Jan 18 1962
From The Space Library
Administration budget for FY 63 presented to Congress by President Kennedy. NASA requests totaled $3,787,276,000, with $2,968,278,000 going to research, development, and operations, and $818,998,000 to construction. DOD requests totaled $51.64 billion, with $6.843 billion going to research, development, test, and evaluation.
In a NASA press conference following the presentation of the Administration's budget to Congress, Mr. James Webb, NASA Administrator, commented on the general attitude toward NASA's doubled appropriation request: "I would say that, the people I have talked to have felt that we ought to go forward with the effort at about the level the President has recommended. I have seen no indication as we have had advanced discussion with some of the leaders, like the Chairman of the House Committee, Congressman Miller, the Chairman of the Senate Committee, Senator Kerr, and with some of the Appropriations members; we have seen no disposition on their part to just simply throw up their hands and say, 'No, sir.' Each one of them has said that what you have makes sense and we are going to look it over very carefully, of course, but nevertheless there has been no tendency to start out with a reaction that it was simply out of line with reality. . . . Under those circumstances my judgment, is that there will be a good, strong, vigorous debate, just as there was when this agency was formed, and that when the issues are clearly out on the table, and the success of the very active flight program that we are now conducting makes itself felt, that there will be support for the program and that we will end up with about the recommendations of the President." NASA Goddard Space Flight Center selected Rohr Aircraft Corp. to negotiate for the manufacture and erection of three 85-foot-diameter parabolic, antenna systems to be located at Pisgah National Forest, (Rosman, N.C.), Fairbanks, Alaska, and an undetermined location in eastern Canada. When completed, these facilities in addition to similar system completed at Gilmore Creek, Alaska,, would serve as the core of NASA’s wide-band satellite instrumentation network. They would receive and record telemetry from large "second generation" satellites including Nimbus and the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO).
In a presentation at the American Astronautical Society conference in Washington DC, Dandridge Cole of General Electric introduced the concept of redirecting an asteroid to a specific target on earth as a continent-shattering weapon. Cole maintained that rockets capable of redirecting an asteroid in this fashion would be possible after 1970. Globe and Mail
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