Interview with Nancy G. Roman

Sullivan 00:00

Talking with Nancy Roman on 16th June 1978, at IAU Symposium in College Park, Maryland. And could you start off by telling me what your educational background was and how you first came in contact with radio astronomy?

Roman 00:14

My educational background was as an astronomer. Both my undergraduate and my graduate degrees were in astronomy. I did my thesis work and the first part of the work after my thesis on open clusters and the use of open clusters for calibrating absolute magnitudes and spectral types. And then I got from that, I guess basically from the cluster motion work into galactic structure. And I did a fairly major amount on high-velocity stars. Actually, I did spectral types of bright stars, intermediate late type bright stars, and discovered the weakening of spectral lines as a function of increasing space velocity. And from that I got into the galactic structure work, high-velocity stars, that type of thing.

Sullivan 01:02

What school was this where you got your degree?

Roman 01:03

This was in Chicago.

Sullivan 01:04

In Chicago?

Roman 01:04

Yes. And I actually stayed on in Chicago on the faculty for another six years. And I was working, getting into the problem of metal abundances in stars as a function both of Galactic z-distance and of interarm region at the time I left Yerkes. The reason I got into radio astronomy, two reasons. First, to be quite honest, I felt as a woman, I had no future in the University. I could stay there until the tenure decision came up and that would be it. And I decided I'd leave when a good job came along instead of waiting until I had to leave. And the job in radio astronomy came along. And I felt that in 1955, it was obvious that the radio astronomy had a great deal to contribute to galactic structure. And since I was interested in that subject, it seemed like a good opportunity.

Sullivan 02:04

But you had no background in radio astronomy

Roman 02:06

No, I had no background at all in radio astronomy, at all. You asked what my first contact was. I guess my first contact was a couple of years earlier. You may remember Reber did his work not too far from Yerkes. He was in Wheaton, Illinois, which was, what, 40, 50 miles. And so, he had come up to Yerkes--

Sullivan 02:27

I've talked to him in great detail.

Roman 02:28

--from time to time and given a couple of colloquia on radio astronomy and that was my--

Sullivan 02:34

And you were impressed by this?

Roman 02:35

Interested, I'd say, rather than impressed. That was a few years earlier, of course, but by 1955, 21 cm work had come along and it was very clear that radio astronomy did have a major future in the galactic structure area. I think we've seen at this symposium how strong the radio astronomy has become in this area.

Sullivan 02:57

Sure. What was the motivation of NRL? Did they want an optical astronomer to beef up the astronomy side of things, do you think, or?

Roman 03:04

I don't know why NRL was interested in an optical astronomer per se. They, of course, had been in radio astronomy, had gotten into it from radar, wartime radar, and certainly had equipment in the forefront of the field in particularly the high-frequency work, higher frequencies getting into the low centimeter, and even the millimeter region.

Sullivan 03:30

They seem like [crosstalk]--

Roman 03:30

The person who hired me was Hagen. And by the time I got there, Hagen had left for Project Vanguard. And actually, I don't know whether this is something you want to write. I found out years later that I was a real embarrassment when I came to NRL, that they really didn't know what-- Hagen had hired me and then left. And the people who were there then just hadn’t the slightest idea what they were going to do with me.

Sullivan 03:58

So, it probably must have been just solely his initiative.

Roman 04:01

Yeah, I think so. I think he may have felt, and this is something to check with him, that someone with a more classical astronomical background could provide some ballast to the group. I think without being egotistical, and I eventually proved to be rather useful, and I think they were genuinely sorry to have me leave. Main reason I left was not that I didn't still believe in the potential of radio astronomy and galactic structure, but in that era, you essentially had to build your own equipment. And the people who did build the equipment weren't terribly happy about sharing it with someone who hadn't taken part in the construction. And while I was still enthusiastic about the science to come out of it, I just didn't feel like I wanted to start over and become an electronic engineer. So, I was beginning to look around for another job by the time I did the job and NASA did come up although I had certain regrets.

Sullivan 05:05

Yeah. Now, just get it straight now. You left NRL in what year?

Roman 05:08

Early '59.

