Apr 25 1965
From The Space Library
FAA Administrator Najeeb E. Halaby said that FAA's sonic boom tests over Oklahoma City last year had shown that construction of a supersonic airliner prototype was clearly warranted: "My current conclusion is that a supersonic airplane can be designed in terms of configuration, operating attitudes and flight paths so as to achieve public acceptance in the early 1970s," Halaby's statement was in conjunction with release of a three-volume final report on the Oklahoma City experiment. The FAA report, which included preliminary results from boom tests at the White Sands Missile Range, concluded that only abnormally massive booms would create serious problems. A principal finding in the "community reactions" study stated: "Substantial numbers of residents reported interference with ordinary living activities and annoyance with such interruptions, but the overwhelming majority felt they could learn to live with the numbers and kinds of booms experienced during the six-month study," The three volumes just released were "Structural Response to Sonic Booms," "Community Reactions to Sonic Booms in the Oklahoma City Area, February-July 1964," and "Final Program Summary, Oklahoma City Sonic Boom Study, February 3-July 30, 1964," Publication of these three documents completed the five-part Oklahoma City report. Two volumes had been made public in February 1965. ( FAA Release 65-34)
Expansion of the role of the National Science Foundation and expenditure by Federal mission-oriented research agencies of more money on basic research were two major recommendations of a special panel of the National Academy of Sciences to Congress, Recommendations were in a report, Basic Research and National Goals, submitted to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. The panel, headed by Dr. George B. Kistiakowsky of Harvard Univ., former science adviser to the President, was comprised of 15 scientists, engineers, and economists. The panel held that the National Science Foundation, as the sole agency of Government whose purpose was support of science across the board without regard for immediate practical gains, should be expanded to serve as a "balance wheel" to soften the impact of variable research policies of mission-oriented agencies on "little science." The recommendation that agencies should devote greater portions of their budgets to basic research was based on the view that in many cases these budgets were becoming stationary while the capacity for scientific growth was expanding. The panel also recommended that in some cases the Congress should extend the mission of the agency to include the pursuit of certain branches of basic research. Three general opinions were widely held by the panel regarding the balance of science support today: first, Federal funds should be allocated with some consideration to the geographical-social effects of their expenditure; second, biological sciences had been under-supported and should receive support to expand them faster than the physical sciences; third, there was an impending crisis in the physical sciences because mission-oriented agencies, faced with stationary budgets, would probably not expand their support of basic physical research as fast as capacity to do basic research expanded. (Clark, NYT, 4/26/65, 55; SBD, 4/30/65, 330)
Dr. Hideo Itokawa, professor at Tokyo Univ. and deputy director of Japan's Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science, was quoted on Japan's role in space activity by Peter Temm in an article in the Washington Sunday Star: "Space research is not a competition. It should be a cooperative undertaking among all countries, to explore and study the universe, "Both America and Russia appear to be chiefly interested in artificial satellites and manned space vehicles, I see Japan's role as filling some of the gaps skipped over by these two nations, "I believe it is possible that Russia may be preparing to abandon its project of putting a man on the moon in favor of assembling a satellite space station; at least, this how I interpret the recent Voskhod flight and its emphasis on carrying out tasks outside of the capsule, "I sincerely hope if this is so, that American space scientists will not swerve from their intentions of getting to the moon. There are many sides to space research, and the ideal approach is for all nations engaged in the new science to tackle different areas. "That way, we will all progress at a faster rate." (Temm, Wash, Sun. Star, 4/25/65)
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