Saudi ARAMCO World
May/June 2013
Fifty-two years ago, as Soviet cosmonauts and US astronauts were first
venturing into space, another space program was also taking off – in
Lebanon.
Yes, in the early 1960’s, the country of 1.8 million people,
one-quarter the size of Switzerland, was launching research rockets
that reached altitudes high enough to get the attention of the Cold
War superpowers.
But the Lebanese program was more about attitude than altitude:
Neither a government nor a military effort, this was a science club
project founded by a first-year college instructor and his
undergraduate students. And while post-Sputnik amateur rocketry was on
the rise, mostly in the us, no amateurs anywhere won more public
acclaim than the ones in Lebanon.
MANOUGIAN COLLECTION
Manoug Manougian, right, with members of the Haigazian College Rocket
Society, which he founded in 1960. It later became the Lebanese Rocket
Society.
But that is forgotten history now, says Manoug Manougian, now 77 and a
mathematics professor at the University of Southern Florida in Tampa.
He leads me into a conference room where he has set out on a table
file boxes filled with half-century-old newspapers, photographs and
16mm film reels.
`When I decided to leave, no one was interested to take care of all
this,’ says Manougian. `But I felt, even at that point, that it was a
part of Lebanese history.’
TOP: MANOUGIAN COLLECTION
Above: Manougian now teaches at the University of Southern Florida,
where he keeps newspaper front pages on his office wall. `It was a
part of Lebanese history,’ he says. Top: The Society launched its
first `tiny baby rockets’ at the mountain farm of one of its members.
Born in the Old City of Jerusalem, Manougian won a scholarship to the
University of Texas, and he graduated in 1960 with a major in math.
Right away, Haigazian College in Beirut was glad to offer him a job
teaching both math and physics. The college also made him the faculty
advisor for the science club, which Manougian reoriented by putting up
a recruitment sign that asked, `Do you want to be part of the
Haigazian College Rocket Society?’
He did this, he explains, because even as a boy, he loved the idea of
rockets. He recalls taking penknife in hand and carving into his desk
images of rocket ships flying to the moon. `It’s the kind of thing
that stays with you,’ Manougian says.
John Markarian, former head of the college, now 95, recalls thinking
it was `a rather harmless student activity. What a wonderful thing it
was.’ The first rocket, he says, `was the size of a pencil.’
Six students signed up, and in November 1960, the Haigazian College
Rocket Society (hcrs) was born. `It is not a matter of just putting
propellant in the tube and lighting it,’ says Manougian. Former hcrs
member Garo Basmadjian explains that at the time, `we didn’t have much
knowledge, so we looked at ways to increase the thrust of the rocket
by using certain chemicals.’ After dismissing gunpowder, they settled
on sulfur and zinc powders. Then they would pile into Manougian’s
aging Oldsmobile and head to the family farm of fellow student Hrair
Kelechian, in the mountains, where they would try to get their
aluminum tubes to do, well, anything.
`We had a lot of failures, really,’ says Basmadjian.
MANOUGIAN COLLECTION
1963 saw the launch of Cedar 3, a three-stage rocket that allegedly
broadcast “Long Live Lebanon” from its nose cone as it rose. Left: The
Cedar launches were commemorated on this postage stamp issued on
Lebanon’s independence day.
MANOUGIAN COLLECTION
But soon enough `it did fly some distance,’ Manougian adds.
The hcrs began using a pine-forested mountain northeast of Beirut to
shoot off the `tiny baby rockets,’ as Manougian calls them, each no
longer than half a meter (19″).
As they experimented, the rockets grew larger. By April 1961, two
months after the first manned Soviet orbital mission, the college’s
entire student body of 200 drove up for the launch of a rocket that
was more than a meter long (40″).
The launch tube aimed the rocket across an unpopulated valley, but at
ignition, Manougian recalls, the thrust pushed the `very primitive’
launcher backward, in the opposite direction, and instead of arcing up
across the valley, the rocket blazed up the mountain behind the
students.
MANOUGIAN COLLECTION
Launches at the military site of Dbayea, overlooking the Mediterranean
north of Beirut, drew crowds of spectators, journalists and
photographers.