Sullivan 05:09

So, we're talking about three and a half years?

Roman 05:11

Three and a half years, yes.

Sullivan 05:12

So, at NRL. Well, what did you find when you came to this group? What were they working on, and what was the style of the group and so forth?

Roman 05:19

Well, the style of the group was fairly individualistic. Lilley, I think, was there at the time, if not, he came shortly afterwards. He and Connie [Mayer] were working on 21 cm work pretty well exclusively in the 21 cm area. Townes was beginning to come down with a graduate student of his.

Sullivan 05:41

Bringing his maser.

Roman 05:42

Yeah, I'm trying to think of the graduate student's name.

Sullivan 05:44

[Elsaper?]. Giordmaine?

Roman 05:45

No. Giordmaine. He's now at Bell Labs. It was Giordmaine. And they were beginning the work of a major for hydrogen line work. They actually did get it on the telescope, not while I was there in a very useful practical way. Bob Coates was working on the Sun at-

Sullivan 06:08

Eight millimeters.

Roman 06:09

8 mm, and actually trying to get into 4 mm work on the Sun, and did do some 4 mm work on the Sun in spite of the fact that climate in Washington area is not ideal. I worked on this 400 MHz survey with Ben Yaplee. Again, he built the equipment.

Sullivan 06:28

Who was it that decided? Was it pretty much just what everyone did what he wanted to?

Roman 06:31

Pretty much, yeah.

Sullivan 06:33

It wasn't any overall director who was trying to coordinate this?

Roman 06:35

Well, McLean, of course, was the director. But people had pretty much of a free hand. Well, yeah, like any other organization, you had to go in and argue for the money. But if you could convince people what you wanted to do was sensible, you had a free hand. Yaplee, of course, was working on the lunar radar. Then Grant was working primarily-- he did a little bit of work in radio astronomy. But he was working primarily on backscattering characteristics of water surface and sort of thing that Yaplee has gotten into much more recently.

Sullivan 07:12

I don't know this fellow, Grant.

Roman 07:14

Charles Grant. He's now at Goddard. I guess he's now retired. He was at Goddard for quite a while. There actually were two major pieces of work that were going on that were of particular interest to the Navy. Well, the Navy was very interested in the lunar radar work too, for reasons that later became obvious. But--

Sullivan 07:39

You're referring to the whole Sugar Grove thing and so forth.

Roman 07:41

Yeah. Right. But Grant was doing this backscattering work from the sea surface as a measure of sea state. I actually got involved with that fairly deeply for a while also. And then the other piece of work that was going on that I got involved with, to a small extent, or not terribly productively, was the question of navigation under cloud cover.

Sullivan 08:10

Radio sextants.

Roman 08:11

Radio sextants, that type of thing.

Sullivan 08:13

Let me ask you this. You brought it up about the point of view of the Navy, of course, ONR did a lot of funding in the late '50s and this would just be another example of it, but was their motivation military in all respects or were they just--?

Roman 08:29

No, I don't think so. I think ONR basically felt that the country would be served by strong basic research, and well, most of the ONR work had to be justified by some sort of military tie-in. The people who did the justifying and the people who accepted the justification accepted very, very broad interpretations of what was of military interest, and in fact--

Sullivan 09:03

So, this is really for Congress’s benefit more than--?

Roman 09:05

I don't know whose benefit it was from.

Sullivan 09:07

Everybody's flaking on it.

Roman 09:07

It was done and it was honest, but to be perfectly honest, the major initiative both on the part of people like the scientists at NRL and of the people in ONR who were funding university groups, was to try to support good basic research. Now It wasn't entirely that. Clearly, a lot of the radio astronomy work which they were supporting had clear spin-off in the development of receiver techniques and the development, for that matter, even of antenna techniques. But I think basically the receiver techniques and pushing the forefront of technology in receivers is probably the main military interest in the workplace they were supporting.

Sullivan 09:51

Although you could probably do this more efficiently by just developing sensitive receivers.

Roman 09:55

No, I don't think you could.

Sullivan 09:57

No?

