Jan 25 1969
From The Space Library
Apollo 9 prime crew-Astronauts James A. McDivitt (commander), David R. Scott (CM pilot), and Russell L. Schweickart (LM pilot)-held press briefing at Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp.'s Bethpage, N.Y." plant. Describing 10-day mission scheduled to begin Feb. 28 as primarily engineering evaluation of lunar module, McDivitt said: ". . we will be giving the . . . LM hardware a very close scrutiny. We don't expect to find anything, but our job is to go up there and look for it. Now after we have discovered that the LM is a good vehicle, we have . . . to prove the joint operations techniques that we've tried to develop on the ground over the last 3 years. It's one thing to fly one spacecraft in orbit, and have it controlled by the ground, but when you get 2 of them up there, they are trying to look at 2 vehicles simultaneously so that . . . you find the ground talking to 2 spacecraft and 2 spacecraft talking back to each other and also to the ground, and it becomes a rather unwieldly communications effort." He added reminder that "only one of these vehicles has the capability to land-safely, I guess I should add. They both have the capability of landing. We only have one set of parachutes and one heat shield." He described LM as "a tissue paper spacecraft," explaining it did not have to reenter earth's atmosphere and there was no atmosphere on moon. Scott said they now had "a new vehicle . .. a command module LM combination . . . a particularly unique situation, in that . . . we have to do the lunar orbit insertion [in lunar mission] with the two vehicles joined together with a very large mass on the end of the command module, so it's a completely new guidance task" to be checked out. McDivitt explained separation of LM from CM on rendezvous day, with two vehicles pulling away from each other and performing maneuvers, moving up to 100 mi apart: "The object . . . is to evaluate our systems from a propulsion standpoint, electrical standpoint, the staging sequence, all of the components that we can and still get back safely to the command module." In response to question on relation of Apollo Program to life on earth, McDivitt replied: ". . . if you're not moving forward . .. the rest of the world is and they're going to pass you by. We're gaining something and we're gaining knowledge. . . . We're going to move forward on all fronts, we're not moving forward on just the space front. . . . Any organized system of intelligence moves forward in all directions, and . .. that is what we are doing." (Transcript)
Nike-Cajun sounding rocket launched by NASA from Kiruna, Sweden, carried Swedish Space Research Committee (SSRC) and British Science Research Council payload to 73.3-mi (118-km) altitude to obtain atmospheric data by detonating grenades and recording their sound arrivals on ground. Flight, last in series of four [see Jan. 23], was successful; 24 of 25 grenades detonated and were recorded. (NASA Rpt SRL)
Dedication ceremonies were held at site of new earth station for comsats near Cayey, Puerto Rico. (ComSatCorp Release 69-5; ComSatCorp PRO)
NR-1, world's first nuclear-powered deep submergence research and ocean engineering vehicle, was launched at Groton, Conn. Developed jointly by USN and AEC, 140-ft-long submarine would carry five crew members and two scientists over ocean bottom to study and map ocean floor, temperature, currents, and other oceanographic parameters for military, commercial, and scientific uses. (DOD Release 64-69; UPI, P Inq, 1/26/69)
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