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Show Briefing Outlines Athena Mission W Newsmen from through-cut through-cut Utah wore invited last Thursday to the Green 'River h unch complex of While Sands Mis:!e Rang.; for a press briefing prior to launch cf an Athena il missile on Friday morning. In charge of the briefing was White Sand- information informa-tion officer Jim Love'.ady, who Served as moderator for a brA'fing conducted by Naval Captain George L. Dickey, Asssiant Deputy to Major General T.. il. DeSausure Jr., for Naval Application wi'.h the Space and Missile Systems Organization Org-anization (SAMSO) ; Don Faccel, project manager for the Atlantic Research Corporation Athena; Ray Robertson, Hercules project pro-ject manager; and A. Mur-ay Mur-ay Maughan, chief of tin: Utah Launch Complex. The men painted a bright picture regarding the ( past performances of the Athena Athe-na as well as expressing optimism op-timism concerning the fu-tjure fu-tjure cif the Green River site. According to Maughan, eight more Athenas are scheduled to be fired during dur-ing the next 10 ' months. The continued outlook for the project after that time is bright, according to Captain Dickey. The use of the Athena provides a relatively inexpensive inex-pensive means of testing missile detection, radar screening and heat shields, officials at the base stated. With the use of the Athena, cost per flight is about $900,000 compared with about $2 million for use of an Atlas rocket at Vanden-buiig. Vanden-buiig. When questioned about making the Green River complex a permanent site, Maughan stated that at present there is a proposal to make the site a perman-tent perman-tent one, however it has not been done. Maughan continued, con-tinued, "I anticipate that we will have a considerable future here." . In addition to saving more than a million dol- . lars per flight compared to other rockets, the Athena has enjoyed a good success at the Green River site with more than 90 per cent success suc-cess discounting the first few missions. |