Feb 17 1977
From The Space Library
NASA announced that Lewis Research Center had named Kaman Aerospace Corp. of Bloomfield, Conn., to build the world's largest windmill blade: 45.7 meters, more than twice as long as the 19m blades powering the 100kw generator at LeRC's Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, O. The $2-million contract would cover design, fabrication, and test and evaluation of the giant turbine-rotor blade, representing the type needed for production windmills generating 1.5 megawatts of electricity, enough for several hundred homes.
Artist's concept of the 15-story wind-turbine blade, world's largest at 150 ft and weighing about 17 tons, to be built of glass fiber at a cost of $2 million for LeRC by Kaman Aerospace of Conn. (NASA 77-H-156)
The 15-story blade, weighing about 19 400kg and made of glass fiber, would require expensive special tooling and technology advances to permit large-scale production of such blades in future. NASA and ERDA planned detailed design studies on 2-megawatt wind turbines using two of the giant blades to produce power in average winds of 22km per hr. ERDA's decision to develop giant wind turbines had followed studies showing that the big machines could produce electricity at lower cost per kwh. (NASA Release 77-27)
LaRC announced it had awarded a contract worth about $3 million to Lockheed Aircraft Corp. for development and flight testing of active control concepts for subsonic commercial-transport airplanes. Scheduled for introduction in the 1980s, the concepts (including maneuver load control, gust alleviation, elastic-mode suppression, augmented stability, and envelope limiting) would help make future aircraft safer, quieter, more comfortable, and more energy-efficient. Work under the contract would be done at Lockheed's Burbank plant over the next 2yr. (LaRC Release 77-4)
MSFC announced that United Space Boosters, Inc., the firm that would assemble and check out the solid-fuel rocket for the Space Shuttle, had begun a manpower buildup that would eventually include about 150 employees. The present contractor work force of about 60 had been housed in Bldg. 4666 at the center. The firm, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif., had received in Dec. 1976 a contract for work at both MSFC and KSC to include stacking, launch operations, and refurbishing the reusable rockets. Responsibilities would include designing tools for applying thermal-protection materials to the boosters, electrical and instrument-verification testing, and installing instrumentation on the booster structure and on the booster aft skirt for tests scheduled at MSFC and at the Thiokol plant in Utah. Employees of USB doing MSFC work at KSC later in 1977 would number from 150 to 200, but the contractor would keep a cadre of about 80 at MSFC through the Shuttle test period. (MSFC Release 77-26)
LaRC announced that Katherine G. Johnson, aerospace technologist at LaRC's flight dynamics and control division, was among 24 black scientists and inventors honored in Philadelphia who had "advanced technology and helped move the world forward." For Black History Month, Philadelphia's Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum had unveiled a display including Johnson's portrait among "examples of singular achievement in technology" to "inspire the young, gratify the old, and encourage all who are made aware of these accomplishments." Johnson was cited for her work on interplanetary trajectories, space navigation, and spacecraft orbits. (LaRC Release 77-5)
President Carter would propose budget changes to reduce emphasis on nuclear power and increase research on energy conservation, predicted Les Gapay in the Wall Street Journal. Sources in and out of the Carter administration said that Carter would amend the Ford -budget for FY 1978 by cutting money for two major nuclear-power research projects; a multimillion-dollar program to develop a fast-breeder nuclear reactor that would produce more fuel than it consumed, and research on nuclear fusion, a new technology intended to provide commercial electrical power within several decades. Fusion was said to, be more environmentally acceptable than other nuclear programs, and the U.S. had been spending several hundred million a yr on this research. Funds cut from the Energy Research and Development Administration would go toward research on energy conservation; ERDA had been studying ways to save fuel in building, transportation, and industrial processes. The Ford budget had asked for a 28 increase in energy research for FY 1978 (from $2.9 billion to $3.7 billion), most of it for ERDA and for nuclear power studies. (WSJ, Feb 17/77, 3)
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