`We had no idea what lay in that direction,’ says Manougian. To
investigate, the students started climbing, and on arrival at the
Greek Orthodox church on the peak, they came on puzzled priests
staring at the remains of the rocket, which had impacted the earth
just short of the church’s great oaken doors. Manougian calculated
that, even with the unplanned launch angle, considering thrust and
landing point, the rocket had reached an altitude of about a kilometer
(3300′), and he adds the bold claim that this was the first modern
rocket launched in the Middle East.
MANOUGIAN COLLECTION
Ballistics expert Lt. Youssef Wehbe (in uniform) began supporting the
rocket society in 1961, initially by allowing it access to an
artillery range on Mount Sannine.
The next day, Manougian got a call from Lieutenant Youssef Wehbe of
the Lebanese military. He cautioned that the hcrs couldn’t just go up
any old mountainside and shoot off rockets. They could, however, do it
as much as they wished under controlled conditions at the military’s
artillery range on Mt. Sannine. Wehbe, also in his 20’s, was a
ballistics expert, and he was more than intrigued. `Our first
success,’ says Manougian, came there at Mt. Sannine, where the rocket
they demonstrated for Wehbe soared 2.3 kilometers (7400′) into the
air.
Newspapers got wind of the launches, and they reported that the `Cedar
2C’ (named for the symbol of Lebanon) had reached 14.5 kilometers
(47,500′). `Obviously, that’s not yet the moon distance of 365,000
kilometers. But the Lebanese aren’t after that, they’re after
technique,’ stated the report.
Under Wehbe’s supervision, hcrs developed two-stage and then
three-stage rockets, each bigger than the last and soaring higher and
farther.
In the papers, the rocket men were portrayed as both brawny and
brainy, and they were the talk of Lebanon. A fan club of prominent
Lebanese – mostly women – formed the Comité d’encouragement du Groupe
Haigazian. In the photos and films of the launches, one can see
generals deferring to college kids in hcrs hardhats and eagerly posing
in the press photos with them. Even Lebanese president Fuad Chehab
invited Manougian and his students to the palace for a photo op.
`We were just having fun and doing something we all wanted to do,’
says Basmadjian. `When the president came into the picture and gave us
some money, it took off.’
Three thousand years ago, the Phoenicians, who lived on today’s
Lebanese coast but traded as far away as England, were pioneers of
celestial navigation using Polaris, the North Star, recognized by
other cultures as the `Phoenician star.’
Today, natives of Lebanon are helping lead the way to the stars.
`As a child in Lebanon, I was an avid reader of books about Sinbad,
Ali Baba, Ibn Battuta, Captain Cook, Magellan and Columbus, wondering
how exciting it was for these explorers to anticipate what they were
going to see and discover,’ says Charles Elachi, who for 12 years has
directed the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. `I
lead a team of 5000 explorers in defining objectives that seem almost
impossible, then going ahead and implementing them. In the last few
decades, we have visited every planet in the solar system and
discovered volcanoes on Io, geysers on Enceladus, lakes on Titan and
river beds on Mars.’
At Princeton University, Edgar Choueiri is director and chief
scientist of the Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory.
`Plasma rockets differ from chemical rockets, which were the focus of
the Haigazian group and which have been the standard means for
launching and propelling spacecraft into space,’ he says. The rockets
Choueiri is developing use magnetic fields and electrically charged
gases (plasmas) to produce thrust, and they are intended for cargo and
manned missions to the moon and Mars. The first toy Choueiri remembers
from his childhood in Lebanon was a water-propelled rocket that he
launched with his father. `It was a poetic moment for me when, decades
later, I found myself working, under nasa funding, on a plasma rocket
concept that uses water as propellant,’ he says.
George Helou is the director of the Infrared Processing and Analysis
Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), also in
Pasadena, California, and of nasa’s Herschel Science Center. He says
it was one of his teachers at the American University of Beirut,
Pierre Monoud, who was also a faculty advisor to the lrs, who
`encouraged me to pursue astrophysics.’ Helou has provided research
and management for every major infrared astronomy project launched by
nasa and the European Space Agency. He researches galaxies, and in
particular how they turn gas and dust into stars. `The starry nights
of Lebanon’s mountains attracted me to the cosmos,’ says Helou.
`Astrophysics has been and still is a wonderful journey.’
