In early August, 1962, Krick at last received an opportunity to show the space industry something of what he could do. He was invited to address a joint meeting of the Institute of Aerospace Sciences and the American Rocket Society on August 31.

"As I understand it," Krick wrote to Ernest L. Kistler of the Martin Marietta Corporation, Denver Division, who had issued the invitation and would be chairman of the meeting, "the interest is in the methods of ultra-long long-range forecasting which have been developed by our organization. Therefore I suggest as a title for my talk, 'Year-Ahead Predictions of Atmospheric Conditions as an Aid in Planning Space Shots.' "

To add interest to the occasion, Krick suggested that the program include a simulated briefing for a manned space shot. "Engineers in your company will have approximate dates for such shots in the future," Krick wrote. If he could have some of these dates a little ahead of time, he indicated, he would pick the one best suited to the shot from a weather standpoint.

Kistler agreed and within the week the Martin company provided Krick with a theoretical spaceshot problem. They asked Krick's permission to make copies of the problem and distribute them at the meeting. "This should impress them with the complexity of your forecast work," wrote Jerold M. Bidwell, of the company's Meteorological Support Group, who likewise asked for a copy of Krick's forecast when it was ready, "as an example of the type of work your company can do for a complicated missile launch."

The imaginary space shot problem formulated by Martin's engineers was "to schedule a manned rendezvous-type mission so that no delay will be experienced due to weather. At H-hour a missile carrying a logistics payload will be launched into an orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida." This would be followed after a specified interval by a manned shot to rendezvous with the first. This second shot must be fired "during daylight hours" and with a delay of no more than one minute. "The mission should be scheduled during the calendar month of February, 1963."

All details were spelled out, as if it were to be a real launching. "About 12 hours would be needed to prepare the logistics shot for launching," the problem went on. "If the wind speed including gusts at 100 feet is expected to exceed 50 knots at the launch site during the 12-hour period, the launch will be delayed." There was need to know how hard the wind was blowing beyond 25 knots at the surface, plus or minus 5 knots, and for how long during the 12 hours before launch.

"Launch will not be carried out if wind speeds greater than 175 knots are anticipated between 25,000 and 50,000 feet altitude," the statement continued. "The vehicle will not be launched during a thunderstorm or so that the vehicle will pass through a thunderhead. The vehicle must not pass through rain or hail, but can take drizzle. . - . It is required that the entire missile be visible at the blockhouse at launch-distance 1500 feet.

"It is required that the missile be visually tracked to 100,000 feet. This requires no haze aloft, 25 miles visibility, and less than one-tenth cloud coverage at the Cape Canaveral launch site.

The specifications continued, "In the event of abort, the impact area of the payload should have greater than 10 miles visibility, no haze aloft below 10,000 feet, and less than one-tenth cloud coverage below 10,000 feet. Clouds above 10,000 feet must not interfere with radar. Surface wind must neither exceed a mean value of 20 knots nor have gusts greater than 25 knots. Wave heights mus be less than 5 feet. . . . This requirement will hold from Cape Canaveral to ascension."

The statement ended: "Problem prepared by the Martin Mete orological Support Group."

Krick was delighted with the challenge. It was like Normandy all over again. He wrote a memorandum to Paul E. Ruch, one of his vice presidents, attaching a copy of the Martin problem. "We are to develop this forecast for presentation at my IAS-ARS talk at the Martin Company on August 31," Krick explained.

"I should like a staff study, setting up requirements for this forecast by August 24. We will require such things as: should there be an absence of the jet stream; should we do the shots just after a cold-front passage in the high-pressure area behind it, and so on....

"After we have decided what we are looking for," Krick instructed Ruch, "then several of us should go through the progs (prognostic weather charts) for February, 1963, and the analogs, to determine which time we should select. One of the problems, of course, will be the possible abort between Canaveral and ascension. We will have to look at the European maps in conjunction with the North American maps. . . .

"If we can get our shots off on a one-two basis, it will save refueling, the costs of clearing the range for such a long period, and other factors of substantial economic importance." Krick optimistically saw it all as a golden chance to get the door open to them at Martin to work with the company on some real space launchings in the future.

At the August 31 meeting, held in the Martin company cafeterias, Krick first told something of his background. Then he re-stated the problem submitted by Martin calling for a time in February, 1963, some six months away, best suited to firing a couple of men into space and having them join up with a logistics shot sent up the day before.

Krick gave as the best interval for the mission February 6 to 10.

Dr. George Reynolds, member of the American Meteorological Society and one of the three comprising Martin's Meteorological Support Group who had worked up the problem for Krick, disagreed with Krick's forecast. Reynolds said it was highly unlikely that five consecutive days of the kind of weather needed would occur at any time at all in February.

Krick politely countered that he and three of his associates had each considered the problem independently and that all four men had come to the same finding as to the five-day period selected. Krick recommended that the logistics shot be sent up on February 6, followed by the manned shot next morning at eleven o'clock, Eastern Standard Time.

In the informal discussion which developed after the meeting, Martin engineers remarked that they hoped the dates Krick had given, February 6 and 7, 1963, might be used for an actual shot of special importance to the Martin company. Krick would have reason to recall the comment in due course.

A few days after the August 31 meeting Krick documented his forecast in a letter to Jerold Bidwell: "Although the problem was fictitious, the forecast was an actual prediction which you may wish to verify in February of 1963. . . . I am sure we shall all be watching the weather next February to see how it turns out." Krick evidently had been a hit with his audience. Chairman Ernest Kistler wrote him on - September 5, thanking him for an excellent presentation.

