The Americans then announced that they were to send a new series of Pioneer. They were going to send a probe into deep space and originally, a probe to reach Venus. Now, the... that was of extreme interest. The launch was to take place in May of 1960 and everything went perfectly. The important point was that we had reached... we... we had the task, a few moments after the launch from Cape Canaveral, of sending out the signal through the telescope, to fire the bolts holding the space load to the rocket. And all this worked perfectly. From the American trailer; the button was pressed at precisely the right moment and we... we were told after launch and the payload was released form the carrier rocket. The... we then tracked that rocket for many, many tens of thousands of miles into space.

Now, of course the... the press went mad over this and the front page of every newspaper in the world continued this... contained this story pretty well the next day. I had nobody to deal with the press in those days and my telephone was ringing continuously and on... on one of these rings, I wearily picked up the telephone again. 'Is that Professor Lovell?' 'Yes'. 'My name is Klingerlee. I'm Lord Nuffield's private secretary. His Lordship wishes to speak to you'. Lord Nuffield came on to the telephone. 'Is that Lovell?' 'Yes, my lord'. 'How much money is owing on that telescope of yours?' And I said, 'Oh my... oh my lord, I think... I think we still owe fifty or sixty thousand pounds'. 'Is that all? I'll send you a cheque'. So I tried to thank him. He said, 'That's all right, my boy. You haven't done too badly'. End of conversation; end of debt. Fairytale ending.

Now, so that released us from all debt in that fairytale ending. Unknown to me, my wife, who had of course suffered as I had throughout all those years, she wrote to Lord Nuffield to thank him, and she had a reply from Lord Nuffield. When I told Rainford, the bursar, of this episode, he said, 'That's absolutely astonishing. Lord Nuffield has never been known to write a private letter to anyone'. That correspondence is in... in the bookshelf there. Anyhow, that is the story of the end of our debt.