Feb 3 1978
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
Kennedy Space Center reported it had begun a 3-mo exercise called Spacelab Critical Design Review, whose results would go to a final board meeting on design changes needed for Spacelab to fly. ESA's prime contractor, ERNO, had assembled Spacelab data consisting of 34 volumes and approximately 3000 drawings and had packaged 5 sets, weighing a total of 500lb, for shipment to the U.S. KSC review groups would look for discrepancies to ensure that the data reflected the hardware design and that the design was compatible with KSC operations. The reviewers would submit any discrepancies to a screening group, which would select those to be forwarded (along with those identified by other NASA centers) to MSFC for consolidation and decision on which would be sent to Europe. Those finally selected would be consolidated with ESA-identified discrepancies and forwarded to ERNO. (Spaceport News, Feb 3/78, 1)
John Pierce of the CalTech department of electrical engineering wrote in a Science magazine editorial that space exploration and technology had been remarkably rewarding by any standards, because the American public and government had been willing to try new and promising things without any guarantee of success. "Some areas of space," he said, "appear to be reserved perpetually for our government or competing governments. We must continually spend government money to ensure that our launch capabilities keep ahead of those of the rest of the world. Without this, even the most lucrative uses of space will pass into other hands." He advocated continued funding for planetary exploration and other radically new space science, even without immediate financial return: "If space science, including planetary exploration, is not adequately funded, we will lose an art which, having led us to glory, may lead us much farther. A future without adequate support in this area of great national success would be dismal indeed." (Sci, Feb 3/78, 4328)
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