December 1979
From The Space Library
The AFSC Newsreview reported completion of the first phase of construction at Vandenberg Air Force Base's Space Shuttle facility. Launch complex 6, built in the 1960s for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, had never been used (the MOL program was canceled in 1969) and was available to WSMC as a Shuttle launch site. Phase 1, carried out by Morrison-Knudsen, Inc., under a $3.9 million Army Corps of Engineers contract, had moved 680,000 cubic yards of earth and 10,000 cubic yards of rein- forced concrete and had dismantled 2,400 tons of steel. (AFSC Newsreview, Dec 79, 6)
A United Airlines newsletter reported the first solar-powered flight of an aircraft: Larry Mauro's Solar Riser, a homemade tailless biplane with about 600 solar cells in upper-wing panels, generating about 60 pounds of thrust to turn a 3-foot fiberglass propeller, enough to carry a 165-pound pilot and 125-pound craft aloft. Mauro flew his plane about a mile at a height of 40 feet during the annual experimental-aircraft convention in Oshkosh, Wisc. Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong had watched assembly of the craft, now in a Wisconsin museum. (UA rept Dec 79)
- November
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