The Lebanese Rocket Society Page #2

loads of films.

Manoug saved everything.

For over 50 years, carefully.

We're overwhelmed.

And Manoug gives us his treasure.

He longs for us to tell this story

that is gradually coming together.

To say:

We'd love to fly rockets in the sky.

To say:
What do we need to do that?

Propellant?

We don't have any.

So let's make it.

The rocket? We build it.

We make bigger rockets

launch them higher and higher...

To dream and believe it is possible.

To want to do it and do it.

To say:
I want to share

this dream of space with others.

Manoug and his students

were driven by this.

The world then

was a world of possibilities.

In any case

that's how we imagine it.

Soon the project of conquering space

will be shared by another man.

I met Manougian

at a hotel

owned by a friend of mine.

He called Manoug and said:

"I want you to meet my friend

a young lieutenant

specialized in ballistics."

Manoug asked me to work

with the Haigazian's students

who had begun their experiments.

The students had pooled

their meager savings.

I don't even know

if the University chipped in.

They used pipes found in shops

which did not exceed 5 or 6 inches.

They were restricted by the size.

If I had not joined

them at that point

they'd probably have come up

against financial problems.

But also problems arising

from the fact that some products

made in France or in the US

were only available to the army.

Their sale to other users

was prohibited.

Lt. Wehbe, in charge of overseeing

Manoug's enthusiasm for ballistics

develops a passion

for the Lebanese rocket.

The army sends him to Cape Canaveral

where he receives training.

Then he attends test launches

of a 10-meter-French rocket

in the Algerian desert.

When he returns

he and Manoug share a goal:

to make the rocket bigger.

He knows it's possible.

The problem

is the rocket's main part:

the tubes available on the market

are too small.

The rocket they draw

is to be built at the army factory.

All cooperate:

the students of Haigazian

army mechanics

and Pierre Mourad

professor at the American University

who is to guarantee its solidity.

It's now a collective effort.

The space project featured

on front news.

"The boys and their rockets"

were a good story.

"Behold the Lebanese rocket!

The Lebanese rocket's future"

"Bravo to the Cedars!"

"Cedar 3, total success"

"Moment of pride for the Association

of Spacecraft Studies"

"Yesterday, the Cedar took flight".

The fervor around the Cedar emerges

in the era of the great Arab dream

that inspires people

to shape their own destiny.

Pan-Arabism is steered

by Egyptian president Abdel Nasser

with the creation

of the United Arab Republic

which unites Egypt and Syria.

It generates internal

conflicts in Lebanon

and almost a civil war in 1958.

One side of the population

has a pro-western ideology

and the other side endorses

Nasser's Arab nationalism.

To block the influence

of the USSR that supports Nasser

15,000 American marines

land in Lebanon.

A few months later

the new President Chehab

strives to rebuild state and nation.

The space research that began

just after the 1958 conflict

was used to unite a country

that had difficulty

considering itself a nation.

The rockets were turned into symbols.

For Manoug, it was something else.

He dreamt of mathematical teachings

and space exploration.

Students came from Jerusalem

Jordan, Syria

Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon...

And their project was contemporary

with the research of those times.

Yet all these images have lapsed

from the collective imagination.

History has erased them.

It was recorded without them.

The man who made most of

the images of this space adventure

is Harry Koundakjian, one of

the first Lebanese photojournalists.

The first photographs

of the baby rockets are his.

He was in Sannine as well.

Harry was there for all the launches:

Cedar 2B, Cedar 2C

Cedar 3 and 4...

The first photos published

by L'Orient and Al Jarida were his.

Images that adorned front-pages

with the success of the project...

still Harry's.

"Harry the Horse"

traveled the world

witnessed revolutions

and wars, met celebrities.

The images of the 60's

and 70's he shows us

are imbued

with the spirit of the era.

They are moving and linked to us.

They resonate within us.

While those of the rockets

have no trace in our imagination.

What is history's memory?

Harry is happy to hear that Manoug

kept traces of his photographs.

Like many photographers

he lost most of his negatives

during the civil wars.

He had not seen the images

of these rockets for ages.

When you read in the eyes

of these youngsters

how happy they are

with their project and its success

you're so proud of them.

You can never forget it.

It's amazing how this project, in

an Armenian university, evolves.

It is endowed with a spaceport

in the heights of Dbayeh.

The army is participating in it

the State, subsidizing it.

Still, it is

at Haigazian University's lab

that students continue mixing fuel

fabricating it from scratch

with their own hands.

It's seems even more

unbelievable today

that Rev. John Markarian, head of

the Protestant university he founded

did not halt the momentum

that went beyond them.

Now 93 years old

John lives in Pittston, Pennsylvania

with Inge, whom he met in Beirut

where he lived for over 25 years.

We didn't go wrong

with the measurements

but with the trajectory.

We took an ordinary map

to study our position

and the rocket's trajectory.

And we noticed

that the South of Cyprus

was on the same level as Syria.

From Dbayeh

if we had launched

the rocket straight

it would have fallen in Cyprus.

So we decided to deviate it slightly.

But the degree of deviation

was obviously not enough.

We received a letter from

our Ambassador in Cyprus, Ghossein

saying that the British Ambassador

had called him

about a rocket launched from

Lebanon which had fallen near a boat.

That could have sparked

a catastrophe.

At that time, in Lebanon

No radar was capable of following

a rocket at that speed and distance.

When I was in England, I trained

on the Decca Navigator System

which used transmissions

from different fixed stations.

The resulting triangulation

of pulse frequencies and phases

enabled us to track

and locate a boat.

So I had the idea

to use the same model

to track the rocket.

And this is what we did.

Some Arab scientists who founded the

Association for Spacecraft Studies

began launching rockets

that fell a bit too close to Cyprus

triggering an international outcry.

Cyprus protested at the UN

the UK expressed concern

and neighboring countries panicked.

Things verged on a diplomatic crisis.

Joseph Sfeir was in charge

of recording and analyzing

the rocket's trajectory.

An engineer specialized

in telecommunications

he adapted PAL/SECAM to Lebanon

invented the Lebanese

Central Bank security codes

placed radars on tankers

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