Jul 13 1999
From The Space Library
Donald D. Engen, Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, and William Ivans, an internationally known, award-winning pilot from La Jolla, California, died when the motorized glider that Ivans was piloting broke apart and crashed. Investigators were attempting to determine the cause of the accident. Larry Sanderson, President of the Soaring Society of America, remarked that "both victims were top pilots in `an extremely well-built aircraft. So it had to be a very unusual set of circumstances that stressed the craft'." Both Engen and Ivans were officers of the Soaring Society, and Ivans, a pioneer in the field, had won many awards for high-altitude soaring. Engen had retired from the U.S. Navy in 1978, with the rank of vice admiral and had been a test pilot for many years. After retiring from the Navy, he had served for two years on the National Transportation Safety Board and as administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration between 1984 and 1987. He became Director of the National Air and Space Museum in 1996, following the resignation of Martin O. Harwit.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev set Kazakhstan's conditions for permitting Russia to launch a Progress cargo craft carrying supplies to the Mir space station, scheduled to lift off from Baikonur Cosmodrome on 14 July. Kazakhstan had suspended all Russian launches from the facility, following the crash of a Russian Proton-K rocket on 5 July. Nazarbayev's terms for permitting the launch of the Progress craft included Russia's payment of its US$300 million debt for the lease of Baikonur Cosmodrome and a visit of high-level Russian officials to the Proton-K rocket's crash site.
Kenneth R. Timmerman, President of Middle East Data Project Inc., testified before the U.S. House Science Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics that Iran was designing a new missile named Kosar, capable of reaching the continental United States. Timmerman stated that NASA had given Russian aerospace entities millions of dollars for the Russian space program, but that Russia had diverted those funds to support Iran's missile program. House Committee on Science and Technology Chairperson F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI) remarked that each new report of Russian proliferation activities raised the possibility that NASA was inadvertently subsidizing Russian industries, which the United States believed were helping Iran to threaten the United States' friends and allies in the Middle East and in Europe. Henry D. Sokolski, Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, testified that legislation sponsored by Representative Benjamin A. Gilman (R-NY) was critical to ensuring Russia's cooperation with the nonproliferation efforts of the United States. Gilman's legislation would require the President of the United States to determine whether Russia was "assisting Iran's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles." If the President determined that Russia was furnishing such aid to Iran, the federal government would prohibit NASA from "transferring U.S. tax dollars to the [[[Russian Space Agency]]] or any enterprise under the [[[Russian Space Agency]]] jurisdiction." An unnamed NASA official testified that to replace the operational capabilities that Russia provided to the International Space Program would cost as much as US$5 billion.
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