LEFT: JET PROPULSION LABORATORY / CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY;
CENTER: CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; RIGHT: EPPDYL / PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
`We were members of a scientific society. We felt good about it,’ says
Simon Aprahamian, another former student. `But it didn’t feel like
what the us or ussr were doing. It’s a small country, Lebanon. People
felt, `This is something happening in our country. Let’s get
involved.”
Launches now drew hundreds of spectators to the site overlooking the
Mediterranean Sea at Dbayea, north of Beirut, and Haigazian itself
became known as `Rocket College.’ As the hcrs was now the country’s
pride, its name changed to the Lebanese Rocket Society (lrs).
ABOVE AND BELOW: MANOUGIAN COLLECTION
Cedar 4 was the society’s most powerful rocket. newspapers claimed
that it reached a maximum height between 145 and 200 kilometers
(90-125 mi), though the reality was surely much less. For Manougian,
however, the rockets and their launches were not about setting
records, but about teaching future scientists.
Lebanese weren’t the only ones watching. Both superpowers, according
to Manougian, had `cultural attachés’ observing the launches, and he
believes they did more than that. `My papers were always out of place
on my desk,’ he says, and he recalls once leaving a note: `My filing
cabinet I am leaving open. I have nothing to hide. But please don’t
mess up my desk!’
One night in 1962, Manougian was taken in the back of a limousine to a
factory in the heart of downtown Beirut. There, he was introduced to
Shaykh Sabah bin Salim Al-Sabah of Kuwait, who offered to fund
Manougian’s experiments generously if he moved them to Kuwait.
Manougian hesitated, recalling the commitment he made to himself when
he accepted the post at Haigazian: `Don’t stay too long. You only have
a bachelor’s degree.’ More than a private lab, Manougian wanted to get
back to Texas to get his master’s.
Before Manougian left for Texas, however, he sat down with Wehbe to
plan two launches for Lebanese Independence Day, November 21, in both
1963 and 1964. The rockets would be called Cedar 3 and Cedar 4, and
each would have three stages. They would dwarf what went before in
both size and strength: seven meters (22′) long, weighing in at 1270
kilograms (2800 lbs) and capable of rising an estimated 325 kilometers
(200 mi) and covering a range of nearly 1000 kilometers (about 620
mi), the rockets would generate some 23,000 kilograms (50,000 lbs) of
thrust to hit a top speed of 9000 kilometers per hour (5500 mph). From
the nose cone, a recording of the Lebanese national anthem would be
broadcast.
Today, historians regard it as more likely that the rocket was
accidentally discovered, rather than invented, by the Chinese during
the Sung Dynasty between 960 and 1279 ce. And although historians have
pinpointed reports of `rockets’ used in 13th-century battles, Frank H.
Winter, curator emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and
Space Museum in Washington, D.C., sees them as isolated incidents of
the use of `gunpowder-type weapons’ and not necessarily rockets, which
are distinguished, he says, by being self-propelled.
There is an intriguing manuscript, dating from between 1270 and 1280,
written by a Syrian military engineer named Hasan al-Rammah. His book,
Al-Furusiyya wa al-Manasib al-Harbiyya (The Book of Military
Horsemanship and Ingenious War Devices), describes uses for gunpowder
as well as the first process for the purification of potassium
nitrate, a key ingredient. He also includes 107 recipes for gunpowder
and 22 recipes for rockets, which he called al-siham al-khatai
(`Chinese arrows’). Al-Rammah astonishes any contemporary reader by
describing and illustrating one rocket-propelled device that looks
like a scarab beetle. He called it `the egg which moves itself and
burns.’ Comprised of two pans fastened together and filled with
`naphtha, metal filings and good mixtures’ (likely containing
saltpeter), it had two rudders and was propelled by a large rocket. It
seems to have been designed to ride on the surface of the water as a
kind of torpedo.
Ahmad Yousef al-Hassan, the late scholar of Islamic technology,
concluded that this book `cannot be the invention of a single person,’
and thus the `al-Rammah rocket’ could possibly be an even earlier
invention.
Was it history’s first rocket? `This is really hard to pin down
exactly,’ says Winter. `Its appearance in the work of al-Rammah shows
that the rocket was known in the Arab world by … about 1280.’ He
adds that al-Rammah `clearly used `Chinese materials,’ i.e., terms and
sources.’ Thus, at the very least, the knowledge of gunpowder and
rockets in the Eastern Mediterranean would argue for the exchange of
scientific knowledge among the leading civilizations of the time.
