They Say Manus Will Be In It

Manus, in the Admiralty Islands and a part of the Australian New Guinea Trust Territory, is one of the locations tipped as an American satellite tracking station. But it should he a tracking station in a big way, if some of the American newspapers know anything.

According to these reports, Manus has been proposed to the US Government by a big Los Angeles engineering firm. The pro gramme suggested would cost $lOO million and take seven years to complete. It would be built in con junction with a $39 million rocket launching station which would be located on Hawaii Island.

The newspapers have mentioned Nauru and Ocean Island and Aitutaki, in the Cooks, as other possible sites, since a big party of high-level boffins made a flight

down through Christmas, Aitutaki, Nadi and Honiara, with an aerial look at Nauru and/or Ocean and Tarawa. That was early last year.

Since then the Americans have been building “something” at Tarawa, American aircraft being fairly frequent callers at Bonriki in recent months. It may be assumed that this has something to do with the recent attempts by the Ameri cans to launch and recover a “capsule ” by aircraft using nets, over the eastern Pacific.

The possibilities of Manus, how ever, will probably come to nothing.