Moonward Bound

During a lull in the mundane battle to find out where it stands in political Washington, the beleaguered 16-month-old National Aeronautics and Space Administration last week finally got around to telling where it intends to go. Unwrapped before the House Science and Astronautics Committee was a ten-year plan of space exploration calling for 260 satellite and space-probe launchings during the '60s, beginning with twelve launchings this year. Highlights of NASA's timetable:

1960. Test launchings of half a dozen new satellites and space vehicles, including the use of the new Thor-Delta rocket to send an instrumented payload to the vicinity of the moon.

1961. Project Mercury man-in-space flight. First landing of a U.S. payload on the moon. Launching of the Atlas-Centaur vehicle, potentially capable of landing 700 Ibs. on the moon.

1963. Launching of the big-thrust Saturn vehicle, now under development by the NASA team headed by ex-German Rocketeer Wernher von Braun.

1964. Circumnavigation of the moon by an unmanned space ship.

1965-67. Programs leading to manned flight around the moon and to permanent space stations.

Beyond 1970. Manned trip to the moon.

To the sympathetic House committee, Dr. Hugh Dryden, NASA's deputy administrator, reported that NASA's original budget request of $923 million had been cut to $802 million by the Budget Bureau. But because of a quickened interest in speeding up such essential big-thrust engines as Saturn, said he, the President would shortly ask Congress for an additional $100 million.

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