LINCOLN JOURNAL & STAR Vol. 89, No. 28 Sunday, July 8, 1956; p. 1D ALL ABOARD MOON ROCKET TAKING OFF INVENTOR SEES THAT — PLUS MUCH MORE by Bem Price A space satellite is to be launched within the next two years. This is generally accepted as a certainty, even by some of the most conservative people. The next logical step in man's effort to make his dream of conquering space come true would be a manned rocket, perhaps just a manned satellite. Following that, the imagination can accept a rocket trip to the moon. Army, Navy and Air Force rocket developments have made the rocket to outer space (the space satellite) a probability. The rocket and trip to the moon should be logical extensions of the progress already made. A man who firmly believes in the probability of a rocket to the moon is Jacque Fresco, a consulting psychologist and inventor who has spent many of his 40 years delving into the problems of the future and has some firm opinions on where man is headed where man is headed — into outer space. Operator of the Scientific Research Laboratory in Los Angeles for seven years, Fresco gave form to his ideas of the future with rocket models he made for use in several science fiction movies. When he moved to Miami, Fla., recently, he took along photographs of the models, which he made available when interviewed by Dixie Gilliland of the Miami Herald. Two of his pictures are reproduced on this page. Refueling Point His ideas on the future: He likes the popular conception of a rocket ship for space travel. He believes a saucer-like space station using power generated by the sun is as possible as the basketball-size earth satellite now being developed. This space station, he says, would be a refueling station for space ships. He sees a gravity problem in the space station, but says it can probably be solved with electrostatic shoes. Otherwise, he says, life in the station should be only a little more complicated than on earth. He predicts that cell culture of meat and vegetables within 50 years will take care of the food problem. He expects an entirely new electronic world within the next 50 years. "After all, we never expected to see atomic energy in our time," he argues. In the year 2006, he foresees the world buzzing with flying arrowheads, elevators that move horizontally as well as vertically and cars that need no drivers. Fresco's cars are pictured as teardrop shapes topped with transparent plastic which automatically turns dark in the glare of sunlight. A photo-electric effect similar to the negative process makes possible the color change. No Collisions Proximity control will make collisions of cars impossible, Fresco says, but allow the door to slide open and the seat to swing out to meet the driver when he approaches. A button worn by the motorist would send out a signal to activate the door, he says. Fresco claims already to have invented an airplane de-icing device which operates on the principle of the repulsion of like electrical charges. His de-icer would measure the electric charge of each drop of rain or sleet and automatically give the wing (or the windshield of a car) the same charge. Moisture, he says, would be repelled and never strike the object so protected. Claiming a doctor's degree in psychology from Sierra State University of Los Angeles, Fresco was a corporal with the Air Force design development division at Wright Field for 18 months during World War II. He became interested in electronics while conducting psycho-logical and physiological studies of vision and the human mind, he says. In Los Angeles, he built his models of the world of tomorrow and at the same time worked as a movie technical adviser. He says that a Los Angeles firm is now perfecting his invention of stereopticon photographs which do not require a viewer for a three-dimensional effect. Remember ICBM If Fresco's predictions seem fantastic, remember that a few short years ago the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and proposed earth satellite would have seemed as much beyond the reach of man. At this time, however, missiles are being launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., which require a firing range reaching more than 1,000 miles across the Caribbean Sea. That range eventually will stretch onward for 5,000 miles and all of it will be needed to test the rocket missiles which are being developed. From this same rocket launching spot, the space satellite will be hurled skyward. This satellite will attain a speed of about 18,000 miles per hour and a height of 300 miles. It will circle the earth for an indefinite number of days before burning out in the earth's atmosphere as it starts back down. These developments are a fair cry from the German V-2 rocket , which was their forerunner. That missile could deliver a ton of high explosives 200 miles in five minutes. The ICBM the Air Force contemplates will fly 12 to 13 times the speed of sound on a trajectory carrying it into the stratosphere and from one continent to another. From the V-2 to the ICBM and the space satellite the time elapsed will be possibly a dozen years. Who says the momentum of the development program may not take man to the moon, or even to our sister planets? The only barrier may be the human one seen by the late Albert Einstein — the intercontinental ballistic missile with its atomic warhead. The first missile was a thrown rock. As Einstein said, if man succeeds in developing the ICBM and decides to use it, he may soon be back to throwing rocks. |