Roman 09:58

Research doesn't work that way. You don't just say, "Develop a better receiver," without having an idea of what you're going to do with the receiver. And, also, you want to actually use a receiver because you improve it by using it and finding out what's wrong with it as you work with it. And by supporting radio astronomy, they were able to get the receiver development done in the universities on an unclassified basis. And I think that-- not just radio astronomy, not just receivers, but research in general, has proved much more productive on an unclassified basis.

Sullivan 10:40

That's an interesting comment. People are perhaps more motivated when they have something to go after with this receiver that they're developing.

Roman 10:47

I think they're more motivated when they have something to go after. As I say, I think the fact that it's important to try them out, fiddle with them as you're working with them is a help, I think that simply the fact that being unclassified, you know whom you're competing with, you have the sense of competition, but you also have the sense of sharing information. So, both things stimulated.

Sullivan 11:11

Proper scientific [inaudible], sort of speak. And you don't think it was particularly different at NRL than the university funding?

Roman 11:21

Not really, except I think that there was a certain incentive for those of us at NRL to try to tackle some problems which were specifically Navy problems, partly because we became more aware of them, partly because there were people at NRL who are working these problems, and they talked with us. There's just a communication interchange that would get us involved in some of these things. In fact, I found myself at NRL getting involved with things that were far removed from astronomy simply because being an astronomer, by training, I had some optics background, although there was an optics group in NRL, and it's very good, but I had a different view. I was familiar with remote sensing in a way--

Sullivan 12:07

Right. Exactly. Sure. That's nice.

Roman 12:09

--and radiation transfer and problems like that. So, I got involved in quite a number of things outside of astronomy per se, simply because I had a background which was different from most of the people there.

Sullivan 12:22

While I'm asking general questions before we get to the specifics, to what do you attribute the success of the NRL group at that time? It was one of the leading ones in the world, of course. What do you think were the key ingredients?

Roman 12:34

Well, I think it was first, the foresight of Hagen in getting a 50 ft dish and in pushing techniques to higher and higher frequency. I think secondly, they had a very good, competent group of people, I think. Coates, with his receiver work at very high frequencies, was probably as good as anyone available. McLean getting Townes and Giordmaine down there to push the hydrogen work. Frankly, they probably had more funding than most of the radio astronomy groups at that time.

Sullivan 13:10

Yeah, that's true also. Okay, let's go back to specifically what you worked on. What was the first project you got involved in?

Roman 13:18

You can probably tell that from my papers better than I can remember.

Sullivan 13:20

Well, the one with Haddock on modeling nonthermal radio sources?

Roman 13:23

Yeah, I think that probably was very early because I'm not basically a theorist, as you may know, if you've looked at any rest of my record, and I don't think I would have gotten-- well, I wouldn't have tackled a theoretical problem as a major problem. It was just something that you get into a group to start talking. In fact, as I said, when I got to NRL, I was an embarrassment because they weren't quite sure what they wanted to do with me. And I was coming into a government laboratory and I thought, "Well, this will be very different from the University. They'll have a very specific job they want me to do, and they'll tell me what they want." And I got there, they were all very polite, introduced me around, gave me a desk, that was it. And I had a [policy?] in Bracewells's book on radio astronomy, and I decided, "Well, I'll sit down and read that and learn something about the field." I got through that and still, nobody had suggested anything for me. So, I decided, well, it was about time for me to keep myself busy. And I had brought enough work with me that I-- optical work that I didn't have any problems keeping busy. And I just saw to it that I talked to people at lunch, and I'd go around and see what they were doing and just began to get involved with the work there. And I think that's how I got involved with Haddock on this theoretical paper. We talk about things and start thinking, and working from there.

Sullivan 14:53

Do you remember the main thrust of what you were getting at in this paper?

Roman 14:56

No, I don't as a matter of fact.

Sullivan 14:59

I haven't had a chance to look at anything more than a two-sentence summary myself. Can you remember more the general state of what radio sources were thought to be? I mean, was it clear that they were synchrotron radiation--

Roman 15:10

No, not at that time.

Sullivan 15:11

--in '56?

Roman 15:13

I don't think so. I think the synchrotron explanation really didn't come out until '57 or '58. If I remember right. I know my memory is pretty bad.

