Aug 30 1977
From The Space Library
ARC announced that 7 U.S. biological experiments launched Aug. 3 on the USSR's Cosmos 936 had landed by parachute in Siberia Aug. 22. The Soviet satellite also carried experiments from France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and East Germany. Five of the U.S. experiments had followed up those on the first cooperative U.S.-USSR biological satellite Cosmos 782 launched in Nov. 1975; 4 of them had Soviet coinvestigators, and all of them used some Soviet scientific or technical assistance. The last U.S. biosat was Biosatellite 3, launched in 1969; without the Soviet flight opportunity, the U.S. biology experiments would have to wait for Shuttle flights in the 1980s. (ARC Release 77-37; NASA Release 77-169)
MSFC reported that astronaut Paul Weitz had arrived on center to check out a procedure developed for jettisoning a jammed-open outer door of the Shuttle scientific airlock while on a space mission. Weitz would wear a pressurized space suit for the task, to be carried out in MSFC's neutral buoyancy simulator. The 75ft-diameter tank filled with water 40ft deep would duplicate movement of people or hardware almost as if weightless in space. Engineers and technicians could design instruments and procedures to handle almost any foreseeable problems before actual spaceflight, and unforeseen problems (such as solar array failure on Skylab) could be solved during a space mission.
Center workers had been devising a way to remove the outer door of the airlock in case it could not be closed at the end of a mission, using a full-scale mockup of the Shuttle cargo bay in the simulator. Underwater TV cameras would record the astronaut's movements on control room monitors, and both video and voice communications would be recorded for later study. Scuba divers in the simulator would help as needed. (MSFC Release 77-158, 77-166)
NASA announced that the largest Space Shuttle component- its external propellant tank-would roll off the assembly line in New Orleans Sept. 9. The huge tank would then go by barge to the Natl. Space Technology Laboratories in Miss. for the first static firing of the Shuttle main engines.
The external tank consisted of 2 propellant tanks and an intertank structural connector; the forward tank would contain liquid oxygen, the larger aft tank liquid hydrogen. It would be the main structural member carrying the orbiter and the two solid-fuel rocket boosters. At launch, the tank would feed cryogenic propellants to the three main engines on the orbiter; the solid-fuel rocket boosters on each side of the external tank would use their own fuel and would separate about 2min into flight for later recovery. The mated orbiter and external tank would thrust for another 6min, separating just before the Shuttle reached orbital velocity. The complete external tank was 47m (154ft) long; the Shuttle orbiter it would carry was 37.2m (122)ft long. (NASA Release 77-179)
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