The Navy's "Project Rockoon"

Robert W. Kreplin '49, who is working for the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D. C., had a busy summer with "Project Rockoon." This project was an unusual series of upper atmosphere experiments in which ten balloon-supported rockets (Rockoons) were fired by radio signal from shipboard. The purpose of the experiment was to learn more about the effects of solar "storms" or "flares" on radio fadeouts. Kreplin and fellow scientists from the Naval Research Laboratory voyaged some 200 to 400 miles west of San Diego, Calif., on the USS Colonial from which the mammoth plastic balloons (68 feet in diameter) were launched. Each balloon lifted a 12-foot rocket carrying an instrument payload of 20 pounds.

The NRL experiment was the beginning for similar upper atmosphere tests to take place during the International Geophysical Year, 1957-1958. This is only one part of a program sponsored by the U. S. National Committee for the IGY of the National Academy of Sciences and by the National Science Foundation.

In "Project Rockoon" the NRL scientists timed the rocket firing with the occurrence of a radio fadeout or by an optical telescope attached to a television system. The rocket of an already launched balloon was then set off by a shipboard transmitter which, at the same time, turned on the electronic instruments in the rocket. In the next go seconds to two minutes the rocket was expected to soar to an altitude of 60 to 70 miles above the earth, the region of the ionosphere. Data from the rocket-borne instruments were radioed, or telemetered, back to the ship.

Kreplin has written that his part in the project "has been mainly to develop radio-systems for the detection of the disturb-ances to the ionosphere which accompany the solar flares." Since his year at Dartmouth as a teaching fellow in physics, 1950-51, Kreplin has been busy. Except for one year in New York City with the Solid State Research Institute, he has been with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D. C. He was one of the scientists who conducted preliminary experiments with "Rockoons" in the Arctic in 1954 and is one of the fortunate scientists who will be in Florida when the attempt is made to launch the first earth satellite. Originally from Cleveland, Kreplin and his wife now live in Washington with their four-year-old son, Gordon.