Dec 23 1972
From The Space Library
Twenty-fifth anniversary of transistor-invented Dec. 23, 1947, by Dr. John Bardeen, Dr. Walter H. Brattain, and Dr. William Shockley at American Telephone & Telegraph Co.'s Bell Telephone Laboratories. Invention had introduced age of electronic miniaturization, advanced computer development, and simplified communications. New York Times said that, "without the tiny transistor, it is highly unlikely that man would yet have walked on the moon." (Smith, NYT, 12/22/72, 45 )
v/A Charles E. Weakley (USN, Rd.), NASA Assistant Administrator for Management Development, died in Bethesda, Md., at age 66. He had retired in 1967 as commander of Atlantic Fleet's antisubmarine war-fare force and had held NASA post since 1968. Adm. Weakley had received Legion of Merit and Bronze Star. During World War II he had devised random-screen method of protecting merchant convoys in experiment with early sonar. (W Star & News, 12/26/72, A6)
Saturday Review editorial appraised Apollo program's final significance: Militarily "little strategic value beyond increased sophistication in rocketry and global surveillance seems to have been realized." Scientific benefits were difficult to determine until data were analyzed. Program "signals the end-for the time being-of what must be regarded as a kind of dream . . wherein human captains ply their ships through the reaches of the heavens. In a way we are all vicarious captains of space ships, and with the end of Apollo it will be infinitely more difficult to imagine ourselves aboard craft that are guided only by the circuitry of electronic crews. As machinery for exploration, the human captain has been superannuated, at least for the foreseeable future. The inescapable corollary is that we are earthbound once again, tightly contained in the atmosphere of our single spinning island by insurmountably vast distances and the laws of physics." Apollo 11 Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" had been, perhaps, "that the Apollo program, for all its costs and whatever the legitimacy of its birth, created a cosmic event-earth- rise played on the retinas of terrestrially evolved organisms." (Meyer, Saturday Review, 12/23/72, 22)
Soviet aircraft designer Andrey N. Tupolev died in Moscow at age N. During 50-yr career Tupolev and associates had pioneered design of 120 different aircraft from 35-hp ANT-1 in 1920s to Tu-144 Soviet supersonic transport scheduled for service in 1975. He had been regarded as originator of all-metal aircraft, which he first designed in early 1920s. In 1934 he had built huge eight-engine aircraft with 63-m (207-ft) wingspan. Aircraft, named Maxim Gorky after Russian author, actually flew, but was demolished in 1935 crash. Tupolev, one of most decorated Soviet citizens, had won three Stalin Prizes and one Lenin Prize and was three-time Hero of Socialist Labor-highest Soviet civilian honor. He had been imprisoned in 1936 for allegedly divulging Soviet aviation secrets to Germany. During three years of forced labor he designed Tu-2 dive bomber which was flown by U.S.S.R. in World War II. Among postwar airliners designed by Tupolev design bureau were Tu-134 medium-range, 80-passenger transport and Tu-154, three-engine, 150-passenger transport scheduled to replace Tu-104 on Soviet domestic routes. (NYT, 12/24/72, 42)
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