Krick had done so well, in fact, that he was booked to repeat his talk at the IAS Aerospace Reliability and Maintainability Conference to be held in Washington, D.C., May 6 to 8. By that time the forecast he had made for Martin's hypothetical space launchings in February would have been verified, as he confidently wrote to Frank A. Thompson, chief of Martin's Systems Reliability section. He said he would expand his new talk to include an explanation of how he and his associates arrived at the prediction.

As February, 1963, approached, Krick waited to see how close he came with his forecast for the "insoluble" problem provided by the Martin firm back in August. On the morning of February 6, the day he had selected for the first shot, a headline leaped at from the front page of the Denver Post: 6, 500 MILES- TITAN II LIFTS TOP PAYLOAD.

Under a Cape Canaveral dateline, the story led off, "A Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile carried the heaviest military payload in United States history for a record distance of 6,500 miles Wednesday in a test flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida . . ."

Krick remembered the remarks of Martin engineers after August meeting that they hoped the February dates might be used for a space launch of particular significance to the Martin company. He remembered the remarks all over again next day wl yet a new headline from Cape Canaveral proclaimed: POLAI MAKES 1,800-MILE TRIP DOWN ATLANTIC.

There could hardly be more flattering verification of Krick's Martin forecast than these headlines. Mention of the Titan II Polaris shots worked in nicely with an updating of his August paper. "Precise Year-Ahead Predictions of Atmospheric Conditions Aerospace Operations," which he planned to deliver at the aerospi meeting in Washington on May 6.

The flights of the Titan and Polaris dramatically demonstrated what Krick had long been shouting to the wind - that he and group were able to make detailed and accurate forecasts far in the future for a given day and place.

Krick's elation lasted until he got back the advance copy of his paper for the May meeting which he had submitted to Reynolds and Bidwell for their comments. Writing on plain paper - no more Martin company letterheads - these two members of the American Meteorological Society purported to remain unconvinced of Krick's long-range forecasting ability.

It would be fine if it could be done, they agreed, but "the real question has been the accuracy of such forecasts," they wrote, adding "obviously we have tried to keep an open mind on the problem."

The pair had another objection to Krick's paper. They complained that the several references to the Martin company was likely to mislead the readers and listeners into thinking that the Martin company was endorsing Krick's operations.

"The cooperation you have received was by individuals, as individuals, in cooperation with IAS professional activity," they wrote. "It is coincidental that they were employed by the Martin Company."

Reynolds and Bidwell came at length to the matter of the two missile shots which Martin had fired on February 6 and 7, the dates Krick had selected for hypothetical launchings nearly six months earlier.

"The flights of the Titan II and Polaris are really irrelevant," they wrote. "The design criteria for these vehicles and missions are undoubtedly quite different than those set forth in the problem statement." They objected to mention of the two launchings in Krick's paper for the May 6 meeting because it was "likely to confuse the listener," causing him to think that since the missions were successful, Krick's forecast was obviously correct.

The two-page critique of Krick's paper ended with the dictum that there be no reference to the Martin Company, to Dr. George Reynolds, or to Mr. Jerold M. Bidwell.

Krick was still mulling the Reynolds-Bidwell document when, in a few days, he received an alarmed letter from W. D. McBride, the Martin company's public relations director, who wrote that he had just seen a copy of Krick's paper, "Precise Year-Ahead Predictions of Atmospheric Conditions for Aerospace Operations." McBride demanded that Krick remove "all references to the Martin Company in both the oral and printed presentation of this paper."

The fact that the August meeting had been held on Martin Company premises and that Martin engineers had worked up the space shot problem, or that a Martin man had reviewed Krick's paper- none of this had anything to do with the Martin company, McBride insisted. Everyone had been acting on behalf of the Institute of Aerospace Sciences. Therefore, "the use of our name has no bearing on the subject."

McBride ended by saying, "I presume you appreciate our position in this matter and will take the necessary steps to make changes to your presentation."

In his surprise, Krick assumed McBride had not been fully formed about the Martin firm's role in the evolvement of the paper in question and ran through the story for him.

"Thus," he wrote, "the Martin Company has, in fact, played a useful part in not only assisting in the resolution of a scientific controversy, but opening up a new operational capability in the Aerospace Industry. After all, it was not the IAS that fired the Titan II at Cape Canaveral on February 6, 1963, on the basis of the IAS-ARS meeting August 31, 1962!"

Krick concluded, "Frankly, after the Titan II shot on February 6, 1963, we expected the Martin Company to approach us for the purpose of issuing a joint statement on the basis [of Chairman Kistler's promise to give credit where credit is due]. Possibly this was the first shot ever planned months in advance for a s date and time and then so fired."

Krick sent his paper to the May 6 meeting, but under the circumstances felt it pointless to attend. Instead, he flew to Europe to visit his old and ailing friend, von Karman, who, alas, died while Krick was still over the Atlantic.

Krick was missed at the meeting more than he had reason to expect. "The Program Committee . . . was greatly distressed that you did not appear to present your paper," wrote John de Sar Coutinho of the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Company, ing that about 100 people had asked for copies of Krick's paper.

This news encouraged Krick to hope that he might get the paper published in the journal of the AIAA. Again, no - because the paper had never been presented at one of the organization's meetings.

So Krick was neither heard nor read on the proposition that accurately forecasting the weather far in advance for the space industry was now a demonstrated truth.