Sullivan 15:22

Well no, Shklovsky suggested it in '53.

Roman 15:25

Was it that long? Well, then I guess the answer is yes. The synchrotron must have been accepted by then.

Sullivan 15:29

Well, but no, no. No, he suggested it, but it did not have general acceptance in the West until many years later. So, I think your statement is probably right, as far as--

Roman 15:37

You've been looking into this lately, and I'm afraid I haven't. One of the things I find with time is that chronology gets confused.

Sullivan 15:46

Sure. Well, going down my--

Roman 15:49

I guess, really, the symposium in Paris in about '58--

Sullivan 15:55

Right. That was '58.

Roman 15:56

--was the time when the--

Sullivan 15:57

That's right.

Roman 15:58

--nonthermal--

Sullivan 16:00

Precisely.

Roman 16:00

--explanation really began to be accepted.

Sullivan 16:02

For the background and for sources. Right. But speaking of such things, you were an editor for the two IAU symposiums on the same subject as this one--

Roman 16:12

Yes.

Sullivan 16:13

--the structure of our galaxy. And I would be interested in how you saw the intermingling of radio and optical techniques for going at this particular problem, or in general. Or was it pretty much people not talking to each other?

Roman 16:29

It was very much people not talking with one another. I was unusual, I won't say unique, in trying to work in radio astronomy with an astronomical background. Now, in Holland, Oort had gotten, was beginning to get a group together that had both astronomy. It had an astronomy background and was getting involved in radio astronomy. But outside of the Dutch group, the radio astronomers and the optical astronomers were really pretty well separate. Ed Lilley was probably the first person who was trained in an astronomy department in radio astronomy. Bok obviously saw the potential of radio astronomy and introduced radio astronomy to the Harvard department, but--

Sullivan 17:17

These are the exceptions.

Roman 17:18

--I think that was the only place in the country at that time where you had radio astronomy in an astronomy department. And as I said, the feeling of radio astronomy groups were that you had to build your own equipment, which means you had to have a very intense electronic engineering background because the equipment, for you to be competitive, had to really be in the forefront of the art. And it's just very, very difficult to have the kind of background that you require for that and at the same time a strong astronomy background. And the groups really did not talk to one another very much in that period.

Sullivan 17:55

Even when brought together at these meetings, it was pretty much--

Roman 17:58

They weren't brought together all that much at these meetings. The radio astronomers really were not getting involved in galactic structure in any significant way at that time.

Sullivan 18:08

With the exception, perhaps, of Oort.

Roman 18:10

With the exception of Oort and the Dutch group, which was a clear exception. And sure, the 21 cm work, they were beginning to work into galactic structure problems with that. But--

Sullivan 18:20

And of course, the whole question was--

Roman 18:21

--just beginning.

Sullivan 18:22

--the halo and--

Roman 18:23

The question of the halo and was it real?

Sullivan 18:26

What was it made of?

Roman 18:27

But that was more the radio astronomers.

Sullivan 18:30

The optical people didn't care about that.

Roman 18:30

The optical people didn't get involved in that very much. I may be divorcing - excuse me, excuse me - divorcing these two groups too strongly in my memory, but my memory is that there really was discouragingly little intercommunication except in the Dutch group and the beginnings of it at Harvard under the influence of Bok.

Sullivan 18:54

Well, just to follow this line further, how long did the situation go on? Or is it still going on [crosstalk]?

Roman 19:01

No, I think it's not going on. I would say it went on until the early '60s. And again, as I said, my chronological memory is not good. But I think by '61 or '62 that the groups were beginning to get together. And certainly, the development of groups like the NRAO, where you had a national facility with equipment that was available to people, meant that people with an astronomical background could begin to get into the field without having the problems of designing their own, building their own.

Sullivan 19:38

Well, I think I would agree with you for the American case, but the--

Roman 19:42

The Australians were--

Sullivan 19:43

And the British.

Roman 19:44

--beginning to get in a little earlier. Well, the British group--

Sullivan 19:46

Well, no. I mean, as far as this amalgamation into astronomy as a whole.

Roman 19:50

The British, really, I don't think they got together much sooner than we did, do you?

