January 1966
From The Space Library
Series of tests was being completed by NASA MSC’s Landing and Recovery Div. to check out direction and finding equipment for. homing an Apollo spacecraft for post-landing location and recovery. Tests were performed off Galveston Island in Gulf of Mexico using Apollo boilerplate spacecraft with the Apollo Recovery Beacon and Apollo Survival Radio transmitting signals. Homing runs were made from altitudes of 28,000 ft. to 500 ft. to determine range of direction finder receiver onboard a USAF HC-130H air rescue aircraft with the Apollo Recovery Beacon and Survival Radio on the spacecraft in the Gulf. Equipment had performed as expected with line-of-sight acquisition of boilerplate Apollo on all homing runs by the aircraft. ‘‘(MSC Roundup, 1/21/66, 3)’’
Eulogies for the late Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, NASA Deputy Administrator, and the late Dr. W. Randolph Lovelace II, NASA Director of Space Medicine, appeared in Air Force and Space Digest: Walter T. Bonney said of Dr. Dryden: “Hugh Dryden was a deeply religious man. He held that man’s life at its fullest is a trinity of activity, physical, mental, and spiritual. Throughout his life he preached the compatibility of religion and science, and he lived what he preached. No less, he was a realist; and so, as in 1954, he would often remind his listeners that: ‘I am not one of those few who believe that we can abolish the use of force in the world. As a nation we find it necessary to build great military power. I am confident that such strength is a greater contribution to the peace of the world . . . than military weakness.’ “In 1947, he was called to direct the work of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. His tasks were enormously difficult-radically new and expensive research facilities had to be provided, but even more important, learning the nature of the intricate problems of flight in the new speed ranges and methods for their solution demanded new concepts of team activity and functional coordination. His leadership, disarmingly light and unobtrusive, was amazingly perceptive and effective. Facilities were obtained and changes were made; the period 1947-58 became what might be truly called NACA’s golden age. “With establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (of which NACA was the nucleus), he undertook the role of scientific leader, reporting to the Administrator, and made of it a position of paramount influence. He rejoiced in the US policy that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes and worked to promote international space cooperation; but no less, he saw in US exploration of space an activity essential to the strength and security of the nation. As perhaps never before, his great wisdom and his unexcelled mastery of the art of the possible were in those later years valued and used to their fullest.” Editor John Loosbrock said of Dr. Lovelace: “In widening circles, the full import of Randy’s untimely death becomes apparent. The Air Force Association and the Aerospace Education Foundation have lost a distinguished leader. The medical profession is poorer for the passing of a brilliant surgeon, an imaginative researcher. The United States Air Force will miss his sound advice and pioneering efforts in the special kind of medical knowledge that is required for those who fly-in air and in space. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration must find new leadership for its space medical effort. The entire nation and the world itself will find that Randy Lovelace’s death leaves a large and well-nigh unfillable niche.”
