Feb 10 1977
From The Space Library
KSC announced it would reduce its dependency on fossil fuels as early as Oct., when 3 of its buildings would begin heating water with solar energy: the Visitors Center cafeteria and the Banana River repeating station, which should be operating on solar by late May, and the KSC headquarters building. Up to 70% of hot water for the cafeteria would be heated in a flat-plate collector on the ground next to the cafeteria, with a conventional water heater as backup for long periods of cloudy weather.
A larger flat-plate collector would provide up to 70% of the energy needed by the Banana River station, an electronic-communications relay near the eastern shore of Merritt Is., for hot water used in heating and air conditioning reheating. All three systems would be able to heat water to about 370K, although flow through the collectors would move the hot water into storage tanks at a maximum 333K. The flat-plate collectors would face south at a 28° angle for maximum efficiency. ERDA would fund the headquarters conversion jointly with NASA, which would fund the other projects alone. Energy savings over an 8yr period would be about $185K. (KSC Release 56-77)
Soviet news agency Tass reported the death at age 82 of Sergei V. Ilyushin, designer of more than 50 planes from dive bombers of World War II to modern passenger jets. The report did not give the date or cause of death.
Mobilized into the czarist army in 1914, Ilyushin had begun as a sweeper in an airplane hangar, became a mechanic, and graduated from flying school in 1917. Shortly after the Russian revolution, he entered the Soviet army and rose to be a lieutenant general. After graduating from the air force engineering academy, where he had designed and built gliders, he was put in charge of airplane construction and after 1931 devoted himself exclusively to aircraft design. His most famous design was the II-2 attack plane called the Stormovik, one of the first to prove the effectiveness of small single-engine craft operating near ground level. The II-2, a two-heater carrying a rear gunner behind the pilot, was the first close-support plane to fire rockets to any degree and was known to the German forces in WWII as the "flying death." The I1-62, a 4-jet passenger plane, had begun Aeroflot passenger service from Moscow to New York in July 1968.
Ilyushin was fourth of the "big six" Soviet aircraft designers to die: A.A. Mikoyan, who with M.I. Gurevich designed the MiG series of fighter planes, died in 1970; A.N. Tupolev, father of the Tu-144 supersonic transport, in 1972; Gurevich in Nov. 1976. Survivors were O.K. Antonov, designer of An-12 and An-22 cargo planes, and Ilyushin's close associate A.S. Yakovlev, whose Yak fighter usually teamed with the I1-2. Ilyushin's son Vladimir, a test pilot, might have beaten Yuri A. Gagarin into space in 1961 by several days; officials denied this. (NY Times, Feb 11/77, A24; W Post, Feb 11/77, C6)
Japan's Natl. Space Development Agency announced that launch of a three-stage "N" rocket carrying an engineering test satellite had been postponed to Feb. 14 because of trouble in the control system of the rocket's first stage. Launch had been scheduled originally for Feb. 6 from the space center at Tanegashima Is. (FBIS, Hong Kong AFP in English, Feb 10/77)
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