Sullivan 19:56

No. No. But I'm saying that--

Roman 19:59

It was later.

Sullivan 20:00

Later.

Roman 20:00

Yeah. Okay.

Sullivan 20:01

And one can argue that still, the radio groups are very distinct. I mean, not as much as they used to.

Roman 20:05

Not as distinct. No.

Sullivan 20:06

No. No.

Roman 20:07

I don't know that they're that much more distinct now like some of the other--

Sullivan 20:10

Well, they've never developed the philosophy, though, of a national facility--

Roman 20:14

No. That's true.

Sullivan 20:15

--that you just come and use as an optical astronomer or radio astronomer.

Roman 20:17

Yup. That's right. But no, I think the British radio astronomers and optical astronomers have been talking for the last decade. But--

Sullivan 20:24

Oh yes. Oh yes. I didn't mean to say that.

Roman 20:27

Yeah. And even Australia, there it was the radio astronomers that developed it. And they didn't really get together very strongly with the optical astronomers, except in the solar area, until fairly late. Now, in the solar area, they did. The solar astronomers got together--

Sullivan 20:43

Yeah. CSIRO.

Roman 20:43

--with radio quite early. Giovanelli and that group.

Sullivan 20:48

I was just down there talking to them a few months ago. Okay. Now, the next publication I had that you were involved with was with Ben Yaplee to do with 440 MHz.

Roman 21:00

Yeah, right. And that was the major thing that I did do. And the idea there was to try to, well, there had been mapping of the Galaxy at lower frequencies. And you had this nonthermal background, and it was an attempt to extend it down and bridge the gap between the 21 cm line where there was both continuum and line survey work. And the low frequency.

Sullivan 21:30

Was this using the 84 ft dish?

Roman 21:32

No, the 84 ft dish didn't exist at that time. This was using the 50 ft dish at NRL, which was an interesting experience in itself, as you can guess.

Sullivan 21:42

Well, in what sense now? What do you mean?

Roman 21:44

Well, we were two miles from National Airport with airplanes flying in all night.

Sullivan 21:52

Loads of interference.

Roman 21:53

I got beautiful radar echoes from the airplanes every time one landed.

Sullivan 21:58

Oh, I see. You mean actual direct interference from the planes. I was thinking of radar interference from all the activity.

Roman 22:03

Well, what you got was radar reflected off planes coming into the dish and saturating the dish every time there was an airplane in your beam. And of course, you could not work in the daytime because the noise, the area was just much too noisy. And even at night, we had serious interference problems at times, so.

Sullivan 22:23

What about the dish itself? Was the pointing adequate for what you wanted to do?

Roman 22:25

The pointing was adequate. Well, of course, the dish was designed to go down for the 21 cm work, and it actually was pretty good at 21 cm. So, at 67 cm, no problem at all. It was not the easiest dish to operate. It was an old gun mount. And the thing I remember most vividly about it is that it's a solid dish and it was stowed face up. And so, after it rained, you went out to move the-- you had to move the dish outside. There were controls outside for repointing it. Once you had it locked, it would track automatically, but you had to go outside to set--

Sullivan 23:09

Were you cranking or pushing buttons?

Roman 23:11

No, you were pushing. Well, it wasn't buttons. It was neither one they were levers, handles. But you got there after rain and point the dish and you were doused with a good shower of water to put it mildly.

Sullivan 23:29

It's still stowed there.

Roman 23:31

It's still stowed there. I don't see much evidence that they use it very much anymore.

Sullivan 23:35

No, I don't think they use it anymore.

Roman 23:36

Then, of course, I was involved with the 84 ft. That was finished just before I left.

Sullivan 23:44

In what sense were you involved in the design?

Roman 23:45

I wasn't involved much in the design. I was involved in some of the sighting and particularly, such jobs as the alignment of the polar axis, that type of thing. Things where an astronomical background would enter.

Sullivan 23:58

But what about the actual survey itself at 440? What was the main things that came out of it?

