue his doctorate at the University of North Carolina. John began working for the Environmental Protection Agency, doing computer modeling of health effects in the lungs. He retired from the EPA in 2005.
• Richard A. (Dick) McCray, 83, died on October 26, 2021. Dick was born on November 24, 1937 in Los Angeles. He received his B.S. in Physics from Stanford University in 1959 and his Ph.D. in Physics in 1967 from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was a research fellow at Caltech and then an assistant professor at Harvard University. He spent the majority of his career on the faculty at the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences of the University of Colorado Boulder. In 2004 he retired as the George Gamow Distinguished Professor of Astrophysics. He was also a visiting scholar at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, at Beijing University and Nanjing University, at the Space Telescope Science Institute, at Columbia University, and at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to theoretical calculations and computer simulations, he made observations using the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). Dick was a Guggenheim Fellow, member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1990 he received the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics and in 2002 he was awarded the National Science Foundation Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars.
• William Harrison Wynn, 61, died on October 28th, 2021. He was born February 1, 1960 in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Laurel, MD. He joined NASA in the late 1970's working on the Nimbus mission at the Goddard Space Flight Center. He later worked on the Landsat mission before joining the team on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). He spent the rest of his career (31+ years) working on HST. He was also interested in motor racing, model rocketry, shooting sports and U.S. history, especially Civil War and World War II history.
• Coerte Van Voorhies, 65, died on October 31, 2021 after a three-month illness. Coerte grew up in South Pasadena, California where he developed an abiding love of mountains while hiking with the Boy Scouts. After graduating from South Pasadena High School in 1974, he attended Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, where he graduated in 1978 with a degree in physics. He subsequently earned a doctorate in Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1984. He and his wife, Wendy, then moved to Maryland so he could pursue geophysical research at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) where he worked in geodynamics organizations. After twenty-eight years at GSFC, he retired as a senior scientist in 2012.
• Arlene S. Buarque de Macedo, 84, real estate investor, engineer, and entrepreneur, died on November 1, 2021. Born in New York as World War II was about to break out, Arlene spent her early formative years playing the accordion in the Bronx. Arlene studied mathematics at George Washington University and continued graduate school studies in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. She left Pennsylvania to work at the Goddard Space Flight Center, where she worked on the Apollo project and calculated trajectories for the moon shot. She continued her education at the Catholic University of America, where she received her MS in aerospace engineering. She later started a successful business investing in real estate in Maryland and Washington, D.C.
• Edward Anthony Bielecki, 83, of Ellicott City, Maryland died on November 5, 2021, just 2 months after losing his beloved wife of 60 years, Patricia Bielecki. He was born on October 1, 1938 in Jersey City, New Jersey. He attended Stevens Institute of Technology on a 4-year academic scholarship. At Stevens, he played varsity basketball and graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Engineering. Shortly after graduation from college, he worked as an engineer at RCA. He subsequently earned his Master of Science and became an aerospace engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 1969. Edward started his career working on Apollo XI and, after many satellite programs in between, ended his career with the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) program. After retiring from a 30-year career at NASA, he worked as a consultant to NASA for an additional 5 years.
• Dario Emilio Galoppo, 85, of Cocoa Beach, FL and Odenton, MD, died on November 28. Dario was born in Union City, NJ and received his engineering degrees from Farleigh Dickinson University and New York University. He moved to Bowie, MD with his family in 1973. In addition to working at GSFC, he was very involved with the Bowie Soccer Association. It was during his work-related trips to Kennedy Space Center that he discovered his love for Cocoa Beach, FL where he and his wife, Nancy, spent the majority of their retirement years. Visitation and a memorial will be held on Friday, December 3, from 10-11:30am at Donaldson Funeral Home in Odenton. Additional visitation hours will be held from 11:30-1pm at the home of his son, David, 807 Lamoka Dr., Odenton.

FROM THE GODDARD ARCHIVES — IT HAPPENED IN DECEMBER:

December 7, 2001 Delta-II launched TIMED, to study the influences and dynamics of the sun on the mesosphere and lower thermosphere.

December 11, 1971 Scout launched Ariel-4, a cooperative US/UK mission to conduct ionosphere research.

TREASURER’S REPORT: Treasurer Jackie Gasch received tax-deductible donations from Steven Smith, Joseph Bradekamp, Ellen Herring, Carrol Dudley, David Zillig and Karen & Robert Defazio.