Feb 22 1974
From The Space Library
NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Programs George W. Cherry testified in hearings on technology for subsonic aircraft before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics' Subcommittee on Aeronautics and Space Technology. NASA aeronautical programs were structured to provide the airframe industry and its airline customers an efficient and environmentally benign technology base for a new-generation subsonic aircraft. The supercritical aerodynamics program included studies to improve structural efficiency without increasing drag, thrust, or fuel consumption. F-8 and F-111 aircraft flight tests with the supercritical wing had shown that using supercritical aerodynamics on passenger transports would increase profits 2.5% over those of conventional aircraft, or $78 million a year, on a fleet of 280 two-hundred-passenger aircraft.
Advanced transport technology studies showed that aircraft extensively employing composite materials would show a yearly profit of 2.7%, or $100 million, on a fleet of 280 two-hundred-passenger aircraft.
NASA propulsion technology had initiated an advanced multistage axial-flow experimental compressor weighing 60% less than conventional compressors. This, with technology advances in other components, could reduce gross aircraft weights and fuel consumption 10%. (Transcript)
Skylab 4 crew are debriefed on this day
Large underwater oscillations, called "internal waves" and usually invisible at the surface, had been detected by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists Dr. John R. Apel and Robert Charnell, using images from NASA'S ERTS 1 Earth Resources Technology Satellite (launched 23 July 1972), NOAA announced. The scientists speculated that internal-wave formation by lunar and solar tides and their subsequent breaking and dissipation of energy were important processes in the gradual lengthening of the day over millions of years. The waves also affected the propagation of sound in the ocean and contributed to the mixing processes in its upper layers. Internal waves changed the way sunlight was reflected from the ocean surface overlying them, and the change was detected in the satellite images. (NOAA Release 74-32)
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