Roman 24:06

Well, the thing that I remember most vividly, and this was not the 440 as much as it was putting the 440 together with the other frequencies, was the complexity of the Galactic Center area. Beyond that, I frankly, at this point, don't remember a great deal that came out of it. Clearly, we did show that the radiation is beginning to be condensed to the Galactic Plane. We did not pick up the absorption that they were picking up at higher frequencies so it continued to peak as you go to lower Galactic latitudes. And we did pick up a few sources but I don't know that we-- Well, we did contribute to the spectra of--

Sullivan 24:51

Things like Cygnus A

Roman 24:52

Yeah. The various point sources, the strong point sources. I don't remember it as being a terribly Earth-shaking paper, to be perfectly honest.

Sullivan 25:00

Well, just struck me that perhaps the main survey you had to compare with with Reber’s back in '48.

Roman 25:07

Well, no, there was also the Cambridge survey. It wasn't early Cambridge survey.

Sullivan 25:12

Not the 480?

Roman 25:13

No, not the 480. [crosstalk]

Sullivan 25:16

The Reber’s was at 480.

Roman 25:17

Yeah. I mean, yeah, okay. There was nothing modern.

Sullivan 25:19

Right. Right. You had much higher sensitivity.

Roman 25:22

Yes, very much. And better beam width

Sullivan 25:24

Right. Well, not sure. 30 versus 50.

Roman 25:27

Yes, I think we had a somewhat better dish, too, and better pointing.

Sullivan 25:33

Okay, moving on, then. It seems that you also got involved in the radar astronomy effort.

Roman 25:39

Yeah, right.

Sullivan 25:39

By Ben Yaplee, I guess.

Roman 25:41

Well, there again, the main contribution that I guess I made was the astronomical background, the motion of the Moon.

Sullivan 25:49

What was libration and all that.

Roman 25:50

Yeah, right. And we did get involved somewhat with a bit of mapping at the moment along in that lunar radar.

Sullivan 25:58

Right. Right. Was this the first time that any mapping had been done? I got that impression from the abstracts here. You used two microsecond pulses.

Roman 26:08

The only other lunar radar work that I can remember going on at that time was the work at Fort Monmouth, which, of course, was the first group to actually get a signal from the Moon.

Sullivan 26:17

Way back in '46. Yeah. So, they were active in the late '50s also?

Roman 26:22

They were still active in the late '50s, yes. But I don't think that-- I don't know whether they just weren't using as sharp a pulse as we were using or what. They were definitely our competitors, but I don't really think that there was a strong competition as we gave them credit for.

Sullivan 26:41

Yeah, yeah. How did this idea come up? I mean, was this just radar people going -

Roman 26:49

I think so.

Sullivan 26:49

Oh, gee, let's see what we can do with the Moon.

Roman 26:52

Yeah, I think that was largely it. There was another program that people at NRL were involved in also that may have originally stimulated the idea of radar from the moon. I don't really know. And that was the study of so-called angels, atmospheric phenomena, from which they got radar echoes. Now, clearly some of the radar echoes were from insects, they had identified that. But they were also getting radar echoes from atmospheric discontinuities.

Sullivan 27:24

Right. This what’s called troposcatter now?

Roman 27:27

Well, it probably was at least, I imagine. I haven't followed tropospheric scattering and or angels either one in detail, since my guess is, yes, I think probably it also has to do-- also is not unrelated to the clear air turbulence problem, where they are finding that radar, but, well, not higher frequencies, because some of this angel work was at 1.25 cm water vapor line and are near the water vapor line.

Sullivan 27:57

This is going on in the radio astronomy branch?

Roman 27:59

Mm-hmm, to some extent. Not strongly at that time, but there had been-- before my time, there had been a substantial amount of work on angels in the branch and I wouldn't be surprised if, in the course of looking at things, echoes that they might not have picked up the Moon at some time and taking it from there. I don't really know. I think it was basically that they had the dish, they had the capability. Fort Monmouth had done it. It was clear that we had the capability. It was a sensible thing to do under the circumstances.

Sullivan 28:35

And then, I guess, while you were involved in the radar is about when you left?

Roman 28:39

Yes. Yes. It was still going on, I guess it continued for another 10 years after I left.

