FIGURE 9.2 Ernst Stuhlinger (courtesy of Patricia Miklik Doyle); Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Upper Atmospheric Research Group (courtesy of Johns Hopkins University APL); V2 rocket (courtesy of NASA Glenn Research Center); Wernher Von Braun (courtesy of NASA/MSFC).

atmosphere was like. Ernst Stuhlinger, also shown in Figure 9.2, was part of Von Braun’s group and had done his PhD thesis on the development of Geiger counters. He became the scientific liaison to the scientific community.

Shown in the lower left hand corner of Figure 9.2 is Jim Van Allen, looking as young as always, with a large group. At that time, he was with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and, as one might expect, when he came to town to fly the first rocket, he had his experiment ready and he flew it. Unfortunately, the rocket failed, but he did eventually get a successful flight, number 33. At the same time, Eric Crowther organized a rocket panel to distribute the V2 resources but he left shortly to go into industry. Van Allen took over as chairman of the group that evolved into the Rocket Upper Atmospheric Research Panel, finally the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel. Van Allen remained Chairman until NASA was established, and then the group dissolved. The Rocket Panel did not receive support from anybody. It met roughly three times a year and it was made up of people from universities, government laboratories, and industry.

This was Operation Paperclip and its successor programs. In the end some 67 V2s were fired. The V2s were followed by the Aerobee rocket, which could take a 100-pound payload through a 76-kilometer trajectory. The Aerobees were made by Aerojet under the supervision of Von Kármán and Frank Malina of JPL, and were eventually operated by NRL. The Aerobee was a revised version of the Corporal rocket. It steadily improved over the years and some 1037 Aerobees were fired.

Let’s return now to Van Allen. On the left of Figure 9.3 is Van Allen as a graduate student, at what is now the University of Iowa. The middle shot, shows him as a Lieutenant in New Guinea. Van Allen worked first at the Carnegie Institute on the proximity fuse, and so he was one of the people who was sent to the Pacific to introduce the rocket to the Navy. The photo on the right is Van Allen at his desk at the University of Iowa at the end of his career.

One of the technologies that Van Allen developed