On November 21, 1963, a model of Cedar 3 was paraded through Beirut’s
streets to great applause. The cover of the souvenir booklet shows a
rocket overflying the city. For Cedar 4, Lebanon issued commemorative
postage stamps showing the rocket leaving Earth’s atmosphere. On
launch day, 15,000 people showed up, along with generals and even the
president.
MANOUGIAN COLLECTION
In those years, Manougian recalls, the “rocket boys” were celebrities
and Haigazian College was “rocket college.” Above, Manougian answers a
journalist’s questions after a launch. The last rocket, Cedar 10, flew
in 1967, after Manougian had returned to the us to earn his doctorate.
Then, Cold War politics shut down the program.
The newspapers reported with national pride that the rockets flew into
`space’ and landed on the far side of Cyprus. The altitudes that were
published varied from 145 to 200 kilometers (90-125 mi). The actual
figures, however, are likely more modest. `That was totally wishful,’
says Ed Hart, the Haigazian physics professor who took over as faculty
advisor to the lrs. `It never came close. We kept our mouths shut
[because] it was not a student matter anymore. It had become a social,
society kind of matter.’
For Manougian, Wehbe told him that according to calculations, the
rockets achieved their aims. Hart, whose specialty is science
education, brings it back to empirical achievement: `We were teaching
students a great deal, and that is what we came for: the mystery and
structure of forces.’
In 1964, master’s degree in hand, Manougian returned to Lebanon, and
again collaborated with Wehbe on a few more launches. By then, world
powers were interested: France supplied the rocket fuel; the us
invited Wehbe to Cape Canaveral.
Cedar 8 was the last lrs rocket. Launched in 1966, it was a two-stage,
5.7-meter (18′) rocket with a range of 110 kilometers (68 mi) – a long
way from the pencil-sized rockets of five years earlier. `We were
launching in the evening, and we put lights on top of the second stage
to be able to witness the separation. There were no hitches. It took
off beautifully, the separation was fairly obvious, nothing exploded
and it landed at the time it was supposed to land. To me that was a
perfect launch,’ says Manougian, still in awe 50 years on.
Under Manougian’s guidance, a new rocket society at usf is exploring
rockets that use plasma engines.
By 1966 Manougian grew concerned about the extent of military
involvement. `I’d accomplished what I’d come there to accomplish. It
was time for me to get my doctoral degree and do what I love most,
which was teaching,’ he says. He left in August, and the Lebanese
Rocket Society was no more.
But under military auspices, a last Lebanese rocket, Cedar 10, flew in
1967. According to Manougian, Wehbe told him that French president
Charles de Gaulle soon pressured President Chehab to shut down the
rocket project for geopolitical reasons.
Decades of political turbulence followed, and the story of the lrs lay
hidden away in Manougian’s boxes.
Two years ago, science and engineering students at the University of
Southern Florida approached Manougian to set up a rocket society. `My
students did this 50 years ago,’ he replied, adding, `What can you do
now that’s innovative?’ That’s how he became faculty advisor of the
Society of Aeronautics and Rocketry (soar), which is exploring rockets
powered by electromagnetism and nano-materials. As in Beirut, he says,
`the important thing is not the rocket. It is the scientific venture.’
`Soar’ is an apt metaphor for all involved. With the hcrs/lrs rocket
projects, Lebanon punched well above its weight. Wehbe retired as a
brigadier general. Manougian went on to win teaching awards, and he is
loved by his students now as then. Many of the lrs students, and
others inspired by them, went on to excel in scientific pursuits.
`Most of us come from very humble beginnings. But we had some brains
and we studied hard,’ says Basmadjian.
`Did that experience help with regard to making new inventions?’ asks
another former student, Hampar Karageozian, who later studied at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founded several
ophthalmological drug companies. `Yes, it did. Because it completely
changed my attitude. The attitude that we could say that nothing is
impossible, we really have to think about things, we really have to
try things. And it might work!’
Sheldon Chad ([email protected]) is an award-winning screenwriter and
journalist for print and radio. From his home in Montreal, he travels
widely in the Middle East, West Africa, Russia and East Asia. He will
be reporting from Chad for his next story for Saudi Aramco World.
See Photos at
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201303/the.forgotten.apogee.of.lebanese.rocketry.htm