Sullivan 28:46

Yeah, I worked there for the first summer in that branch in '66 and helped observe, and I think it ended just about then, in '67 or so. One final question is you got involved in space astronomy in NASA, and part of that space astronomy was radio astronomy which I guess Fred Haddock was [crosstalk]. Could you just tell me how--?

Roman 29:07

Well, Haddock was involved--

Sullivan 29:10

Just a brief outline of how that came about.

Roman 29:12

[inaudible] my memory with names is horrible.

Sullivan 29:15

Well, I think Walsh.

Roman 29:16

Well, yeah, Dennis Walsh was with Haddock. No. I want don't want to say Papagiannis because he's in NASA now.

Sullivan 29:27

Oh, Papagiannis, or whatever, Boston.

Roman 29:29

Yeah, Papagiannis in Boston was involved at Harvard in those days. And then it was a little later that Stone came to Goddard and got involved with what was finally developed into the Radio Astronomy Explorer. Now, you asked me a question.

Sullivan 29:49

Well, I was just saying, how did this come about? Was this purely Haddock's idea and NASA was there so he tried to get some money?

Roman 29:56

Well, partly yes, partly no. The idea when I first went to NASA was to try to set up an astronomy program. And my feeling was that we should try to get observations in the entire spectral range that was not accessible from the ground. And clearly one of those ranges was the very low-frequency radio range. And so, I was on the lookout for something in that area. And as I say, both Haddock and Papagiannis working with Lilley, as a matter of fact, we're interested in that. The Harvard group got support from the Air Force, and we supported Haddock for the rocket work. Now, obviously, it was clear we had to go quite high. The program was not terribly productive, primarily because the electromagnetic interference in the rocket proved to be essentially insurmountable. Although actually, by the end of the program, Haddock was beginning to get results. The first flights were pretty well useless simply because of interference. But by the end, he was getting quiet enough information to get data. But he was obviously, in hindsight, running into the same thing that killed REA, and that was the atmospheric magnetospheric noise.

Sullivan 31:27

I didn't know there was a first satellite that was in too low in orbit or something.

Roman 31:30

Well, we had two satellites. The first one was not in a low orbit. It was in a pretty high orbit, but it was an Earth orbit. And the magnetosphere of the Earth turns out to be stronger than the magnetosphere of Jupiter so that it was just a very noisy background. So, we put the second one in orbit around the Moon so that the Moon would act as an occulting screen. So, we got a fair amount of solar data from the first one. But I would be tempted to say that the amount of Galactic data that came out of the first Radio Astronomy Explorer was pretty minimal.

Sullivan 32:07

Right. But this now is up into ‘68 or '9--

Roman 32:10

Yeah, this has been a-- no, well, it doesn't quite--

Sullivan 32:14

[inaudible] the first Radio Astronomy Explorer [inaudible]?

Roman 32:15

Was it that late? Didn't remember that it was quite that late, but it certainly was getting it's later than your period that you're worrying about. In fact, even Haddock's work is outside. Is actually '60, I think.

Sullivan 32:28

I’m not rigidly cutting off at '60. But how long did Haddock work on roughly? Do you remember?

Roman 32:32

Oh, I imagined around ‘65. That's just a guess, but it's about that.

Sullivan 32:37

Yeah, I'll ask him for more detail, but. Well, that pretty well covers it. Unless you can think of any other comments--

Roman 32:44

Oh, you're asking for personal experiences. I think there's one I think I could give you a human interest story. When we put up the 84 ft dish down at Maryland Point, there was obviously a question of facilities. So, there was a trailer which was sort of the general--

Sullivan 33:01

I know that trailer.

Roman 33:02

Yes. And so they put up Little Roman don't know if you ever ran into that. They put up a separate little house so I would have a place to stay. [laughter]

Sullivan 33:12

So that the men were in the trailer and you had a separate little shop.

Roman 33:15

Yeah. The amusing thing is that the one night I spent down there was so cold I moved into the trailer with the men. [laughter]

Sullivan 33:22

So, you only used this thing half a night or something?

Roman 33:24

Yeah. [laughter]

Sullivan 33:27

All right. Thank you very much. That ends the interview with Nancy Roman on 16th June '78.