Dr. Raymond L. Bisplinghoff, Special Assistant to NASA Administrator, paid tribute to the late Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, in Applied Mechanics Reviews on Dr. Dryden’s scientific and engineering accomplishments. Dr. Bisplinghoff noted that the NACA, under Dr. Dryden’s leadership, ‘‘produced a vast body of new knowledge which made possible routine supersonic flight and laid much of the ground for space flight that was to come. We discern here, perhaps as much as any other place, the impact of Dryden’s leadership on the nation’s destiny. The development of high-speed wind-tunnel facilities and a companion competence for theoretical research within the NACA contributed, in the opinion of the author, more than any other single factor to the leadership of the United States in supersonic flight. . . .” ‘‘(AMR, 1/66,1-5)’’
An air-transport vehicle that had attracted the special interest of NASA aeronautics research was the personal airplane, Charles Harper, Director of Aeronautics Div., NASA OART, wrote in Astronautics & Aeronautics. Attempts were being made to devise aircraft whose control commands would provide a response “wholly natural to the operator” and which could be operated with no more special training than required for the automobile. Recent scientific developments spurred by spaceflight activity were being assessed with regard to the problem. ‘‘(Harper, A&A, 1/66,24)’’
In Reader’s Digest article, William Hines, science editor of the Washington Evening Star, charged and documented what he described as a banding “together in a unique alliance, [of] NASA and the Urban Renewal Administration” to build NASA Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, Mass., at the cost of several citizens’ rights. He said: “It was a splendid arrangement. The glamor of a Federal space center would grease the way for urban renewal which, realistically, didn’t otherwise stand a chance of tearing up this thriving industrial area. NASA had captured a prize piece of real estate at a bargain-basement price roughly $4 million-thanks to the fact that urban renewal would pay most of the ‘real’ cost of the land and would take on the expense and dirty work of removing the occupants. And the Cambridge-Boston area was going to have all that money spent there. “There was only one catch: nobody had bothered to ask the opinion of the 94 businessmen and their 3,500 employees who were on the Kendall Square chopping block. Most didn’t realize what had happened until they read the newspaper headlines on August 21: $60-Million NASA Plant To Be Built in Kendall Square.’ ” (Reader’s Digest, 1/66,)’’
European Space Research Institute (ESRIN) had begun operations in a temporary location in the Park Hotel, Frascati, Italy. A center of the European Space Research Organization (ESRO) , it would work initially on plasma physics and its application to spacecraft control as well as plans for proposed ESRO astronomical observatory. Permanent facilities were planned near the Italian Atomic Energy Authority’s research center. ‘‘(M&R, 1/24/66, 7)’’
Report of the first US. Space Industry Trade Mission, which visited Europe under sponsorship of the National Space Club, indicated that European space industry offered “a potentially attractive market,” and concluded that US. aerospace industry could best develop its European market potential by “the sale of materials, components and subsystems; licensing or technical support; outright investment in European firms; and joint ventures with European firms.” ‘‘(Text)’’
Dr. Donald F. Hornig, Director of Office of Science and Technology, said in International Science and Technology: “. . . a technological society has to have first-rate research in progress-in some cases for immediate application and in other cases simply because we realize more and more that we have to depend on how much we know and understand in order to build a new society . . . So research, as research, is an important goal, and in accomplishing it we end up supporting two-thirds of all the research going on in the graduate schools of the country. . . . We’re supporting some 26,000 students a year, indirectly, through research grants. And now through direct federal grants and fellowships we’re supporting a little more than that many again. So that even if we had no plan whatever, we already have a mighty effect on the higher educational system.” ‘‘(Int. Science and Tech., 1/66, 66-70)’’
NSF Reviews of Data on Science Resources indicated, in a preliminary report on research and development in American industry for 1964, that the aircraft and missile industry was responsible for 44% of total net increase in R&D performance funds from $6.6 billion in 1956 to $13.4 billion in 1964. Report attributed 17% of increase to the electrical equipment and communication industry, noting that performance of R&D in those two fields was “strongly influenced by the requirements of the Federal Government in the areas of defense and space exploration.” Only those two industries received more Federal than company financing for R&D; in 1964, 90% of aircraft and missile industry’s R&D funds came from Federal Government, and 62% of those of the electrical equipment and communication industry. Aircraft and missile industry employed 30% of total number of R&D scientists and engineers; January 1965 figure of 101,200 for these personnel showed decline of 7,700 from January 1964. Electrical equipment and communication industry accounted for 22% of total-74,800 scientists and engineers as of January 1965, 600 less than previous January. ‘‘(NSF, Reviews of Data on Science Resources, 1/66)’’
Dr. George P. Woollard, president of the American Geophysical Union and director of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, said in AGU Transactions that there was a “crisis in science” requiring bold Government action. Stating that less and less of NSF’s budget was going into basic research, Dr. Woollard called on Congress to assess the overall scientific needs of the country, including “ambitious” programs in various fields proposed by NSF and NAS panels. “Research proposals that were good enough five years ago to obtain NSF support now would not stand a chance,” he said. “They would be turned down not because the projects lacked significance but because funds are short and only the most established and influential researchers win out.” ‘‘(AGU Transactions, 1/66)’’
- December 1965
- January
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